Earlier today I had kind of settled on the idea that would like to go see a movie. It’s not something I do often, but every once in a while I feel like losing myself in a big dark room and being treated to the sort of spectacle only a movie theater can provide. Big screen, loud noises, overpriced treats… yeah, it’s got it all.
As I was going through the list of available films, I noticed that “Atlas Cloud” only had a respectable 7.6/10 user review. This is a movie that I’ve been pretty excited about for some time, and one that Roger Ebert recently described as “a demonstration of the magical, dreamlike qualities of the cinema“, and so I was a little taken aback that it didn’t have universal critical acclaim from Saskatoonian movie goers.
I took a closer look at the reviews over at Cinema Clock, and I love the story they tell: You’re either going to love it or hate it.
I haven’t seen the movie yet myself, but I think I have to now. Any movie that polarizes an audience like this has got to be worth my time and money.
Oh boy, it’s been a while since my last blog update! I was kindly reminded today that it’s been around 2 months since my last post! In short, I’m still working on my upcoming project, and I’m working on a big update to my first game “Leyenda”. I’m also farming, which has actually eaten up most of my time. That and Diablo III.
Despite the lack of free time to invest into game development, I did manage to work on a problem I’ve encountered when working with tile maps, and I think I’ve come up with a potential solution.
But first, what is a tile map? In short, a tile map is a way for game developers to take a small image, break it into parts and to reuse those parts over and over to create a much larger image. As an example, a tile map engine can turn this:
Texture pack used to create desert themed maps
Into the image show below by reusing and stitching together the “tiles” within the texture pack:
Tile map composed out of images from a texture pack.
If you’ve played a 2D video game, odds are it probably used tile maps to create the world your character explored. Mario, MegaMan and Pokemon are (probably) good examples. This method has many advantages, such as keeping the size of your assets small, improving rendering performance, and allowing for basic collision detection and scripting events to be easily implemented. It seems like an all around sweet deal, and so I started playing with a tile map editor and tinkering with code with the eventual goal of setting up an engine I could use to create a side scrolling adventure game.
As seen in my last post, I’ve managed to get collision detection, basic physics and player controls, and the tile map all playing nice together. The only problem is that it’s ugly. Or at least it was:
Since I’m aiming for something that looks a little more organic, the blocky appearance of the level and the pattern appearing in the grass texture was not acceptable. My solution is the following:
I create a tile map out of a simple texture pack. In my case, I only use two different tiles. One is for normal ground and the other is for one way platforms.
A simple tile map
Then, using the magic of photoshop, I can create a second image that I superimpose over the tile map above in order to enhance the appearance of the level. The example below shows a character running through the level shown above after the photoshop treatment. You’ll notice that the far left side of the level still looks like it’s made out of tiles:
This allows me to use most of the benefits of a tile map, while still giving the game a more organic, hand drawn look. I say “most of the benefits” because I’m still going to have to draw entire levels and save them as massive bitmaps. This will take up a lot of valuable space (I’m trying to keep the game under 50mb) and so it may turn out not to be such a great idea after all. However, I like the way it looks (or could look, this was a quick test an so I didn’t spend a lot of time drawing the level) and so I plan on playing around with the idea a bit more to see how practical it is.
Oh, and in case anyone is curious, I’m using a general purpose tile map editor called “Tiled” as a level editor. It’s super flexible and free, so if you’re at all interested in tile map editing you should check it out!
I had a bit of time recently to invest in my game, and so I thought I would share where I’m at with the new project!
I added several features that are vital for a platformer style game. I’m not able to create levels in an editor and them import those levels for use in the game. In addition to that, I’ve added collision detection logic and a simple camera to manage everything on screen:
I have a lot of work left to do though. The next step will be to improve upon the collision detection logic for the tiles; I’d like to add slopes of varying degrees in order to make the levels look and feel more organic. Next I plan on adding game logic to import background and foreground objects, some of which the player will interact with.
After all that is done I have to figure out how to make it fun to play….
I’ve been feeling pretty energized from the non-failure of my first game release, and so I’ve begun work on a couple new projects. I rigged up a little demo so I could play with different control schemes, and I ended up testing out the accelerometer as a method of moving the player on the x-axis. I was pleasantly surprised at the results!
Maybe it doesn’t look like much. You might have to play the demo to really appreciate it, because this has me super pumped.
I’ve always thought that accelerometer controls felt floaty and unresponsive in modern games, but this little experiment was very encouraging. I would love to make a platforming adventure game for mobile devices, but at the same time I don’t want to rely on on-screen soft buttons. This may be the answer!
Wow, I’ve been busy since my last blog post! In short, I decided to become an independent game developer. It’s an idea I had been playing around with for a long time, but it was only this last year that I decided to undertake a serious project.
I plan on writing a few updates in the next week (or whenever I get around to it) highlighting some of the interesting things I’ve learned throughout the process of making and publishing a game.
For now though, I’d like to share a little something that totally made my day. My first 1/5 star rating!
Haha. What? Liberal Trash? I was expecting 1 star reviews if the game didn’t work properly or crashed people’s devices…. but this person actually found the content of the game offensive! What!? I’d make more fun of this person, but I suspect he or she is one of those people that owns a lot of guns.
Yeah, I don’t get it. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little angry. The ratings of games essentially make or break them on Google Play, and to have terrible reviews drag down the game’s average rating based on something other than the quality of the game is … annoying.
You know what really grinds my gears? The many hundreds of replies in public forums to simple technological problems that can be boiled down to this generic response: ”Oh, just take it to [retailer] and they’ll fix it!”
Of course they can. And if not, they can mail it away for two to four weeks and get the manufacturer to fix it. But that doesn’t solve my problem does it?
When I have a problem, and I search for a solution, it’s because I want to fix it myself. I don’t need an “expert” to look at the device in question and tell me what I already know: ”Yeah, it shouldn’t be doing that. I don’t know what’s wrong with it.” The only time I ever send anything away to be fixed/replaced is when I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s actually something I cannot fix on my own. Guess what people, I rarely resort to that (I also break a lot of things, but not because trying to fix stuff on your own is bad). Is troubleshooting and problem solving a lost art?
Case in point, today I got the trackpad on my MacBook Pro damp. Not wet, but damp. Guess what? The trackpad became unresponsive to touching, which since that’s all it’s really supposed to do, that was a problem. I Googled the issue (by the way, I used the tab, arrows, delete, and return button to browse. That’s old school computerizing right there). I found that:
People spill all kinds of liquids on their laptops.
Spilling liquids on laptops is not recommend.
90% of the “solutions” found were to take the computer to the “genius bar” where they would fix it for you!
People. Taking a broken thing to someone else to fix it is not a solution. The magic thing the other person does is the solution.
You know what the solution was (and still is if you came here with the same problem)? Dry off the trackpad while the computer is powered down and wait a while. MacBook Pros REALLY hate moisture on their track pads apparently. Even a small amount will affect their performance, and if there is still moisture present when they boot back up the calibration of the trackpad will be very wrong.
For a couple years now it has been an anual tradition amongst a few of my friends to head north and spend a few days in a cabin off the shores of Lac La Ronge. The cabin is a strange mix between modern luxury and rustic living. Wood and propane heat the building, and the basic plumbing system is not useable throughout the winter (and the indoor toilet is off limits 365 days a year. Hello Mr. Outhouse!). On the other hand though, you also have access to Sasktel’s 3G cellular network, and solar panels supply enough power to keep cell phones charged throughout the duration of your stay. ”Back in my day we had to facebook and twitter by candle light!”
The lack of running water is usually what really gets to me. If you’re thirsty, need to do dishes, or want to wash up, you have to jump through a few hoops to accomodate your needs. In our case, we had to get through a layer of ice to find a supply of safe water. How hard could that be?
It turns out that the water hole had froze solid, and we had to chip our way through 2 feet of ice (no, we did not have an ice auger). Eventually we got through, although not before having a few camping beverages and realizing the full utility of the phrase “ice-hole”:
A full album of all the pictures I took can be found on my Google+ account (assuming you follow me on there).
