Owner: Videogame Biscuit URL:http://www.videogamebiscuit.com Join Date: Sun, 03 Jun 2007 07:06:22 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: I'm an amateur game developer. I publish the progress of the games I'm working on, finished games, reviews of tools and books and anything game development related Site statistics:Click here
Explosion tutorial 2007-08-03 09:43:35 I mentioned this a while ago, but here it finally is: a tutorial about explosions in Torque Game Builder. I’m gonna show you how to make a simple explosion with Torque’s particle engine. It will be only a fireball, no ejected fragments, sparks, plasma rings or anything like that. Just a very basic explosion.
We’re gonna start by creating a particle sprite. This will be the particle the explosion will be made of. For this, I used The Gimp. I created a 64×64 pixel image with a black background (used for viewability purposes, this will be removed later) and made a transparent layer on top of this. In this layer I drew the particle with the paintbrush. I used the ‘Galaxy, Small’ brush with an opacity of 50%. Next, I applied Gaussian Blur with a radius of five pixels and the black background layer is hidden. This image is saved as particle.png; it is very important to save it as a png file, since this format contains an alpha channel!
That’s it for Read more:Explosion
Gridblaster progress 08-01 2007-08-01 16:04:42 Did some more work on Gridblaster; the background tiles and maze blocks for level 3 are finished. Here’s what it looks like:
Like I said before, this will be the last level. When this is finished, I’m gonna finish the rest of the game (title screen, menu, level transitions, …) Read more:progress
Gridblaster progress 08-06 2007-08-06 12:37:41 My summer vacation ended today, but I managed to get some work done on Gridblaster the last few days. Here’s the latest screenshot. You’ll notice the extra blocks in the maze.
Here’s what those blocks do. If you hit them on the right side, they fly all the way through the maze and then back a bit. For example, when the block closest to the vertical edge of the maze is hit from the left, it will first move all the way to the right side of the maze, back to the left, and stop two blocks right from where it’s now. When a block hits an enemy, he’s destroyed. The block will also keep moving, so it’s possible to score multikills with them! The player himself can’t get hit by the blocks.
There are four blocks in the maze. Two can move only horizontally and the other two can only move vertically; this is indicated by the arrows on the blocks. They will also only move when hit from the outside. For example, the top block will start moving when hit from Read more:progress
The greatest features in games 2007-08-11 08:45:42 Game Producer has compiled a list of the seven greatest features
in games. Let’s take a little look at them!
Slow Motion
Although this can add a nice touch to a game, I don’t consider it one of the greatest features. Prince Of Persia: Rival Swords for the Wii also had it, but that changed nothing to the cold, hard fact that it’s a lousy game. I used some slow motion in Gridblaster, but I didn’t make it a key feature and the game wouldn’t be much different if I didn’t use it.
Shadows and lights
They are pretty much standard in 3D games now. Since I make sprite-based games I can make only very limited use of this. Although I agree they can create a great atmosphere for the game, there are some over-used clichés and incredibly predictable situations. Two examples:
A room that’s entirely lit, except for one spot under the stairs. Guess where the evil mutant alien is hiding! Doom 3 is especially notorious for this.
A long corridor with a switch at
Gridblaster progress 08-11 2007-08-11 08:04:37 I implemented the final features of level 3 yesterday; here’s the final result:
I have added the upgrade capsule launcher and two flamethrower traps. The upgrade capsules enable the same features as in the previous levels, plus one extra: invulnerability!
So this is the final level. Now it’s time to put them all together, make a title screen with a menu system and polish everything up. I hope to finish it by next weekend so I can publish it, but I can’t guarantee anything of course. To quote John Carmack, when he’s asked for the release date of a game: “When it’s done!”.
When this game is finished, I’m immediately starting on the next one. I’m not gonna disclose any details yet, but I already made plans for it even before I started working on Gridblaster. However, before I get started on it, I’m gonna buy a new computer! I had it planned for quite a while now, and now I’m finally going through with it. I have already ma Read more:progress
Gridblaster is back on track! 2007-08-18 06:59:59 Okay, things didn’t go as smoothly as I hoped the last couple of days, but everything is back on track. I have figured out how to build a graphical user interface and I’m working on the menu system. The levels have been linked, so the next level is loaded when the current level is cleared. I expect to finish the game by wednesday. I’ll have to do a few days of test playing to check for any more bugs, and when everything works fine I’m gonna upload and publish the game next saturday!
Gridblaster progress 08-15 2007-08-15 14:21:47 The levels are done, and I’m busy putting everything together. First thing I was trying to do was creating splash screen on startup and then a menu. And it’s giving me quite a few headaches! If there’s one thing about Torque Game Builder that I hate it’s the GUI (graphical user interface) Builder. There’s hardly any documentation and it’s loaded with bugs. Right now I’m stuck with an image that I can’t resize. No matter what I try, it always resets itself to fullscreen. Another thing is loading levels. You’d imagine you just use the “loadLevel” function with the filename, right? Wrong! It doesn’t work, and again, very little documentation.
Now don’t get me wrong, I still think TGB is a great tool. Right now I’m still using the old version since I can’t import my game in the new version without more or less rewriting everything, but I hope there’s a lot of bugfixes in the new version! Somethi Read more:progress
Happy birthday, John Carmack! 2007-08-20 13:07:44 Today is John Carmack
’s 37th birthday! If you are into video games, this name will, without any doubt, sound very familiar. Carmack is one of the people responsible for some of the greatest video games of all time, such as the Commander Keen series, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake. He was the first programmer to achieve smooth scrolling on a PC (pioneered in Commander Keen) and made the first successful first person shooters.
John Carmack, born on August 20 1970, started programming at a very young age, on the Apple II computer. When he got a job developing games for Softdisk, a shareware subscription magazine, he met John Romero and Adrian Carmack (not related). They felt they couldn’t make the games they wanted at Softdisk, so after a while they left and started their own game company: id Software (pronounced ‘it’, not ‘idea’), wich we all know, of course, as the company that made Doom and Quake. Doom is still considered one of the most legendary g Read more:Happy
Gridblaster is finished! 2007-08-25 08:42:34 Well, here it finally is. Gridblaster is finished! You can download it from the Games page. The file is a self-extracting zip file. Just unzip it and run Gridblaster.exe, no installation is necessary. For a first game, I personally think it turned out quite fine. I struggled a bit with the GUI system, and getting the sound to work wasn’t always easy.
I’m already planning my next project and working on some of the graphics, but I won’t disclose any information about it right now. For the next two weeks, I will write a few tutorials. I think some of the features in Torque Game Builder aren’t very well documented. Some searching on the forums gave me all the information I needed and to make sure I don’t lose it I’m gonna write some tutorials, mostly on how to build a graphical user interface. My next project will be officially announced in two weeks, that’s september 8.
Blender 3D 2007-08-29 15:31:13 Even though I make sprite based games, I still need a 3D modelling tool. A very common way to create great looking sprites is pre-rendering them. Instead of using a 3D model, you render a bitmap of it and use that as a sprite. A while ago I already reviewed POV-Ray and Moray. While these are great tools, they have their downsides. A very well known application in the open source community is Blender
3D. This tool is claimed to have the same capabilities as some that cost thousands of dollars!
So let’s take a look at Blender. The first thing you will notice when starting it is the complicated interface. While this has improved a lot, it still looks very confusing to new users. The good news is that you don’t need most of the tools right away. Also, as we will see, there’s a truly gigantic amount of documentation available. You’ll need to digg through a lot of it since the program relies very heavily on keyboard shortcuts and the interface can be quite non-intuiti
Creating a splash screen 2007-08-27 15:55:22 This is the first article in a series of tutorials about Torque Game Builder. For these tutorials, basic knowledge of Torque is assumed. I am not going to write complete beginner courses, but specific howto’s. And I’m gonna start with a tutorial on how to make a splash screen
. If you have bought the indie license version of any Torque product, you are required to show the Torque logo on startup, and a splash screen is perfect for that. The GUI builder contains everything you need to do just that.
So let’s get started! Start Torque Game Builder and open the GUI builder (F10 or Project -> GUI Builder). Go to File -> New Gui; a dialog box will pop up. First, name the new GUI you will be creating; let’s name this one “Splash”. Next, select the GUI class. To create a splash screen, we’re gonna use the GuiFadeinBitmapCtrl class. With this class, you can show a bitmap with a fade-in and fade-out effect, wich is perfect for splash screens. Now yo Read more:Creating
Changing the application icon 2007-09-02 14:33:16 When you have made a game with Torque Game Builder and have built the package, you’ll notice that the executable file has the same icon as Torque Game Builder itself. If you want to change this, you will need the source code, wich comes with the professional version. Of course, it’s kinda silly to spend money on that if all you want to do is changing the icon (not to mention that you’ll also need Visual C++). Luckily, there are other ways to accomplish this.
The tool you will need for this is Resource Hacker. With this application, you can view and edit resources in executable files. Now, what are resources? Resources are data like cursors, string tables, menus, and of course, icons. The feature we will use here is replacing an icon in an executable. It’s very easy. You just open the .exe file in the program, select the icon you want to replace (in this case, there’s only one) and select “Replace Icon” from the “Action” menu. Now yo Read more:Changing
Wasabi Defense background story 2007-09-24 10:00:10 A story
in a videogame is like a story in a porn movie. There should be one, but nobody really cares about it. I have come up with a cool background
story for my current project, Wasabi Defense
, and here it is.
In the last decade of the 21st century, scientists develop the tachyon pulsar, a faster-than-light engine. The only energy source that’s capable of powering it, however, is anti-matter, wich is very difficult and expensive to make. Building a manned spaceship is simply impossible, so mankind decides to build a fleet of small robotic explorers to travel to nearby star systems. And then, a probe investigating Omega Wasabi 4, a small planet in the Wasabi star cluster (not a real star cluster, totally made that up) discovers something very interesting…
A robotic lander that descended to the planet’s surface had discovered an unknown super heavy element that transformed into anti-matter when exposed to high energy alpha particles. This element, wich was named kicka
Update on design document templates 2007-09-22 06:40:57 I have added two more templates to my designdocument
template package. I have created a layer organiser and a new version of the source code tracker. In the first version (wich is still included, of course) there was a section for dependencies (files that are imported in the current source file). The new version doesn’t have this section so there’s more place for entering the classes that are in the file. You can get the new version on the Tools page. Read more:Update
Wasabi Defense progress 09-18 2007-09-18 12:47:55 Visually there isn’t that much progress
. Still the background image, the lander and the rocket flame. New are the landing platform (wich might be replaced later, since I’m not too excited about it) and the hud (heads up display). This display is essential for guiding the lander to the landing platform, since it displays the approach conditions. The horizontal and vertical speed need to be within specific limits, as well as the angle of the lander. If any of these parameters is out of bounds, the lander will crash. It also displays your fuel. That’s right, you don’t have an infinite amount of fuel, so you better not mess around too much!
What is planned for the next step? A launchpad for the fighter, the fighter itself, gamepad support, the first stage of the menu system and trying to set the game to fullscreen mode, including detecting and setting the resolution and aspect ratio. Read more:Defense
Wasabi Defense background, part 4 2007-09-17 11:37:37 Okay, here’s the final part of the tutorial on the background
image. I will explain how I created the bright star and the planet, both quite easy effects. But let’s begin with the star. This consists of three layers: the star core, the four rays of light and the halo. We’ll start with the core. Create an empty layer, pick the brush tool and select a large circle fuzzy brush. For the color, I picked a very light (almost white) blue. This is what I did next:
Place a dot with the fuzzy brush;
Select the dot and enlarge it 400%;
Blur with a radius of 30 pixels;
Place a second dot in the middle of the blurred dot.
This resulted in the following effect:
Next, the rays. I created another layer and selected a circular region around the star core. Next I feathered the selection, with a radius equal to the radius of the selection itself. I filled it with the star color and cut out a circular section in the middle. Finally, I blurred the layer (radius about 20 pixels) and set Read more:Defense
Wasabi Defense background, part 3 2007-09-14 10:54:39 In this article, I will explain how I created the hills. For this I used POV-Ray and Moray; basic knowledge of these tools is assumed for this tutorial. The key element in this tutorial is the so-called heightfield. This element takes a bitmap image and turns it into a 3D object using the brightness of the pixels. White pixels forms mountaintops, black pixels form valleys. The trickiest part is generating the image for the heightmap. This is done with The Gimp. First, create a new image and apply the clouds filter (Filters->Render->Clouds->Solid Noise), wich will generate a random cloud-like pattern. You should set the size to the same aspect ratio as the image you’re using. For example, I used a 1680×420 image, so I set the size to 8×2. Next, the detail. The more detail you add, the more peaks and edges your hills will have. Low detail results in smooth hills, while high detail yields detailed mountain peaks. Here’s the cloud pattern I used:
Using thi Read more:Defense
, background
Wasabi Defense background, part 2 2007-09-12 10:00:51 In the previous article, I explained how I created the sky for the Wasabi Defensebackground
. Let’s move on to the ground! This is a pretty easy one. Let’s start by creating a new empty layer named “Ground”. In this layer, I created a texture pattern for the ground, like this:
Apply the solid noise clouds filter (Filters->Render->Clouds->Solid Noise) with X and Y size set to 10 and detail set to 4;
Go to Layer->Colors->Colorize and adjust the values until you have the color you want. In my case, I set hue to 40, saturation to 100 and lightness to 20;
Apply gaussian blur with a radius of 5 pixels (Filters->Blur->Gaussian Blur).
You can experiment with these values a bit to get different results. Mine looks like this:
This looks a bit like a rocky landscape viewed from above, but what we need is some sort of perspective view. Gimp has a perspective distort tool, but I wasn’t really satisfied with the result of it, so I decided to try
Wasabi Defense background, part 1 2007-09-10 10:00:24 Creating the background
image was quite a bit of work, so I’ll split the tutorial up in several parts. I’m gonna start with instructions on the sky. The background started as a 1680×1050 (the typical resolution of a 22″ widescreen display) image with a black background. The sky occupies the upper 4/5 part of the image, so I created a new layer named “Sky gradient” and selected a 1680×840 region. This was filled with a linear three color gradient that goes from black to red to magenta.
This is way to bright, however, so I set the opacity of the layer to 40%:
Now we need some stars in the sky. That’s done like this:
Create a new layer named “Stars”, select the top 1680×840 region and fill it with black;
Go to Filters->Noise->Scatter RGB, uncheck “Independent RGB” and set the color values to 1.00 and alpha to 0;
Go to Filters->Blur->Gaussian Blur and set both values to 3.0 pixels;
Go to Layer-> Read more:Defense
Introducing Wasabi Defense 2007-09-08 10:00:24 For the past two weeks I have been working on my new game, and now I’m finally introducing it: Wasabi Defense
! Your mission is to build an outpost on the planet Omega Wasabi 4 and defend it from attackers. You have to manoever spacecraft that carry equipment to a landing platform, after wich additional structures are added to the outpost, and then an attack wave follows. During the attacks you control a hovering gun platform that floats above the base. Here’s a first screenshot that shows the surface of Omega Wasabi 4 and a lander that’s firing it’s main engine.
For this game, I have started using Torque Game Builder 1.5, and I must say, it’s a great improvement over the previous version. There are a few new things that I’ll be using in this game. First of all, it will be fullscreen, with support for both standard and widescreen formats. For controls, you can use the keyboard or a gamepad. I will also use pre-rendered sprites and much more animation Read more:Introducing
A short update… 2007-10-01 12:01:32 Okay, I realize there hasn’t been a real update in more than a week, but there’s a good excuse&hellip
; I mean, explanation! First of all, part of the work I’m doing on this version is behind-the-scene stuff. I need to figure out how to read and write configuration files - something that wasn’t included in Gridblaster - and set the screen resolution and aspect ratio. This involves a bit of trial and error, so it takes a while.
Second, and that’s the most important reason, I ordered a new computer (finally!) and I’m busy backing up stuff from my old machine and moving everything to the new one. I also need to install all software again, download the most recent versions of all my open source tools and get everything up and running again. When that’s done, I can return to working on Wasabi Defense and hopefully, I’ll be able to post some new screenshots soon!
Wasabi Defense update 10-11 2007-10-11 07:34:48 Finally, here’s a new screenshot of Wasabi Defense
! It took a while because there were quite a few difficulties that took some time to solve. Anyway, here it is:
First of all, I got started on the status bar. This was a real pain in the ass, because the text objects had to adjust to different screen resolutions. The coordinate system in TGB’s GUI builder is entirely different from the in-game system, and to make matters worse the GUI doesn’t automatically resize for different resolutions. It has taken me a few days to figure everything out. I’ll probably write a tutorial about it when I’m sure everything works as it should.
Second, I created the main weapon of the game: the Hovergun weapon system! It consist of a central engine pod with weapon pods attached to the sides. Right now, there’s only a plasma cannon pod, and it’s not really attached but floating near it. I should draw some sort of connector to put them together. I created the graphi
What makes games fun? 2007-10-06 08:24:08 Interesting article on Game Producer about seven things that make games fun. So, what is it that makes
games fun to play?
1. Collecting stuff
Definitely! This is what made the Diablo games so great. The graphics weren’t too spectacular, the gameplay repetitive as hell, but the ability to collect and trade all sorts of kick ass items made up for that.
2. Personalizing stuff
Also present in Diablo II, although not that much. Best example in this category is The Sims. Let’s face it. This game is boring as hell, and still it’s a huge succes because you could personalize literally everything! And, of course, let’s not forget Second Life. Ugly, boring, slow and full of weirdos with some bizarre fetish. But at the moment, there’s nothing that’s more customizable.
3. Improving stuff
I think this is one of the top factors that makes a game great. Being able to improve and upgrade your equipment makes a game extra interesting. Examples: System Shock 2, Bioshoc
Wasabi Defense progress 10-05 2007-10-05 05:32:44 I’m more or less done with the code for setting the display options. The trickiest part was adjusting the aspect ratio for widescreen displays. I struggled with it for quite a while, only to find out it was actually very easy to solve. You can play the game in fullscreen or windowed mode. In windowed mode, you can choose to play with a 4/3 or 16/10 aspect ratio; in fullscreen mode, this isn’t possible. Also, when playing fullscreen you can either set the resolution or let the game detect your desktop resolution and use that.
On my 17″ crt, everything works fine. My new computer should arrive any day now, so I can finally see if it works on a widescreen display. I called the store today and they’re still waiting for the case (an Antec Sonata III), but it should arrive today so I can go pick up my computer tomorrow. Read more:Defense
, progress
A short setback… 2007-10-16 11:05:43 I finally got my new compter, and there’s a small problem. I created all artwork so far with The Gimp, and I can’t get it to work on Windows Vista. The installer doesn’t even work, I get a very cryptic error message. This means that I either have to fix this problem, or find another graphics program. Luckily, I had finished all graphics for the current version so I can still work on my code. I’ll keep everyone updated on the issue, and I hope it will be fixed soon. Read more:hellip
Wasabi Defense update 10-21 2007-10-21 14:00:57 Okay, so here’s the new screenshot. This is the first screenshot made on my new computer, so it’s a Vista window, and it’s in widescreen format. The colors are a bit darker, because I had to adjust them for LCD displays.
What you see is the hovergun weapon entering the game. Originally, I intended to make a bunker with doors that would slide open and then the fighter would emerge from it, but I soon realized that I would have to make it a lot wider and I only have a limited amount of space for each base unit. So, I decided to make it some sort of teleport-effect.
This also concludes this development step. Next, I’m gonna get started on the behind-the-scenes mechanics and fixing some of the bugs that are still haunting me. I’m also gonna write a few tutorials on how to make resolution-independent GUI’s. It took me a bit of time to make this work and the method I came up with works quite well. Read more:Defense
Back on track once again! 2007-10-20 16:05:00 After the initial trouble with The Gimp, I’m back on track with Wasabi Defense. I couldn’t get the original Gimp to work, so I tried the portable version, wich is designed to run off removable media and doesn’t require installation. Not the most elegant solution, but it works. The first thing I had to do was adjust the brightness of the background. It looks different on my new LCD monitor than on my old CRT, so I had to darken it a bit. Right now I’m finishing up the last bits of work on this version, and I’m already planning the next step. This will incorporate the behind-the-scenes mechanism wich controls the construction of the base and keeps track of the progress. I’ll post another screenshot when I’m finished with this version.
Creating a resolution independent status panel 2007-10-23 13:45:09 The status panel I created for Wasabi Defense required a bit of coding for making it resolution independent
. The problem with Torque is that the level builder and GUI builder use different coördinate systems. The level builder uses world coördinates. These aren’t affected by the screen resolution and have, by default, the origin placed in the center of the screen. The GUI builder, however, uses window coördinates. This means the origin is placed in the top left of the screen, and this system is pretty much the same system Windows uses for window coördinates and is not resolution independent. If you develop a game that allows players to adjust the resolution and aspect ratio of the screen, you need to do some coding to work around this problem.
First of all, the background panel image. The actual GUI you see on the screenshots is actually only the green text; the metal panel with the inset displays isn’t really a part of the GUI. It’s just a static sprite that&rsqu Read more:Creating
Wasabi Defense update 11-03 2007-11-03 15:43:31 I did some behind-the-scenes work on Wasabi Defense
. This includes stuff like: starting the game from a menu, handling lander crashes and landings, expanding the base, initializing the hovergun weapon, counting lives and resetting the game when the player is out of lives. And to avoid having to create it all when the game is finished, I already started on the main menu. I only added the two buttons that I need right now: Start Game and Exit. I’m gonna add the other items when I need them. Here’s what the menu looks like:
The next step is designing other buildings for the base, enemies and other weapons for the player. Stay tuned for more updates and screenshots!
The dumbest thing in programming languages 2007-11-02 05:33:15 According to Game Producer, the worst invention ever when it comes to programming languages are “==” and “=”. The first one is used for comparing two values, the second one for assigning a value to a variable. This has already led to countless errors, when you accidentally mix the two up. Torque Game Builder also uses this and it has happened numerous times that I use “=” for comparing values. Game Producer has suggested using is used for accessing fields and methods of objects that are referenced through a pointer, so you’d have two things that you can mix up again and the very same problem would emerge.
When I first started using C-like languages, I had another annoying problem. My first programming experience was with Turbo Pascal and Delphi. In Pascal-like languages, “=” is used for comparing values and “:=” is used for assigning values. It took me a long time before I finally got rid of my old habit! I think, howev
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