I used to have an awesome dual screen setup, but since I moved to Costa Rica I had to switch to a laptop for mobility. So my work area is.. not as cool. However I got some tasty snacks to keep me going!

the local store doesn’t have mountain dew, so I settled for some awesome green tea stuff.

Not sure if this is just me, but the IRC server is not letting me join any chat rooms. At first I got the message that my IP was blocked, so I setup AuthServ and it not authenticates and lets me send pm’s, but whenever I try to join a room it doesn’t do anything. Anyone got any ideas what’s going on? No error messages or anything, it just ignores my /join commands but I’m still connected and authenticated. I can try Meebo if all else fails but I really prefer to stay with Pidgin

Also I’m definitely intending to join in next weekend, though I’m rusty. Going to use this as an excuse to try something with WebGL

Figured I’d post my setup cause all the cool kids are doing it

core2duo with dual monitors and win7
msi wind netbook with win7. using synergy to make it function like 3 displays, typically just use the netbook for chat/irc/email and performance testing

I’m probably going to settle on Flash for easily getting something running. Going to try FlashPunk instead of Flixel because it sounds a little more better organized.

I thought I’d like to make a Road Rash clone, cause that game was awesome. I was going to style it like road rash 3 and do everything fake 3d style. I wasn’t sure how to do the road in fake 3d though.
Then I remembered Away3D, a 3D engine for Flash I was looking at before and decided to give it a try. It’s a pretty complete engine, but Flash performance is still not the greatest so I can’t use all the pretty things like ‘shaders’ or ‘correct z-order rendering’ or really most anything that makes doing a 3d game worthwhile.

I did get a kind of demo for how it might go though at
http://thegup.com/samples/flashy/lolbike.html
I also had to learn 3d modeling so my bike is kinda.. jaggy. And the textures didn’t load propery in MilkShape.

which leads me to maybe making a tron clone .. simple if any textures..

If I can get billboards working and scaling right then I might actually be able to make a game

The game I submitted to the contest (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-16/?action=preview&uid=28) wasn’t a game in the sense that you could like.. do anything. Objectives? nah. Plot? nah. What I did was essentially a tech demo- flash space exploration mmo. except more than a couple people turned my crappy vps into a flaming heap, but theoretically it was an mmo . Well, anyone that likes the idea of a cross between Elite and Eve Online, I’m continuing work on it and just finished a large rewrite of the backend:

I am currently aiming at getting something more playable in for TIGSource’s Assemblee contest by the 10th (all the art/music I’m using is generated earlier from their users). I just finished a full rewrite so that everything runs of Python/Django on Google AppEngine . Added bonus- game accounts can attach to google authentication

Play at http://play.drifting.thegup.com

Currently the appengine framework is pretty much complete with datastore models for players,stars,planets,civilizations and npcs. I’m still tweaking the galaxy generation process but will be moving on to solar systems soon, along with multiplayer chat and pilot profiles, and some more ui options .

The game plan is to make it into kind of a multiplayer Elite – civilizations are generated along with the galaxies including homeworlds, npc ships and npc space stations you can interact with. You represent whatever civilization you choose and can later switch civs based on a reputation system. War against other civs and plunder, go freelance pirate, or do missions they give. There will be a limited resource you can use to claim new planets in the name of your civilization and either set up defenses or mining bases.
Each sector will be generated when a neighboring sector is first discovered.. ie a player enters sector 10,10 – the 3 neighboring sectors that haven’t been generated would then be created. There will be randomly placed wormholes or warp gates as well to connect to either other solar systems in the same sector or other sectors, to make exploring less linear.
Eventually I want to make planets explorable as well. They will be procedurally generated with a unique seed combined with the physical traits described by the ACRETE algorithm when generating them. I was looking at Away3D for making planet exploration a separate flash app

Congratulations to everyone who entered LD, there were some great and amusing entries

So I didn’t get an actual game submitted this time, but I put in all the effort I could. Slept 3 hours since Friday morning, only break I took was to go to the store.. I like the concept and design for my game and am going to pursue it. Even if I rip the flash code to hell and back, I successfully prototyped an ‘infinitely’ (based on optimized server resources) persistent universe streaming through a flash client with mmo style multiplayer.

Play Live

I also am psuedo calculating the total gravity wells of all nearby planets and using it as propulsion. I’m pretty sure it’s not physically accurate, but didn’t have time to total up the force vectors of 100′s of fake planetary bodies myself. So it makes you move, worsk for me. I’m sure a little tweaking would make it more fun being able to fly around navigating by slingshotting around big planets.

For my first flash game ever it’s not too bad. If I go for a rewrite I might drop Flixel completely. Writing the crappy text input because Flixel completely seperated any event handlers from the game logic.. yea, shitttyyy. FlxSprite has no sprite elements, that was another fun one. What’s the point of using a graphics library, when you have to write pixel by pixel to the buffer to get around it..
On the other hand, there are several ways I could have used Flixels structure better. It seems really designed around using the tilemap class, which I didn’t touch.

I have a partial timelapse I’ll upload soon. I’m pretty sure it was responsible for the two blue screens of death I had this weekend though

Pixel Stars

Explore the endless supply of pixelated stars at Clicky Clicky
*currently there is a bug where if you go to negative coordinates, your endless supply of stars ends*

Spent pretty much all day working on what comes down to a fairly simple server app. Planets and solar bodies are persistent and tracked on the server in a database. Flash periodically requests a map refresh from the server and creates the necessary sprites. If you go in a positive direction it works fairly well. When you go to a coordinate where the server does not have any stars, it generates somes, saves them and returns them, thus endless until either the client or server crashes.

I wanted to be working on the planetary exploration by this point,grr. Wasted 3 hours fighting with Python/AppEngine before just making a Perl script. Haven’t slept, so 24 hours at my desk trying to code.

Drifting in the Stellar Winds
Infinite space + planet exploration

Screens with ripped art that will be replaced!


Current playable copy:

Currently Title->Menu->Game states . Game has a player class that runs around the map, and a random starfield in the background. It scrolls, I’m happy. Using flixel made that a headache since apparently FlxSprite has no Sprite elements, so I couldn’t make one when I want to manipulate pixels, but instead had to make a sprite and a custom render function that blits it over. Otherwise Flash would blit real Sprites over any Flixel objects every time the screen updates. fun.

Next up is getting the starfield to generate new data whenever approaching the current boundry, to remove borders completely. The starfield is just cosmetic so it will be constantly random and not persistent .

Drifting in the Stellar Winds

TimeLapse Running
I got timelapse running with Chronolapse about an hour before the comp and will capture cam and screenshots all weekend!

I think i’m going to do this competition. No, like really this time. I’ve yet to complete an LD48, though I have about 3 half-games sitting around from previous competitions . Thing is, I’ve been programming a lot due to my job, but almost entirely in Perl, so I’m all rusty with Python/Pygame, C++/DirectX or C#/XNA which are my typical choices for a game.

Does anyone have experience making a game in perl? It’s not a very common use for the language, and I really haven’t heard of any mature game/graphic libraries for it.  If I don’t find anything better I’ll probably just use the SDL bindings . It’d be nice if these was something similar to PyGame available though.

Time to start working on some code, but not with a tasty little meal

minestrone soup, sourdough bread toast, and Hansens creamy root beer

I’m not sure where my digital camera is, so I’m using my crappy webcam

Food and desk picture at the same time!

… hmm.. maybe I should get some groceries real quick