No Name Games

Last night while some of my classmates were diligently finishing their computer graphics assignments, I was blissfully pissing time away playing a flash game on Kongregate called Sonny. A friend from class started up a conversation on GTalk regarding implementing multiple mouse object selection in GUIs. Digression ensued:

I nominate this guy:

Based on the lives that we live today, society has failed to deliver on many of the promises about the future (now the present) offered by the cultural media from the late 80s to early 90s. These promises included flying cars, cryo-preservation and reanimation, and possibly cohabitance with alien life forms. In fact, the only real revolutionary piece of technology between then and now is what we call the Internet…which wasn’t even close to what had been predicted. Although the projections were mostly disappointing, there is still hope!:

Good coding practice is so very important so I thought id start a series of posts explaining what I think are the best ways to improve your code, this is the first one I have dubbed “Do’s and Don’ts”.

Do’s

-Try and program with the future in mind, you know think of it like playing chess, you need to always be a few steps ahead of yourself.  Future planning in any situation is always a good thing.

-Remember to always pace yourself, if you can’t figure out the source of a bug just relax…  take a deep breath and start back tracking to find the source of the issue.

-Design your code using UML or similar tools before you even start the actual coding!  A well thought out code design will make for easy coding in the future.

-Unit testing is key, well only in the parts of your code you are sure you need to use it!  You do not have to test every single little aspect of your code, just the parts you know it will be needed.

-K.I.S.S. “Keep it simple sweetie” or some times “Keep it simple stupid”, either way don’t over do it, spend time to think of the shortest and easiest way to achieve something in your code.

-Always document and comment your code, ALWAYS!!!

-Code with modularity in mind.

-Learn design patterns, they will greatly improve the way you code.

-Don’t s

-Never taking a break…  bug’s will fustrate you there is no getting around that, but don’t dwell on it!  Take a break, walk outside…  come back to it with a clear head.

-Don’t plan to far ahead!  Yes I stated before that it is good to plan ahead but don’t plan to far head… This may make for blotted code and a waste of a lot of time for things you may not even use.

-Don’t have HUGE functions that are like 30 or 40 lines, if you do everything in smaller chunks it makes for easier debugging, cleaner code, and well just good practice.

-Don’t be full of yourself!  Trust me you are not the best, there will always be some one out there who can code ten times faster and better then you can…  So don’t be afraid to ask people who you know are smarter for help.

-Don’t depend on schools to teach you everything you need to know, if you want to be a good programmer you must keep on learning even outside of school.

Of course there are many, many more things you should do and not do…  But just to get the ball rolling I figured id mention a few before diving deeper into the topic of “good coding practice”.  In the next part in this series I will discuss a bit more in depth on the first stages of coding.

If you are interested in learning more about Unit testing id suggest you watch this slide show… It does a really good job in explaining what it is all about. Slide show...

Also I would recommend listening to episode 388 of .Net Rocks where they interview Bob Martin on clean code.

Earlier today, I met with Andy and Joe to discuss game design/development ideas at a Starbucks in Sacramento. I don’t normally like being That Guy who buys a coffee for $1.89 and decides that two dollars is a reasonable price of entitlement for your very own corner office at a coffee shop, but I got over it. Boy I’m glad I did since I had the pleasure to sit by a woman who was having a deep and involved conversation with her invisible friend.

Meanwhile ideas were formed, pictures were drawn, caffeine was consumed. Some of the more serious talk was about the use of non-traditional perspectives in 2D games. Some of the wackier ideas that were thrown on the table included steam-punk weapon-wielding ninja heroes fighting for humanity’s existence against an army of sentient future robots…yanno, since it’d be foolish to trust anything with a computer at that point.

Sometimes the hardest part about making a game is getting started. Have an idea for a great game? Awesome, that’s a great first step! Cool, let’s figure out the scope. We’re gonna need sprite sheets for animations, background and miscellaneous art, music, sound, a tailored game engine mostly from scratch, code up the game, make map and other editors, test, debug, refine/tune, and then spend countless hours on feature creep and polish. Got an idea for a great game that can be made within a reasonable time…say like 2 years or less? That’s a bit tougher to do. As one of my game dev friends likes to say, “embrace futility” and you’re well on your way down the road of game development!

In other news, Andy whipped up some possible concept art.

Made by Andy. Check out his site www.rezenstudio.com.

-GD

I can’t think of a more relaxing gaming experience.

Sadly I could not make it to Adobe Max 2008, although I would have loved to so very much but I am doing the next best thing!  Watching the constant stream of information pour out all across the internet!  Here some of the things I have seen come out of Adobe Max that are just making me so excited to be Flash developer right now!

-Alchemy

Is at the top of my list, this awesome product allows you to compile any of your C/C++ code to flash byte code (SWF), why is this so amazing?  This will allow people to start utilizing a butt load of open source and legacy C/C++ libraries.  Great example of this would have to be OGG Vorbis an open source project that sounds, and plays better then the standard audio formats out there…  And you can get high quality sound in a very small size!  But I would have to say the greatest thing I see about Alchemy is the whole idea of creating an online compiler/interpreter, this is something I feel would truly be grand! Also just like CLR and JVM allow multi-language support this may allow AVM2 to use multiple languages as well, which is a HUGE plus That and creating flash based emulators for games, like this Commodore 64

-Cocomo

This is another product released in the adobe labs, very interesting, it’s basically a tool that allows you to easily interface with Adobe’s Acrobat back-end services for creating multi-user applications…  This is a pretty fantastic dealie, you get access to all those rich features, like instant messaging, voip, etc.

-Adobe Flash Catalyst

This is basically there tool for easing the process even more in Flex for developing UI’s which is pretty much the equivalent of Microsoft’s Blend tool for developing UI stuff for Silverlight.  Now I am FAR from a visual guy I am very much a developer but whatever tools can make my life easier when developing UI’s I am all for it!

OH my, oh me…  This is just the tip of the ice burg for what Adobe has planned for the future of flash, the great thing about all this is that it can all be used to make some truely amazing games

Being avid video gamers ourselves, Joe and I had a discussion the other day about good video games that we had played during the recent “next gen” era of console and PC games.  The topic of Bioshock was broached.  The game looked awesome, it had a unique upgrade system rooted in genetic biology, and it had a unique and super-immersive atmosphere.  By all accounts I should have loved the game, but I did not love it.  Like a gorgeous model with a cleft-hoof for a foot, I just could not get past one aspect of the game–”hacking.”

Hacking in the game was cute at first, if not nostalgic.  It brought back memories of my old school days of gaming in the early 1990s when the Sega Genesis and the 8-bit NES were competing for dominance.  I could not tell you the number of hours I spent at my neighbor’s house helping Sonic and his sassy red sneakers run through mysterious landforms shaped like 360 loops and slide down infinite water labyrinths in order to save some rabbits and penguins or some shit.  These were the formative years of a young gamer nerd’s life when glorious Windows 3.1 games and their MIDI sound effects were alive and strong.  SkiFree, JezzBall, Chip’s Challenge, and Pipe Dream…ahh yes, Pipe Dream.  Apparently someone at Boston2K also liked Pipe Dream.  Liked it enough to remake the game and cast it as THE mini-game that you played when you were trying to hack an electronic device. every. single. time.  I stuck with it for a while hoping for the best; hoping that they would eventually change the minigame after level 1.  I was wrong.  If I wanted to play freakin’ pipe dream, I would go fire up my Intel 486, hit the turbo button and go to town.  Not play it on my circa 2007-2008 dual core PC with an 8800GTS graphics card.

And that’s why I never got past level 2 of Bioshock.  What otherwise good games have you readers played that had something wrong about it that you could simply not get past but left you saying “what the hoof?”

-GD

Unlock achievements and get the highest score in this exciting 3D space shooter!

Click the image to play the game

AstroMines is a 3D space shooter in which you blow up asteroids to earn points.

You can register with us and we’ll keep track of your scores, and you can even earn achievements. The scoreboard will show you your scores, and when you click the ‘online’ button, it’ll show you all the high scores saved to our database. See if you can top our scores!

In Survival Mode, you’re flying through space with asteroids continuously coming at you. You’ll have to keep blowing them up and dodging them as they split into smaller asteroids and get faster and faster!

In the mini-game we included, you play a twist on a classic! If you were into the old one, you just might like this version.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to do as much as we’d wanted to do with the game (no missions, had to scrap the storyline, fewer objects in space, things like that…) - largely due to time and Flash performance constraints. But hopefully you’ll enjoy what’s there! If you like it, be sure to say so - we just might include that stuff in a sequel!

And remember! Gold asteroids are worth 5 times as much.

===== Basic Instructions =====
To bring up or get rid of the options screen:
-Enter

To pause while play:
-Escape

Survival Mode:
-Movement: W/S/A/D or Up/Down/Left/Right
-Shoot: Space bar or Ctl keys

Mini-game:
-Turning: Left/Right
-Accelerate/Decelerate: Up/Down
-Shoot: Space bar

-Developers
Joseph Burchett: Project Lead, web and game play programmer
Gary Deng: Physics and game play programmer
Eli Ross: Sound Engineer, 3D Modeler, game play/UI programmer
Joseph Grasso: Concept artist, texture, and 3D modeler
Lauren Zeier: Contributing concept artist
Andy Dicochea: Contributing artist
Zach Rhyenolds: Q/A, designer, tester

-Tools used
Platform: Flash player 9
Animation: Boostworthy Animation Library
3D engine: Sandy 3D Engine

Special thanks to
Everyone who helped test the game, and to the Sacramento Game Developers Meetup, without it none of this would have been possible

Me playing the mini-game like it was never intended. :)

This involved no cheating whatsoever, just a bit of exploiting.
Without movement, it’s kinda hard to tell, but there are HUNDREDS of shots on screen at once, although you can clearly see 3 different explosions in 3 different places all going off at once as asteroids are blown up.

I’m just that creative.