Day One Continued
Just a quick report to confirm I did make it to the end of Saturday! I nearly nodded off around dinner time, but switched the heater off and left the house into the freezing Welsh winds. Fixed a towing bracket, changed some license plates, sorted out an attic inside, put up two chipboard walls with severely inadequate tools. Had a lovely steak meal. It is now 12:30AM (basically Saturday just gone midnight), which puts my vertical hours tally to 33 hours and climbing. I could probably sleep now.
However
I did mention that bit about second wind, and the thing about this second wind is that because your body clock says you work from 9PM to 3AM, that is exactly what it wants to do right now. Crazy I know. I have made a cuppa and have decided to play some C&C and Dishonoured to fill the gap where work might creep in.
Signing Off
Will probably not blog Sunday due to extended sleeping, but catch up with antics on Monday when I shall be setting out my initial plans for graphics work for Reloaded, and working out which part of the massive source code to tackle first (amongst other projects of course). Until then, good night!!
Saturday, 12 January 2013
Friday, 11 January 2013
Friday Fun Time Day
Hello Fellow Explorers
We continue our story in a small room in Wales, not too far from the borders of reality and certainly a place that warrants caution. Rules are fragile here, not through any weakness on their part, but the product of continual dismantling and reassembly by a madman with crazy Dr Who hair.
The Proverbial Morning (3PM)
I am writing my blog at the start of my day, just after answering emails, which makes a change from the normal 'end of day dump' (as it where) you are normally subjected to.
I am interjecting to let you know that I have just ordered Fallout 3 and Dead Space 1 & 2 which adds to me collection of great FPS games. Both recommendations that came in quite recently. The latter suggestion actually came from a video that was emailed to me, and peeked my interest in a subject I have been keeping an eye on for over a decade. Rather than rant on, I thought it a good idea to insert the video into my blog so you can see for yourself. Now I want to make a massive disclaimer that this will NOT be in the initial version of Reloaded, but I know a certain party (not called Lee) who will remain illusive will want this A LOT when it hits the mass market.
True VR Immersion
That's right folks, those brain buckets at Oculus Rift have figured out through lens technology how to fill those annoying black gaps in your peripheral vision with more pixels. The upshot is that if you put it on your face, you instantly stop seeing the real world and completely drown in another one.
Needless to say, I want one really really badly! For research purposes you understand. My prediction is that I will be working on this bit of kit around Christmas 2013 to get a feel for the SDK and then have something for you guys added to Reloaded early 2014 (but don't quote me on that). The challenge is not to connect it up for stereo 3D rendering (which would take me all of five minutes), but to tweak and adjust the controls, HUD views and game content to produce a great Oculus Rift experience. My understanding is that it augments the players perception within the game world. Watch the video and listen to the bit about how the Doom 3 player is actually only 4 feet tall - something you can't appreciate on a flat monitor. Fun times ahead!
The Proverbial Afternoon (9:15PM)
I am finding my way around the whole iOS landscape like a pro these days, everything from setting up new company linkages to my developer portal access, certificates, provisions, devices, app IDs, builds, code signing, test flight configuration, the whole nine yards. This is where I have been spending the latter half of the day so far, with the former part of the afternoon spend bouncing tweaks between my Windows development app and the iPad Mini test device. Amazing how cool it still is to me being able to instantly broadcast to the device to see how everything plays. In a few short hours I have taken it from a rather unresponsive cludgy app into a quick, instant response delight to use. If you are wondering WHAT app is so nice, I can reveal that in about 40 days so bear with me on that one. I can say it will sell hundreds of thousands of units and well worth my time to get it just right, and will benefit a whole nation! I will say no more.
Also as I write, my fingers and eyes (and bits of brain) and fussing out a little, due to the fact that apart from two cups of wicked strength non-decaf coffee I have had nothing to eat (stupid I know). I am now going to find big food from the kitchen, and munch it over an episode of Top Gear. Once my brain has recovered, I will proceed to a few more house keeping TGC jobs and then onto the fun stuff, another game! I wonder what I will pick...
The Proverbial Evening (3:05AM)
And here I am at the end of a very long half-day-half-night, but what a time. I spent these solumn hours between keeping the email count to just one (DBP module related), eating food, watching three Top Gears, playing C&C Tiberium Alliance once every two hours (I am using the free to play mode which basically means I can attach other things eight times and then I have to wait two hours before I can do anything else; not sure if they're winning the hearts and minds of freemium players with that one, but I keep coming back so there is method to the madness. If they think I am paying any money though, they have a surprise coming. I may have paid a set amount to be able to attack for as long as I want, but I thing they have set up the whole game so everyone is on one of two playing fields, those that pay and win, and those that play and plod. I am happy to plod).
Anyhoo, between all these things (and of course more testing on the iPhone, iPad 1 and iPad Mini with Test Flight), I seem to have run out of daylight and time to install and play another FPS game. The sensible thing is to go to bed now and rescue some daylight from Saturday, where I can sally forth into the outside world and do something practical like clean a shed or dig a hole. I decided not to drive to Wigan this weekend, just to give me a jump on next week's work list.
Second Wind Time?
As I am not THAT tired, I think I will make a nice cup of tea, get the new DBP DarkNet module sorted (not ready the email yet so not sure what 'it' is), and then I will have won a small victory in clearing my inbox for Friday.
I can sometimes pull off the trick of not sleeping at all when it gets this late, and just try to make it to the following 6PM (15 hours from now), which will give me all of the owling hours, plus a whole Saturday of daylight for outdoor things. I have a small boat that has seen as much water as I've seen flying Yeti's largely to the fact that I don't trust the outboard as far as I can throw it, but it would be a good opportunity while the sun shines to give it a fresh tank of petrol and clean it's tubes out. It really needs the carbs cleaned out, but it's a fiddly job and really needs to be done by a professional. Still, I can do the other little jobs like making sure the back seats don't fly off at the merest hint at a wave.
I would only contemplate this at weekends as my brain would not function properly if I did this mid-week, but my body clock needs a kick so I think I will try. Fortunately, I have just the game to keep me awake until 9AM when I can drink lots of coffee and amble about in the garden pretending to be awake and not the least insanely sleepy.
Signing Off
I think that's enough twittering for one day. I will now proceed to put plan 'stay awake regardless' into action and will make another blog in the next two days where I am sure to have lots of new things to talk about.
We continue our story in a small room in Wales, not too far from the borders of reality and certainly a place that warrants caution. Rules are fragile here, not through any weakness on their part, but the product of continual dismantling and reassembly by a madman with crazy Dr Who hair.
The Proverbial Morning (3PM)
I am writing my blog at the start of my day, just after answering emails, which makes a change from the normal 'end of day dump' (as it where) you are normally subjected to.
I am interjecting to let you know that I have just ordered Fallout 3 and Dead Space 1 & 2 which adds to me collection of great FPS games. Both recommendations that came in quite recently. The latter suggestion actually came from a video that was emailed to me, and peeked my interest in a subject I have been keeping an eye on for over a decade. Rather than rant on, I thought it a good idea to insert the video into my blog so you can see for yourself. Now I want to make a massive disclaimer that this will NOT be in the initial version of Reloaded, but I know a certain party (not called Lee) who will remain illusive will want this A LOT when it hits the mass market.
True VR Immersion
That's right folks, those brain buckets at Oculus Rift have figured out through lens technology how to fill those annoying black gaps in your peripheral vision with more pixels. The upshot is that if you put it on your face, you instantly stop seeing the real world and completely drown in another one.
Needless to say, I want one really really badly! For research purposes you understand. My prediction is that I will be working on this bit of kit around Christmas 2013 to get a feel for the SDK and then have something for you guys added to Reloaded early 2014 (but don't quote me on that). The challenge is not to connect it up for stereo 3D rendering (which would take me all of five minutes), but to tweak and adjust the controls, HUD views and game content to produce a great Oculus Rift experience. My understanding is that it augments the players perception within the game world. Watch the video and listen to the bit about how the Doom 3 player is actually only 4 feet tall - something you can't appreciate on a flat monitor. Fun times ahead!
The Proverbial Afternoon (9:15PM)
I am finding my way around the whole iOS landscape like a pro these days, everything from setting up new company linkages to my developer portal access, certificates, provisions, devices, app IDs, builds, code signing, test flight configuration, the whole nine yards. This is where I have been spending the latter half of the day so far, with the former part of the afternoon spend bouncing tweaks between my Windows development app and the iPad Mini test device. Amazing how cool it still is to me being able to instantly broadcast to the device to see how everything plays. In a few short hours I have taken it from a rather unresponsive cludgy app into a quick, instant response delight to use. If you are wondering WHAT app is so nice, I can reveal that in about 40 days so bear with me on that one. I can say it will sell hundreds of thousands of units and well worth my time to get it just right, and will benefit a whole nation! I will say no more.
Also as I write, my fingers and eyes (and bits of brain) and fussing out a little, due to the fact that apart from two cups of wicked strength non-decaf coffee I have had nothing to eat (stupid I know). I am now going to find big food from the kitchen, and munch it over an episode of Top Gear. Once my brain has recovered, I will proceed to a few more house keeping TGC jobs and then onto the fun stuff, another game! I wonder what I will pick...
The Proverbial Evening (3:05AM)
And here I am at the end of a very long half-day-half-night, but what a time. I spent these solumn hours between keeping the email count to just one (DBP module related), eating food, watching three Top Gears, playing C&C Tiberium Alliance once every two hours (I am using the free to play mode which basically means I can attach other things eight times and then I have to wait two hours before I can do anything else; not sure if they're winning the hearts and minds of freemium players with that one, but I keep coming back so there is method to the madness. If they think I am paying any money though, they have a surprise coming. I may have paid a set amount to be able to attack for as long as I want, but I thing they have set up the whole game so everyone is on one of two playing fields, those that pay and win, and those that play and plod. I am happy to plod).
Anyhoo, between all these things (and of course more testing on the iPhone, iPad 1 and iPad Mini with Test Flight), I seem to have run out of daylight and time to install and play another FPS game. The sensible thing is to go to bed now and rescue some daylight from Saturday, where I can sally forth into the outside world and do something practical like clean a shed or dig a hole. I decided not to drive to Wigan this weekend, just to give me a jump on next week's work list.
Second Wind Time?
As I am not THAT tired, I think I will make a nice cup of tea, get the new DBP DarkNet module sorted (not ready the email yet so not sure what 'it' is), and then I will have won a small victory in clearing my inbox for Friday.
I can sometimes pull off the trick of not sleeping at all when it gets this late, and just try to make it to the following 6PM (15 hours from now), which will give me all of the owling hours, plus a whole Saturday of daylight for outdoor things. I have a small boat that has seen as much water as I've seen flying Yeti's largely to the fact that I don't trust the outboard as far as I can throw it, but it would be a good opportunity while the sun shines to give it a fresh tank of petrol and clean it's tubes out. It really needs the carbs cleaned out, but it's a fiddly job and really needs to be done by a professional. Still, I can do the other little jobs like making sure the back seats don't fly off at the merest hint at a wave.
I would only contemplate this at weekends as my brain would not function properly if I did this mid-week, but my body clock needs a kick so I think I will try. Fortunately, I have just the game to keep me awake until 9AM when I can drink lots of coffee and amble about in the garden pretending to be awake and not the least insanely sleepy.
Signing Off
I think that's enough twittering for one day. I will now proceed to put plan 'stay awake regardless' into action and will make another blog in the next two days where I am sure to have lots of new things to talk about.
Thursday, 10 January 2013
Thursday Triumphs
What A Lot Of Things
I can report that I awoke, drank lots of tea and coffee, and made a lot of things happen today. Consulting my new monster diary which I got for Christmas (not had one in a few years but this one is pretty beefy so acts as my daily jotting pad too (which is great for going back in time to find important bits of information you jotted down)). Got emails out of the way quickly, uploaded four new versions of one AGK project, finished off another AGK app and prepared iOS versions of that as well. Cleaned out the older iOS provision files ready for an AGK V108 release and sent off a few emails to get more clean-up done and prepare the ground for AGK activities in 2013. Did some various AGK debugging and device testing until everything worked nicely, and backed up by Mac which I keep forgetting to do.
The Next Thing Is The Only Thing
All of the above was done in the present moment, with very little advance planning. Just sat down and though of the first thing entering my brain then did that. Seems like the universe knew the priority list quite well when I went to consult my task list later in the day. One thing did strike me from the list though that the universe did not make me do, which was play ONE FPS game and blog about it.
My ONE game
The game I have decided to unwrap, install and play an hour or two of is called XCOM Enemy Unknown and was rated (by some site) as one of the best ten FPS games of 2012. A highly subjective claim, but I bow to practically every authority going when it comes to rating the latest games. Developing games is like making chocolate. You are surrounded by them all the time, so when you have some free time you are not spending it in front of the computer playing (eating) the things you where making (cooking) a few hours before. The analogy is not quite right as games are your typical every-flavoured-bean and you can pretty much eat them for the rest of your life without getting bored of them.
I write this after I have installed the game but before I have launched or played it. I use Google Blogger for my daily rants and it allows me to save my progress and return at a later time. This time fast approaches. I am going to put down my blogger, switch off my backed up Mac, make a BIG drink of decaffeinated coffee (decide whether to Google whether decaf can still keep you awake at 11:10PM) and then put my papers away and start a new game experience.
As you may know from my previous blogs, playing games at the moment is a very serious business and involves spotting cool things we can put in Reloaded. From the cover art and screen shots, it looks very space based with modern and futuristic guns, machines and gadgets with what looks like an alien in there too. Time to don my space helmet and report back in a few hours with news of what I found.
Many Hour Later - What I Found By 3AM
Well I found I was getting tired :) I also found out that XCOM Enemy Unknown is not a traditional First Person Shooter, and bears a striking resemblance to Space Hulk using turn based manoeuvres to win the missions. It's a game I could learn to enjoy a lot (as it's a thinking persons game like chess) but my research mission does not include turn based games.
It was essentially a First Person from the perspective of the 'Commander' who directed the choices, appointed the teams, co-ordinated the action, e.t.c and of course lots of things got shot (aliens mainly) but it's not what I would call an F.P.S.
I did pick up a few ideas though, and something I noticed before but with the absence of FPS action to focus on I realised plays a key role. First all the games so far have dynamic loading pages, that is, they move in 3D, have text, images, voice over and animation which engages the player while the all important game data loads in. The story sequences are almost always real-time 3D sequences using the same game models (with perhaps excessive use of shaders for cinematic effect but not much use in combat). The interruption of the game with more story moments, explanations, clarifications and instruction is key to a great game story, and so, Reloaded users will need a way to create these sequences without breaking a sweat over them.
I wonder if the way point system we talked about before, which would be improved to allow enemies to patrol, stop, talk, look, wait, e.t.c could not also be used in a story board manner in concert with other characters along the same time line? We could then make the 'game camera' an invisible flying character too and then edit these crossing lines of movement, actions and voice along a single timeline segment. If this could be made easy, you could edit/paint (rather than script) a sequence which can be used for a story element or a sophisticated enemy response to various incursions.
Just imagine, depending on which door you came in from, you could trigger a short sequence where the base commander calls to his soldiers to take up a flanking position against the east wall, and then move the characters to those locations. If you enter via the second door, a different sequence could be triggered where the commander is taken by compete surprise (with a nice bit of banter), just before you throw him out of the upstairs window and into the river, with another sequence showing the aforementioned soldiers running to the lake and shouting out to the commander why he decided to go for a swim. I think blending the story sequence with game sequences, and not 'pausing' the action while you watch the pretty video, would be a better approach. Sure, you could probably have something to freeze the action of the player while the sequence plays out, but by default I prefer to have everything live and running.
Which Means Of Course
A big, huge, monstrous task I am not looking forward to is saving the game states with the new Reloaded engine. I will have to record EVERYTHING this time, from the position the rag doll bodies collapse into, the animation frame of each dynamic element, the stats and values of every entity anywhere in the world, everything about the player at that specific moment and probably a thousand other small details. To combat this, my plan is to make a single super structure that when the time comes will be the only place storing ALL this information in a single place. By separating dynamic 'movable' data with the static stuff that just gets loaded in and referenced, there is no longer any guesswork and trial-and-error about what data should be saved. If it moves, it's part of the super structure, and the entire super structure gets saved. It will mean some pretty beefy save files, but lets face it, when you club ten guards on the head and stuff them all in the wardrobe, you want them to be there when you load in your save position.
It's not paramount of course, even Dishonoured which I now hold in high (if unreachable) admiration will conveniently remove old corpses and unconscious characters from the scene after a reload (or after a short while), which I am guessing is the same reason Quake used to face out bullet holes and splatters after a while, to keep performance high, game levels clean and life of the tester manageable.
Personally, if I can find time, I want to have the ability to destroy and mangle a level continually for three hours, and then save an exact copy of that wonderful carnage for another three hours the day after. Resetting even a small part of the world you helped create somehow distracts you from the immersive universe you are trying to weave.
Signing Off
It seems the lateness of the hour does not diminish the size of my blogs, but it's been a full day (and night) and I am happy to offload my experience of it unguarded and unedited. Been in email correspondence with Paul, another night owl here at TGC, and have made the decision to remove the Debug libs from the final AGK installer which will reduce the size of the installer and development files T2 users need. It will not detract from iOS, Mac and Android users, and a small change to the VS projects and a modified Debug lib will satisfy T2 Windows users too. It also means we have less to build each time a version goes out, which is good for everyone. Friday is my last official blogging day until the next working week, and I have not decided whether to stay in Wales and play more games or drive to Wigan and do some good honest grunt work filling a large skip that needs filling desperately. It seems I can get Blogger for Mobiles thanks to Google, so maybe later on in the blogging season I can turn this into a 24/7/365 blogging experience :) For now, I get to escape the endless paragraphs during the weekends and you get a rest from reading it all.
I can report that I awoke, drank lots of tea and coffee, and made a lot of things happen today. Consulting my new monster diary which I got for Christmas (not had one in a few years but this one is pretty beefy so acts as my daily jotting pad too (which is great for going back in time to find important bits of information you jotted down)). Got emails out of the way quickly, uploaded four new versions of one AGK project, finished off another AGK app and prepared iOS versions of that as well. Cleaned out the older iOS provision files ready for an AGK V108 release and sent off a few emails to get more clean-up done and prepare the ground for AGK activities in 2013. Did some various AGK debugging and device testing until everything worked nicely, and backed up by Mac which I keep forgetting to do.
The Next Thing Is The Only Thing
All of the above was done in the present moment, with very little advance planning. Just sat down and though of the first thing entering my brain then did that. Seems like the universe knew the priority list quite well when I went to consult my task list later in the day. One thing did strike me from the list though that the universe did not make me do, which was play ONE FPS game and blog about it.
My ONE game
The game I have decided to unwrap, install and play an hour or two of is called XCOM Enemy Unknown and was rated (by some site) as one of the best ten FPS games of 2012. A highly subjective claim, but I bow to practically every authority going when it comes to rating the latest games. Developing games is like making chocolate. You are surrounded by them all the time, so when you have some free time you are not spending it in front of the computer playing (eating) the things you where making (cooking) a few hours before. The analogy is not quite right as games are your typical every-flavoured-bean and you can pretty much eat them for the rest of your life without getting bored of them.
I write this after I have installed the game but before I have launched or played it. I use Google Blogger for my daily rants and it allows me to save my progress and return at a later time. This time fast approaches. I am going to put down my blogger, switch off my backed up Mac, make a BIG drink of decaffeinated coffee (decide whether to Google whether decaf can still keep you awake at 11:10PM) and then put my papers away and start a new game experience.
As you may know from my previous blogs, playing games at the moment is a very serious business and involves spotting cool things we can put in Reloaded. From the cover art and screen shots, it looks very space based with modern and futuristic guns, machines and gadgets with what looks like an alien in there too. Time to don my space helmet and report back in a few hours with news of what I found.
Many Hour Later - What I Found By 3AM
Well I found I was getting tired :) I also found out that XCOM Enemy Unknown is not a traditional First Person Shooter, and bears a striking resemblance to Space Hulk using turn based manoeuvres to win the missions. It's a game I could learn to enjoy a lot (as it's a thinking persons game like chess) but my research mission does not include turn based games.
It was essentially a First Person from the perspective of the 'Commander' who directed the choices, appointed the teams, co-ordinated the action, e.t.c and of course lots of things got shot (aliens mainly) but it's not what I would call an F.P.S.
I did pick up a few ideas though, and something I noticed before but with the absence of FPS action to focus on I realised plays a key role. First all the games so far have dynamic loading pages, that is, they move in 3D, have text, images, voice over and animation which engages the player while the all important game data loads in. The story sequences are almost always real-time 3D sequences using the same game models (with perhaps excessive use of shaders for cinematic effect but not much use in combat). The interruption of the game with more story moments, explanations, clarifications and instruction is key to a great game story, and so, Reloaded users will need a way to create these sequences without breaking a sweat over them.
I wonder if the way point system we talked about before, which would be improved to allow enemies to patrol, stop, talk, look, wait, e.t.c could not also be used in a story board manner in concert with other characters along the same time line? We could then make the 'game camera' an invisible flying character too and then edit these crossing lines of movement, actions and voice along a single timeline segment. If this could be made easy, you could edit/paint (rather than script) a sequence which can be used for a story element or a sophisticated enemy response to various incursions.
Just imagine, depending on which door you came in from, you could trigger a short sequence where the base commander calls to his soldiers to take up a flanking position against the east wall, and then move the characters to those locations. If you enter via the second door, a different sequence could be triggered where the commander is taken by compete surprise (with a nice bit of banter), just before you throw him out of the upstairs window and into the river, with another sequence showing the aforementioned soldiers running to the lake and shouting out to the commander why he decided to go for a swim. I think blending the story sequence with game sequences, and not 'pausing' the action while you watch the pretty video, would be a better approach. Sure, you could probably have something to freeze the action of the player while the sequence plays out, but by default I prefer to have everything live and running.
Which Means Of Course
A big, huge, monstrous task I am not looking forward to is saving the game states with the new Reloaded engine. I will have to record EVERYTHING this time, from the position the rag doll bodies collapse into, the animation frame of each dynamic element, the stats and values of every entity anywhere in the world, everything about the player at that specific moment and probably a thousand other small details. To combat this, my plan is to make a single super structure that when the time comes will be the only place storing ALL this information in a single place. By separating dynamic 'movable' data with the static stuff that just gets loaded in and referenced, there is no longer any guesswork and trial-and-error about what data should be saved. If it moves, it's part of the super structure, and the entire super structure gets saved. It will mean some pretty beefy save files, but lets face it, when you club ten guards on the head and stuff them all in the wardrobe, you want them to be there when you load in your save position.
It's not paramount of course, even Dishonoured which I now hold in high (if unreachable) admiration will conveniently remove old corpses and unconscious characters from the scene after a reload (or after a short while), which I am guessing is the same reason Quake used to face out bullet holes and splatters after a while, to keep performance high, game levels clean and life of the tester manageable.
Personally, if I can find time, I want to have the ability to destroy and mangle a level continually for three hours, and then save an exact copy of that wonderful carnage for another three hours the day after. Resetting even a small part of the world you helped create somehow distracts you from the immersive universe you are trying to weave.
Signing Off
It seems the lateness of the hour does not diminish the size of my blogs, but it's been a full day (and night) and I am happy to offload my experience of it unguarded and unedited. Been in email correspondence with Paul, another night owl here at TGC, and have made the decision to remove the Debug libs from the final AGK installer which will reduce the size of the installer and development files T2 users need. It will not detract from iOS, Mac and Android users, and a small change to the VS projects and a modified Debug lib will satisfy T2 Windows users too. It also means we have less to build each time a version goes out, which is good for everyone. Friday is my last official blogging day until the next working week, and I have not decided whether to stay in Wales and play more games or drive to Wigan and do some good honest grunt work filling a large skip that needs filling desperately. It seems I can get Blogger for Mobiles thanks to Google, so maybe later on in the blogging season I can turn this into a 24/7/365 blogging experience :) For now, I get to escape the endless paragraphs during the weekends and you get a rest from reading it all.
Wednesday, 9 January 2013
Wednesday Wrecking Ball
Is That The Time?
It has been one of those days where you start in the morning (don't ask me how I did that) and look up and it's well past midnight. Sometimes coding (and probably more likely; testing) absorbs the mind so completely that everything just goes out the window. With no 5PM home-time to put my life in order, these things happens to the independent developer.
As Such, My Small Blog
I won't rabbit on too much as I did promise that my blog would not consist of huge volumes of rant (like my first post), and I will stick to the facts. Cleared all emails quite quickly, finished off the functional part of an AGK app I have been working on (102 hours estimated work done in less than 50 so it actually went quite smoothly). Just needs nice graphics and testing tweaks now, and of course the inevitable iterations.
Where Did The Games Go?
A great question. I have decided to make time to play one new FPS game in working hours on Thursday to keep the Reloaded momentum going through what I shall call my 'backlog month'. I still have the following games shrink-wrapped and ready to explore; COD MW3, Far Cry3, XCOM and HALO4. I was quite a bit miffed HALO 4 was not available on PC, which means I have the hassle of activating my dust covered XBOX 360 to try it out. For this reason it will be excluded from Thursdays short list as I need something I can install while reading emails, then play while letting my brain change gears.
Signing Off
As promised, a short blog. Sorry it's not all excitement and new discoveries but you will find when a 'daily' blog is run, there are often just regular days with not much happening in them. At least Thursday I get to travel to another game universe for a short while and return with stories of high adventure!
It has been one of those days where you start in the morning (don't ask me how I did that) and look up and it's well past midnight. Sometimes coding (and probably more likely; testing) absorbs the mind so completely that everything just goes out the window. With no 5PM home-time to put my life in order, these things happens to the independent developer.
As Such, My Small Blog
I won't rabbit on too much as I did promise that my blog would not consist of huge volumes of rant (like my first post), and I will stick to the facts. Cleared all emails quite quickly, finished off the functional part of an AGK app I have been working on (102 hours estimated work done in less than 50 so it actually went quite smoothly). Just needs nice graphics and testing tweaks now, and of course the inevitable iterations.
Where Did The Games Go?
A great question. I have decided to make time to play one new FPS game in working hours on Thursday to keep the Reloaded momentum going through what I shall call my 'backlog month'. I still have the following games shrink-wrapped and ready to explore; COD MW3, Far Cry3, XCOM and HALO4. I was quite a bit miffed HALO 4 was not available on PC, which means I have the hassle of activating my dust covered XBOX 360 to try it out. For this reason it will be excluded from Thursdays short list as I need something I can install while reading emails, then play while letting my brain change gears.
Signing Off
As promised, a short blog. Sorry it's not all excitement and new discoveries but you will find when a 'daily' blog is run, there are often just regular days with not much happening in them. At least Thursday I get to travel to another game universe for a short while and return with stories of high adventure!
Tuesday, 8 January 2013
Tuesday And Resisting
Another Day
Yes, another day without Dishonoured and experiencing some withdrawal, but coping by immersing myself in code. I am not a semi-night shift at the moment so my day starts about dinner time, and my first port of call after a few house keeping emails was a conference call with Rick and Paul.
First AGK Meeting Of 2013
It was probably scheduled by Rick for 15 minutes and took more like an hour thanks largely to the fact I started talking and did not stop. We briefly touched on each major area of AGK including compiler, IDE, engine stability, platforms and the migration of Freedom-Engine. We have some news on FE which I will share on another day in another blog when we have gathered our plans for you. I have set an informal date to get all the AGK stuff handed over to Paul by the end of January, so I am completely free to work on Reloaded. No doubt Paul will take one look at the compiler code and simply by staring at it viciously will optimise it 400%. All AGK users will be pleased about what we have planned in 2013, but best not to spill too many beans lest I stand on one and squash it.
Other AGK Work
I hint in my blogs of working on AGK projects from 2012, and I was doing that for most of today and making good progress. They are not large projects, but thorny and have to be done just so to get them through the validation step. I will be very surprised if I have not finished both of them by the end of the month. In the meantime I will be amassing my forces for Reloaded.
Reloaded Comments
Thanks also for the comments in the blog posts so far, and keeping them on subject! It was just my hope that if I rant enough, users will pick up on something I said and agree with the odd idea (odd being the word). Making sure you can create a 'sneak-em-up' would be one of them, and put strain on the name of the product. Perhaps First Person Sneaker Creator might work, but then we'll be confused with an app to design footwear. It's only redeeming feature is that we can keep the acronym.
Signing Off
Still have an hour or so of coding, then I am going to see if I can manage to move my night-shift back into day-shift somewhat. Still, day or night, my coding is largely unaffected, it's just my body clock that does not know whether to eat, sleep or think. Catch you Wednesday!
Yes, another day without Dishonoured and experiencing some withdrawal, but coping by immersing myself in code. I am not a semi-night shift at the moment so my day starts about dinner time, and my first port of call after a few house keeping emails was a conference call with Rick and Paul.
First AGK Meeting Of 2013
It was probably scheduled by Rick for 15 minutes and took more like an hour thanks largely to the fact I started talking and did not stop. We briefly touched on each major area of AGK including compiler, IDE, engine stability, platforms and the migration of Freedom-Engine. We have some news on FE which I will share on another day in another blog when we have gathered our plans for you. I have set an informal date to get all the AGK stuff handed over to Paul by the end of January, so I am completely free to work on Reloaded. No doubt Paul will take one look at the compiler code and simply by staring at it viciously will optimise it 400%. All AGK users will be pleased about what we have planned in 2013, but best not to spill too many beans lest I stand on one and squash it.
Other AGK Work
I hint in my blogs of working on AGK projects from 2012, and I was doing that for most of today and making good progress. They are not large projects, but thorny and have to be done just so to get them through the validation step. I will be very surprised if I have not finished both of them by the end of the month. In the meantime I will be amassing my forces for Reloaded.
Reloaded Comments
Thanks also for the comments in the blog posts so far, and keeping them on subject! It was just my hope that if I rant enough, users will pick up on something I said and agree with the odd idea (odd being the word). Making sure you can create a 'sneak-em-up' would be one of them, and put strain on the name of the product. Perhaps First Person Sneaker Creator might work, but then we'll be confused with an app to design footwear. It's only redeeming feature is that we can keep the acronym.
Signing Off
Still have an hour or so of coding, then I am going to see if I can manage to move my night-shift back into day-shift somewhat. Still, day or night, my coding is largely unaffected, it's just my body clock that does not know whether to eat, sleep or think. Catch you Wednesday!
Monday, 7 January 2013
Monday Playtime Over
Putting My Toys Away
In order to ensure that enough hours are spent on actual development rather than 'research' I have put Dishonoured back in it's box. It is an amazing game and pretty much trumps Thief and Assassins Creed for the immersive stealth experience. So much so I was starting to get wrapped up in the universe it created for me. It is now put away, and I will return to it only when all the other games have been played and my research is complete.
I would not be surprised at all if Reloaded was able to create a stealth game at the end of this development, and I would be proud to see that. There are a LOT of subtle things that make a great sneak-em-up, and far too many for such a short development available to me, but I would like to add a few ideas in before we box up the product for sale.
FPS Creator Land
I often call my various areas of work 'lands', so I know mentally where my body is at any moment. I could be in FPSC land, or AGK land, or DBP land, or AGK APP land or TGC land. My plates are scattered far and wide.
I was in FPSC land today to build, test and release a new beta for the FPSC V120 update which solves more community reported issues and also further refines the lift scripts, thanks to Flatlander from the FPSC forums. It does not help when the internet stops working at 94% but these things are sent to try us, and it was easily enough to resume 5 minutes later from 1%.
It is vital that we get V120 finished and released officially before any coding work can begin on Reloaded as I don't want to start from a bugged code base and if they are to be fixed, best they are available before I lock myself away to start coding Reloaded. With Beta 8, we are hopefully very close to that moment.
AGK Land
I also spent a brief time in AGK land fixing a small Compiler Windows XP bug and built a few fixes from Paul into the new V108 Beta 8 (funny how they are both the same beta number). Providing there are no more internet interruptions, I should be able to post and tweet that one before midnight.
Signing Off
Back in TGC Land, I have a few emails an hour trickling in on week days so I am never far from the centre of things. My work today is finishing off some backlog AGK work from 2012, and once that is done and the V120 version released, I expect to be able to report some cool new FPSC code for Reloaded. Until then..see you Tuesday!
In order to ensure that enough hours are spent on actual development rather than 'research' I have put Dishonoured back in it's box. It is an amazing game and pretty much trumps Thief and Assassins Creed for the immersive stealth experience. So much so I was starting to get wrapped up in the universe it created for me. It is now put away, and I will return to it only when all the other games have been played and my research is complete.
I would not be surprised at all if Reloaded was able to create a stealth game at the end of this development, and I would be proud to see that. There are a LOT of subtle things that make a great sneak-em-up, and far too many for such a short development available to me, but I would like to add a few ideas in before we box up the product for sale.
FPS Creator Land
I often call my various areas of work 'lands', so I know mentally where my body is at any moment. I could be in FPSC land, or AGK land, or DBP land, or AGK APP land or TGC land. My plates are scattered far and wide.
I was in FPSC land today to build, test and release a new beta for the FPSC V120 update which solves more community reported issues and also further refines the lift scripts, thanks to Flatlander from the FPSC forums. It does not help when the internet stops working at 94% but these things are sent to try us, and it was easily enough to resume 5 minutes later from 1%.
It is vital that we get V120 finished and released officially before any coding work can begin on Reloaded as I don't want to start from a bugged code base and if they are to be fixed, best they are available before I lock myself away to start coding Reloaded. With Beta 8, we are hopefully very close to that moment.
AGK Land
I also spent a brief time in AGK land fixing a small Compiler Windows XP bug and built a few fixes from Paul into the new V108 Beta 8 (funny how they are both the same beta number). Providing there are no more internet interruptions, I should be able to post and tweet that one before midnight.
Signing Off
Back in TGC Land, I have a few emails an hour trickling in on week days so I am never far from the centre of things. My work today is finishing off some backlog AGK work from 2012, and once that is done and the V120 version released, I expect to be able to report some cool new FPSC code for Reloaded. Until then..see you Tuesday!
Sunday, 6 January 2013
Sunday At Play
Syndicate Overview
Right off the back of playing Dishonoured, I quickly installed and charged through 30 minutes of the game Syndicate. My idea is to gleam what made these games top rated in 2012.
Right away I noticed the mouse sensitivity on this game was set very high compared to the last FPS game controls and right away I was very ineffectual at survival.
One thing I will be studying is the mouse look behaviour of these two and ask myself why one was instantly playable for me and one was not. Dishonoured asked for the ambience to be chosen before I started playing, but I had to do this manually in Syndicate.
Some good things I took from Syndicate was that they had made use of light volumes in different ways and this might lead to a more refined kind of light volume in the Reloaded project. Another cool feature was the way the weapon ammo and storage was on the gun itself, and the gun had other neat touches like pressing against the body when up against a wall. The heat seeking HUD view to find enemies was also pretty useful and similar to the Dishonoured Dark Vision magic which does a similar thing.
Again I did not see advanced multi-shadow effects here, just basic light mapping, some good post processing of the final screen and a single point/directional light for dynamic lighting with a single shadow. I dare say this feature will recur as I play more games (my guess is this is to keep the game running as fast as possible on basic PC rigs=more sales).
I cut my gaming short as I wanted to install and play the second game of the weekend which was Fear 3. I have already been for-warned about keeping my expectations low, but truth be known I have not really played Fear 2 that much and I am sure it has plenty of things it could teach FPSC!
Fearful of Three
With advance warning given, I plumbed into the universe of Fear The Third. I installed and only gave it about 15 minutes as I did not want to get engrossed in the story, just a feel for the game mechanics.
Mouse sensitivity not as bad as Syndicate, but Dishonoured did it better so far, and the camera wobble is very pronounced in this one. The game play of collecting guns, shooting, hiding behind things I remember most from Fear Two and of course the single shadow rendering appeared once more.
I am pretty happy now that a single shadow (rather than 'everything' casts a shadow) will be fine as it fits in with the latest FPS games and provides us all with the performance we need. It is also clear that finding cover, triggering story moments in real-time, configurable player skills and/or weapon attributes are all part of the initial experience of a good FPS game. Enemies are not super intelegent, and are always triggered by the player crossing an invisible line in the level or story. Their basic behaviour is to hide behind and around things, pop up, take a pot shot, then back down (and yell to each other but not actually do anything substantially different). Almost all combat was close quarters in confined areas, so no need for complex path finding (you're usually fighting over a room or progress through the story). All games so far are massively staged in the single player campaigns, which might seem an obvious thing to say, but the FPSC product right now has almost no support for making story elements. The best we have right now are trigger zones, scripts and the ability to play huge video footage. I dare say I could develop a whole product just to create real-time cut scenes, but that's for another year. Right now it's about two things. How do we make Reloaded quick and easy to edit games, and what do we do to make Reloaded produce awesome game play experiences.
Signing Off
By continuing to (what looks like enjoying myself) play FPS games in the evening and weekends, my education about what makes great game is coming along nicely.
Right off the back of playing Dishonoured, I quickly installed and charged through 30 minutes of the game Syndicate. My idea is to gleam what made these games top rated in 2012.
Right away I noticed the mouse sensitivity on this game was set very high compared to the last FPS game controls and right away I was very ineffectual at survival.
One thing I will be studying is the mouse look behaviour of these two and ask myself why one was instantly playable for me and one was not. Dishonoured asked for the ambience to be chosen before I started playing, but I had to do this manually in Syndicate.
Some good things I took from Syndicate was that they had made use of light volumes in different ways and this might lead to a more refined kind of light volume in the Reloaded project. Another cool feature was the way the weapon ammo and storage was on the gun itself, and the gun had other neat touches like pressing against the body when up against a wall. The heat seeking HUD view to find enemies was also pretty useful and similar to the Dishonoured Dark Vision magic which does a similar thing.
Again I did not see advanced multi-shadow effects here, just basic light mapping, some good post processing of the final screen and a single point/directional light for dynamic lighting with a single shadow. I dare say this feature will recur as I play more games (my guess is this is to keep the game running as fast as possible on basic PC rigs=more sales).
I cut my gaming short as I wanted to install and play the second game of the weekend which was Fear 3. I have already been for-warned about keeping my expectations low, but truth be known I have not really played Fear 2 that much and I am sure it has plenty of things it could teach FPSC!
Fearful of Three
With advance warning given, I plumbed into the universe of Fear The Third. I installed and only gave it about 15 minutes as I did not want to get engrossed in the story, just a feel for the game mechanics.
Mouse sensitivity not as bad as Syndicate, but Dishonoured did it better so far, and the camera wobble is very pronounced in this one. The game play of collecting guns, shooting, hiding behind things I remember most from Fear Two and of course the single shadow rendering appeared once more.
I am pretty happy now that a single shadow (rather than 'everything' casts a shadow) will be fine as it fits in with the latest FPS games and provides us all with the performance we need. It is also clear that finding cover, triggering story moments in real-time, configurable player skills and/or weapon attributes are all part of the initial experience of a good FPS game. Enemies are not super intelegent, and are always triggered by the player crossing an invisible line in the level or story. Their basic behaviour is to hide behind and around things, pop up, take a pot shot, then back down (and yell to each other but not actually do anything substantially different). Almost all combat was close quarters in confined areas, so no need for complex path finding (you're usually fighting over a room or progress through the story). All games so far are massively staged in the single player campaigns, which might seem an obvious thing to say, but the FPSC product right now has almost no support for making story elements. The best we have right now are trigger zones, scripts and the ability to play huge video footage. I dare say I could develop a whole product just to create real-time cut scenes, but that's for another year. Right now it's about two things. How do we make Reloaded quick and easy to edit games, and what do we do to make Reloaded produce awesome game play experiences.
Signing Off
By continuing to (what looks like enjoying myself) play FPS games in the evening and weekends, my education about what makes great game is coming along nicely.
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