tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47216759033840207372011-08-15T17:38:53.817ZCome what may gibberish from an artist^U^U programmer^U^U designer in the video games industry.Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.comBlogger241100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-46366505815296820382007-11-23T06:31:00.000Z2007-11-23T07:08:19.682Z

After trying out blogs and periodicals on the Kindle, I'm left reasonably impressed. It's really neat to pick up the Kindle and find that one of the blogs you watch has an update you haven't read yet. The push functionality is cool, and I dig what amounts to the pay as you go approach to the EVDO bandwidth. I mean, someone has to pay for it somewhere, right? And so what if Amazon are playing the

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-40180453073843532782007-11-22T22:34:00.000Z2008-12-11T03:23:02.853Z

So I've been waiting a decade or so for this thing. I grew up in an area far from easy access to books, and I was a voracious reader. After one point, appreciated presents almost entirely boiled down to new reading matter. Sure toys were great, but books were awesome. In the afterglow that was finishing a good book, I regularly fantasized about a magical book that I could command to show me any

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-61468454741348888182007-11-22T22:28:00.000Z2007-11-22T23:37:03.344Z

To everyone who's e-mailed me in the past months since that last post: sorry I didn't get back to you! Life's been stupid busy, and what with the move to the US, I was cut off from any serious internet access for ages.To those interested in what's become of RPG Zero, it's still sort of alive back there. I'm afraid that despite going for a job that I thought would be more relaxing than the last

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-43274119729157816482007-03-03T19:47:00.000Z2007-03-03T20:09:20.477Z

Karl in a comment asked what I'm doing for collision, so here's a brief run down.I export the levels from Max as a simple XML file with triangles, load that and parse them into a friendly structure. I store all the parsed triangles in a balanced binary tree, subdividing cells on longest axis. I would use an octree, but that requires subdiving for effect, and I haven't yet invested in writing a

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-49257321655079977372007-03-01T23:24:00.000Z2007-03-01T23:55:32.926Z

As promised, here's a look at a few pretties. We have a level segment with a new palette, and a new badguy, the froggy. These are the entry level badguys, so they don't put up much of a fight. Still blow up nice though.I've also snuck in the healing item in the game: mushrooms. So, coming on from last time's discussion of mesh animation, this update shows more examples of it. All the effects and

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-19903549534000722352007-02-27T16:46:00.000Z2007-02-27T22:59:46.878Z

A few things have happened since last time:I now have the different firing modes in place. Each of Tad's (Tad, his name is Tad for now) weapons have 3 firing modes: tap for a quick shot, hold and release for a "shotgun" and hold for a while for a berserk blast. The fire gem has all 3 working now.Added support for a bigger variety of effects. Mean, mean friends were saying it just wasn't pretty

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-90075741282419511942007-02-23T17:54:00.000Z2008-12-11T03:23:03.108Z

So the rpg has come on a little bit. I really ought to come up with a name at some point. For now, it stays RPG Zero.New since the last update:Tried to refine the look of the thing. I'm going primary colours, sharp contrasts, simple forms, abstract surfaces and everything easy to put together quickly. Also leaning a lot on vertex colouring for the low frequency shifts.Our protagonist can now be

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-85613513612545916152007-02-20T23:59:00.000Z2007-02-21T08:28:42.869Z

So Ultrahead, over at Do as I say, not as I do... in a comment conversation reminded me that I've always wanted to make an RPG. Abandoning all the other toys (I have a habit of doing that), I've decided to embark on the adventure.When I started writing about game programming here last month, I really did want to practice a little altruism and share some stuff with the community. I'm afraid the

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-88179531542929807642007-01-31T20:52:00.000Z2008-12-11T03:23:03.279Z

So, in the last programming post I tried to dump what I know about data driven architecture onto a rather dense page. Here I'd like to share with you a sample application that might shed some light on what I was trying to say.The ShooterZero.zip file over on my google pages page contains an XNA project that is a 2D shooter game framework.The code describes a series of classes that together

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-55326778597274901492007-01-31T16:38:00.000Z2007-01-31T21:38:59.810Z

An article over at gamesindustry.biz is painting a horrible picture of what's just gone down at Sports Interactive. In summary: a leaked pirate copy of Eastside Hockey Manager has killed legit sales so badly that they've had to can the game. Not any pokey little game either, we're talking a critically acclaimed game. They didn't make their money back and they can't afford to pay the hockey team

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-52770547475630156462007-01-28T23:11:00.000Z2008-12-11T03:23:03.427Z

You hear the term "data driven" bandied about reasonably often in gaming tech circles. Why is this? Here I'll present a summary of my experiences in the matter.Goals:Laziness. We want to write the least amount of code to deal with each instance of a feature of our game. Why on earth write a whole class for a new bad guy if we can get away with a bit of data instead? Laziness part 2, or

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-35415328794314683502007-01-14T23:22:00.000Z2007-01-15T00:23:38.247Z

I've seen a few posts and articles around the net with recommendations on how to structure an XNA game, for example this great post at Cornflower Blue.Most of these revolve around the same idea of building an own rolled Game Component collection class as the backbone for your game's partitioning, e.g. Startup:GCCollection, LevelSelect:GCCollection, InGame:GCCollection, HUD:GCCollection and so on.

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-63051687301426786302007-01-06T22:54:00.000Z2007-01-06T23:24:10.939Z

Joy!Just before I pop out of town for a week's holiday, I get to spend a day on my own toys. Life is good.So I'm motoring along on this Mooncast project. Since the last post on the subject, I've written most of the main mechanics. The video illustrates the following:* Buildings UI.* Castle spawning plebs (here cheated to take no time for speed of demonstration).* Plebs being reassigned to

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-70769225610039092152007-01-04T20:49:00.000Z2007-01-04T22:04:25.949Z

It's a trailer, and I'm absolutely not going to comment on someone's work without having seen the entirety of it. Suffice to say that I'm looking forward to watching it and seeing how he's pieced together this hot button topic.No, this post is to address a specific quote from the trailer: Godverdomme, but I’m tired of hearing Thompson’s pearls of wisdom. We don’t recognise violence as a virtue?

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-28260352624781978672007-01-02T21:43:00.000Z2008-12-11T03:23:03.697Z

I've persistently heard the oddest disparaging comment made about the Wii recently: "It's all just novelty. The Wiimote is just a gimmick"WTF?When did being new become a sin? For some reason I thought it was the goal: show people what they haven't seen before. Is "Racer X Part 4 Autumn '07 Tournament Edition 1.74 Extreme" really the path we want to go down? Is it really OK that the main

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-35836345702361828602007-01-02T21:10:00.000Z2008-12-11T03:23:03.850Z

So I got me some Elebits last week. General impression: Good fun!The principle is very straight forward: the world runs on Elebits, these little adorable puffball creatures. Something's gone a bit off and the Elebits are behaving bizzarely, leaving everything without power. Your dad, currently away from the house, is an Elebits researcher. You decide to take matters into your own hands, grab his

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-29572008865211899692006-12-31T14:35:00.000Z2008-12-11T03:23:03.984Z

So someone I know in gaming has been having a rough year and is getting to the point where he's asking "Why?, Why do we do this?"A little background. Working in video games is hard. Not grave digging hard or saving lives hard, but it is hard. I don't know many people in games who work a normal day. Invariably the day leaks an hour, and when things are going bad it's common to be at work for 12

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-22900713586011082152006-12-30T10:52:00.000Z2006-12-30T11:12:53.135Z

Curious to know which bits of information on managed code performance on the 360 are FUD versus truth? The .Net Compact Framework Team's blog has a 2 parter on performance considerations on the beast. There are some interesting tidbits on where the XNA and the standard Compact Framework diverge. Shame that it doesn't yet take advantage of the Altivec stuff, but oh well.They mention memory

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-65040511452510497092006-12-29T19:49:00.000Z2008-12-11T03:23:04.154Z

So the holidays are over and the Zune hasn't really made much of a dent. Having had a play with the device, I can see why this is. It's not actually bad, it's just not great. It doesn't do much that any other player doesn't already do, and what it does new immediately feels like it misses the mark.Here's what I assumed they were going for and, in contrast, why I'm not interested yet.Wifi access

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-32976016537175815462006-12-29T12:15:00.000Z2006-12-30T10:38:11.008Z

I really like giving any personal project I'm working on a title. No matter how large or small the project, I feel compelled to.It doesn't have to be a permanent name, but it does need to say something about the project. Often times that thing gets dropped or evolved out of recognition, but I just gotta have a name. There's something important about names, even if I can't quite articulate

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-53453350627590022062006-12-29T12:10:00.000Z2008-12-11T03:23:04.426Z

In order to explore the XNA and get a real feel for trying to write a game with it, I've spent the last few days trying to work up a little prototype. The working title for it is Mooncast.The gameplay is battleship meets a cut down RTS affair. You start on one continent, with a castle and a pair of plebs. Your goal is to take out the opponent's castle on the other continent. At the start of the

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-90689959849694103462006-12-28T20:23:00.000Z2008-12-11T03:23:04.542Z

Ahh, Zelda.Disclaimer: Some of my fondest gaming memories involve the Zeldas all the way back to the NES. (I'm conveniently forgetting Zelda II here)So Zelda: TP then. Loved it, loved it, and loved it some more. I think I now rate this as the best Zelda to date. Take it for granted that if you love Zelda, the things you love are here: clever lateral thinking, a big world with long foreshadowed

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-78764949298476036942006-12-28T15:26:00.000Z2006-12-29T12:14:54.984Z

So I've been writing tools in C# for building games for almost two years now, but I've not really attempted to write a game there yet. I had a brief flirt with MDX for the novelty of it, but without being able to use it at work I just haven't been able to find the time. A bit of time to myself and the launch of XNA though, has prompted me to finally investigate.Turns out, XNA is wonderful.To

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4721675903384020737.post-43716435096010892162006-12-28T14:55:00.000Z2006-12-28T15:11:49.659Z

Hello there, interweb.I've been working in video games since the turn of the millennium now. While there have been plenty of ups and downs (oh boy have there), the one thing that I have enjoyed without fail is gibbering at work colleagues about games, how to make games and games.This holiday season, it was brought to my attention by a good friend that I might as well be doing this online. Not

Gamey Little Hackerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09027345175905651542noreply@blogger.com0