Maybe today is the official word, if not than Monday.
The Lawyers made their changes and now we just need for the other party to sign off on it.
Matt is continuing to do a first pass over the "Bucket List" - a list we made of what we would like to see polish wise added to the game. Getting our feet wet again with the inner workings of Pathogen is good. We haven't really touched it in more than a month and since then we have adopted new, better coding practices. Unfortunately we cannot implement them into Pathogen without basically rewriting the game again. Oh well.
Spoke at Champlain this morning to a group of teachers, explaining our process, and what Flash & Unity are. Great to do it, game development teaches a-lot of really strong skills that more people need. Pictures went up on Facebook & Twitter I believe thanks to Mike.
Finished Winter Rose by Patricia Mckillip yesterday after starting it only the day before. A fantastically written little novel infused with a lot of beauty and passion.
Continuing work on turn based stuff. Got a system for putting Unique Skills into the game up and running which is super exciting. Need to really settle on what classes exists & how that whole system is going to play.
TGIF, more tired than usual.
Showing posts with label Company Updates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Company Updates. Show all posts
Friday, July 19, 2013
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Vision
Warm again today, almost enough to completely forget that only two weeks ago its was pouring like someone cut the sky.
Pathogen has been picked up by its Indiecade jurors, which is exciting. Cross your fingers, knock on some wood, hope a little for us. Getting anywhere with them would go a long way to helping us make a name for ourselves. Unfortunately the build does have a few persistent issues that might ruins things + the lack of music which means we probably can't even be scored in that category :( But we will continue to hope.
Pulling the presentation together this morning for tomorrow.
In other news I can finally see what the Turn Based Combat is supposed to be. I know my short term goal which is a relief, had been searching for a while now. Synergy between characters is the key, being able to create squad wide builds is what I want to be able to accomplish. So far I'm on the right track. Got two systems in place already, working on special skills today.
I have a rant about games and narrative now, but I want to get to work, came in late after stopping in at the Helpdesk to make sure we are ready for tomorrow on the technology front. So maybe tomorrow.
Pathogen has been picked up by its Indiecade jurors, which is exciting. Cross your fingers, knock on some wood, hope a little for us. Getting anywhere with them would go a long way to helping us make a name for ourselves. Unfortunately the build does have a few persistent issues that might ruins things + the lack of music which means we probably can't even be scored in that category :( But we will continue to hope.
Pulling the presentation together this morning for tomorrow.
In other news I can finally see what the Turn Based Combat is supposed to be. I know my short term goal which is a relief, had been searching for a while now. Synergy between characters is the key, being able to create squad wide builds is what I want to be able to accomplish. So far I'm on the right track. Got two systems in place already, working on special skills today.
I have a rant about games and narrative now, but I want to get to work, came in late after stopping in at the Helpdesk to make sure we are ready for tomorrow on the technology front. So maybe tomorrow.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Alls Quiet on the Western Front but the Dying.
Wednesday and again the temperature is summery again, not too excessively hot when we entered the week.
No word as of yet about the contact and so we continue on. We have been down this road before, but hopefully it ends in a better place than previously.
Matt was sick yesterday, so it was just us three. Specc'ed out the jobs for Physical apps, which spill out to be far more than a month so we will see what we will be doing for them. Another temp hire could help shoulder that work. In my neck of the woods I think I have a better handle on how to get combat progressing faster. Adding in the first of the new systems I'm designing today and the goal is to get it working.
Saw Pacific Rim this past weekend and it was fantastic. A perfect film for that 13 year old we all still carry around. Its a huge spectacle that delivers exactly what you need, whether you were aware of it or not. The movie felt stream lined to a T, and as a result it ends up being a ridiculous amount of fun. The CG effects are amazingly overlaid with real props and they did a great job with creating the sheer sense of weight being thrown around. Enough said, go see it.
Finished LoveDeath, a novella collection created by Dan Simmons. Very interesting pieces for sure, but the two that really shined where Sleeping with Teeth Women, and The Great Lover. Sleeping with Teeth Women was a Sioux tale which I found familiar & exotic at the same time. I have read only a few books about native/first people culture and beliefs. They give a great contrast to what we supposedly learn in grade school and somehow feel far more faithful. The Great Lover on the other hand was a novella told from the perspective of a poet conscripted into the British Rifle Division during WW1. I am now convinced that being on the French front, in the Trenches, is probably one of the most horrible moments in all of human history. Hundreds of thousands told to die by an incompetent command structure, while thousands more died in the horrific conditions.
Watching: Hero's Season 1.
Playing: Civilization 5 BNW (darn you culture victory on Emperor difficulty).
No word as of yet about the contact and so we continue on. We have been down this road before, but hopefully it ends in a better place than previously.
Matt was sick yesterday, so it was just us three. Specc'ed out the jobs for Physical apps, which spill out to be far more than a month so we will see what we will be doing for them. Another temp hire could help shoulder that work. In my neck of the woods I think I have a better handle on how to get combat progressing faster. Adding in the first of the new systems I'm designing today and the goal is to get it working.
Saw Pacific Rim this past weekend and it was fantastic. A perfect film for that 13 year old we all still carry around. Its a huge spectacle that delivers exactly what you need, whether you were aware of it or not. The movie felt stream lined to a T, and as a result it ends up being a ridiculous amount of fun. The CG effects are amazingly overlaid with real props and they did a great job with creating the sheer sense of weight being thrown around. Enough said, go see it.
Finished LoveDeath, a novella collection created by Dan Simmons. Very interesting pieces for sure, but the two that really shined where Sleeping with Teeth Women, and The Great Lover. Sleeping with Teeth Women was a Sioux tale which I found familiar & exotic at the same time. I have read only a few books about native/first people culture and beliefs. They give a great contrast to what we supposedly learn in grade school and somehow feel far more faithful. The Great Lover on the other hand was a novella told from the perspective of a poet conscripted into the British Rifle Division during WW1. I am now convinced that being on the French front, in the Trenches, is probably one of the most horrible moments in all of human history. Hundreds of thousands told to die by an incompetent command structure, while thousands more died in the horrific conditions.
Watching: Hero's Season 1.
Playing: Civilization 5 BNW (darn you culture victory on Emperor difficulty).
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Music in the left ear
Ugg, yesterday ended up being a scorcher. Way too hot. Today's bike ride in was pretty good though, maybe I'll take the bike path up after work if it remains like this.
Had the Physical App's guy come around yesterday and they are looking for a bunch of things. The product is getting ready to ship, which means they were looking for as much work done as possible within a months time. That's a little brutal in terms of a development timeline. We are specc'ing some of those potential projects to see what we could do/bring people on to do.
Lorrie came by to help out figure out tax stuff. We had a client bounce a check and amazing how much of a domino effect that can have. Mike & Marguerite's checks both bounced, while Matt's and Mine were held by our bank until they could clear. We also had a rent check bounce as well. We quickly got the clients check put back through, but it caused more than just a little bit of chaos in our quick books.
Today is possibly THE day, the contract changes have gotten looked over (hopefully) and we should have an update today. In the mean time Matt played around with the particle system built into Starling which is as powerful or more so than Unity's built in system. I'm working back through the combat in the turn based game, looking to see how to make the whole thing faster, while keeping choice and strategy in there.
Sad day, headphones are broken... I have iPhone headphones, but the Headphone jack is on the back of the tower and there is no way its going to reach.
Had the Physical App's guy come around yesterday and they are looking for a bunch of things. The product is getting ready to ship, which means they were looking for as much work done as possible within a months time. That's a little brutal in terms of a development timeline. We are specc'ing some of those potential projects to see what we could do/bring people on to do.
Lorrie came by to help out figure out tax stuff. We had a client bounce a check and amazing how much of a domino effect that can have. Mike & Marguerite's checks both bounced, while Matt's and Mine were held by our bank until they could clear. We also had a rent check bounce as well. We quickly got the clients check put back through, but it caused more than just a little bit of chaos in our quick books.
Today is possibly THE day, the contract changes have gotten looked over (hopefully) and we should have an update today. In the mean time Matt played around with the particle system built into Starling which is as powerful or more so than Unity's built in system. I'm working back through the combat in the turn based game, looking to see how to make the whole thing faster, while keeping choice and strategy in there.
Sad day, headphones are broken... I have iPhone headphones, but the Headphone jack is on the back of the tower and there is no way its going to reach.
Monday, July 15, 2013
My kingdom for a contract.
As predicted the weekend was pretty nice, so naturally I stayed inside and explored my now expanding game list thanks to the Steam Summer Sale.
We have a guy coming up from Physical Apps, our very first client and the ones who kinda got us up and running from the contract work we did for them. They fell off the planet a few months ago, which caused us to shift priorities, but now they are back. So we will see what tomorrow may bring from them.
In other news we continue to wait on legal to make some changes to the contract we have with Pathogen, but hope remains that this is the week.
We are also speaking at an event held at Champlain this weekend. A bunch of teachers are gathering to talk about alternative teaching methods/new areas of learning and Game Development is one of them. We will be giving a brief overview of different engines they may choose to teach, their pro's/con's and explaining why Game Development is good for the soul.
P.S. I got a new monitor, its kinda crazy large. writing on the left half of the screen because i'm scared of vastness of the right side.
We have a guy coming up from Physical Apps, our very first client and the ones who kinda got us up and running from the contract work we did for them. They fell off the planet a few months ago, which caused us to shift priorities, but now they are back. So we will see what tomorrow may bring from them.
In other news we continue to wait on legal to make some changes to the contract we have with Pathogen, but hope remains that this is the week.
We are also speaking at an event held at Champlain this weekend. A bunch of teachers are gathering to talk about alternative teaching methods/new areas of learning and Game Development is one of them. We will be giving a brief overview of different engines they may choose to teach, their pro's/con's and explaining why Game Development is good for the soul.
P.S. I got a new monitor, its kinda crazy large. writing on the left half of the screen because i'm scared of vastness of the right side.
Friday, July 12, 2013
Multiplayer Framework
Perfect day out for bike riding, hopefully it will carry over into the weekend.
As to work, Matt starting looking into how we should go about constructing the framework of our multiplayer system. We have tried to do this twice already, but always shelved it due to potential instability. There are a few options/considerations to make.
1. Scalibility: We need to be flexible on the backend. Should a ton of people be playing at the same time, sharing/storing data, we need to be able to handle that kind of traffic. This was always something we had worried about with our previous attempts because all of the game data was just stored on our website server, not a dedicated box.
2. Security: If your doing match making, which we are, you need to worry about the information your collecting. While ours has always been innocuous (just email addresses) its still important to try to keep that data safe. On our own server the data could be pretty easily hacked by anyone who knows what they are doing, since we don't have any knowledge about website security.
3. Stability: What are the chances the multiplayer will just break due to a million different problems? (save data corruption, uninstalling the game, Logging in/out, etc)
3. Platforms: Different methods of setting up this multiplayer system will alter how much time/energy it takes to go to multiple platforms.
So the question on what to do, really boils down to two choices:
1. Build our own solution for Multiplayer with the knowledge that we have.
2. Buy a Game Center plugin and utilize the built in game center asynchronous multiplayer framework that is already in place.
There's plenty of pros and cons to both sides of the coin.By using the Game Center Plugin we don't have to worry about scalability, Apple will handle our traffic, don't have to worry about Security unless Apple is compromised, Game Center is proven and known, we won't have to worry about stability, however where the plugin fails is that the game would only be for iOS Tablets. End of story, users would not be able to play PC - iPad, or Web to iPad, or iPad to Kindle or any of the really cool cross-platform things that could make Pathogen stand out.
On the other hand, if we build it ourselves we could choose an option that would allow for cross-platforming gaming. The issues then become Scalibility, Security, Stability.
From the work Matt did yesterday we have have found a good way to tackle some of those issues. FLOX is a service provided by the guys who made Starling (the current AS3 framework we are using) and it is seems to be exactly what we are looking for. It provides a Scalable service for network traffic and cloud storage. ok, 1 problem down, two to go.
For security we are actually going to use Game Center to authenticate the user, we then use that data to create a player on the FLOX side of things. That will take care of security on the iOS end, for Android we would do the same thing, but authenticate with Google Play instead. For web, we might have to build our own, or potentially could use Facebook. This authentication is super important because it allows us to recognize unique individual users. In addition the data is stored in FLOX, who is responsible for protecting it, not us.
The last thing which always worries me is Stability. Stability will (hopefully) simply come in time and testing. We just have to be really thorough during development to try to have an answer for every possible/conceivable problem that occur on the clients and our server side.
Matt is continuing to gauge the potential of FLOX and will do so until we officially enter production again when we sign the contract.
As to work, Matt starting looking into how we should go about constructing the framework of our multiplayer system. We have tried to do this twice already, but always shelved it due to potential instability. There are a few options/considerations to make.
1. Scalibility: We need to be flexible on the backend. Should a ton of people be playing at the same time, sharing/storing data, we need to be able to handle that kind of traffic. This was always something we had worried about with our previous attempts because all of the game data was just stored on our website server, not a dedicated box.
2. Security: If your doing match making, which we are, you need to worry about the information your collecting. While ours has always been innocuous (just email addresses) its still important to try to keep that data safe. On our own server the data could be pretty easily hacked by anyone who knows what they are doing, since we don't have any knowledge about website security.
3. Stability: What are the chances the multiplayer will just break due to a million different problems? (save data corruption, uninstalling the game, Logging in/out, etc)
3. Platforms: Different methods of setting up this multiplayer system will alter how much time/energy it takes to go to multiple platforms.
So the question on what to do, really boils down to two choices:
1. Build our own solution for Multiplayer with the knowledge that we have.
2. Buy a Game Center plugin and utilize the built in game center asynchronous multiplayer framework that is already in place.
There's plenty of pros and cons to both sides of the coin.By using the Game Center Plugin we don't have to worry about scalability, Apple will handle our traffic, don't have to worry about Security unless Apple is compromised, Game Center is proven and known, we won't have to worry about stability, however where the plugin fails is that the game would only be for iOS Tablets. End of story, users would not be able to play PC - iPad, or Web to iPad, or iPad to Kindle or any of the really cool cross-platform things that could make Pathogen stand out.
On the other hand, if we build it ourselves we could choose an option that would allow for cross-platforming gaming. The issues then become Scalibility, Security, Stability.
From the work Matt did yesterday we have have found a good way to tackle some of those issues. FLOX is a service provided by the guys who made Starling (the current AS3 framework we are using) and it is seems to be exactly what we are looking for. It provides a Scalable service for network traffic and cloud storage. ok, 1 problem down, two to go.
For security we are actually going to use Game Center to authenticate the user, we then use that data to create a player on the FLOX side of things. That will take care of security on the iOS end, for Android we would do the same thing, but authenticate with Google Play instead. For web, we might have to build our own, or potentially could use Facebook. This authentication is super important because it allows us to recognize unique individual users. In addition the data is stored in FLOX, who is responsible for protecting it, not us.
The last thing which always worries me is Stability. Stability will (hopefully) simply come in time and testing. We just have to be really thorough during development to try to have an answer for every possible/conceivable problem that occur on the clients and our server side.
Matt is continuing to gauge the potential of FLOX and will do so until we officially enter production again when we sign the contract.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Arts and Crafts.
While it looked a little threatening today, it ended up being a pretty good ride in to work today. Vermont is now free to go about its business and storm if it wants, just as long as it promises to stop at the end of the day.
Still waiting on the contract, but some people seem to think that by next week some time we should have it squared away (which is pretty promising, but still hard to believe as we have been living in the oh-it-will-be-next-week mindset for three months now)
Played through the combat Matt created yesterday and finally gave over to that gut feeling that what we were pursuing just wasn't the right path... Those are always hard decisions to make. However, Matt understood totally and is going to take another look at Pathogen, potentially to get it prep'ed for next week. Created a new board game yesterday as another experimentation into finding out what this adventure game should be. We played it at the end of the day and it held some promise. The board was made from the last month torn from the calender, ink and sharpies. Marguerite had an emergency set of dice & a pack of cards in her car and we were all set to play.
I might update the post with pictures & instructions.
Well, onto paper prototyping some more until we actually sign something.
Still waiting on the contract, but some people seem to think that by next week some time we should have it squared away (which is pretty promising, but still hard to believe as we have been living in the oh-it-will-be-next-week mindset for three months now)
Played through the combat Matt created yesterday and finally gave over to that gut feeling that what we were pursuing just wasn't the right path... Those are always hard decisions to make. However, Matt understood totally and is going to take another look at Pathogen, potentially to get it prep'ed for next week. Created a new board game yesterday as another experimentation into finding out what this adventure game should be. We played it at the end of the day and it held some promise. The board was made from the last month torn from the calender, ink and sharpies. Marguerite had an emergency set of dice & a pack of cards in her car and we were all set to play.
I might update the post with pictures & instructions.
Well, onto paper prototyping some more until we actually sign something.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Deviously Dangerous Dexter
Windy today, feels like something was looming as I biked into work. Probably going to rain this afternoon. Everyone seemed to running a little late this morning, saw more bikers than normal out, maybe its just the weather.
I've been a long time fan of the show, and very happy to have it back on the air. 8 seasons and it all is going to finally wrap up. There have been some up seasons and then some slumps, but hopefully they shake it all up for this final inning. At the same time I am now reading the novels by Jeff Lindsey (thank you Burlington Public Library), which have a lot of nice surprising twists to them, not to mention that the rhetoric is razor sharp with Dexter's inner monologue.
Began our conversations with the lawyers yesterday about the contact and all I have to say is, ick.... legal... Its like an alien language all by itself, purposefully made to be entirely too dense. We got a translation, making some changes, waiting for a reply. How it goes i guess. Till then we just keep plugging along with whatever we can.
Had some other thoughts about how the adventure game could work out. Might break away from the code and experiment. Yesterday we successfully got combat to initiate from an event (A bunch of slavers where appeared) which is pretty awesome. Going to try to put as much control as possible into the event system so that you can indicate how many enemies there are, if they hit the party with a surprise attack first causing X character to lose some health before the fight, etc. Flexibility is the key.
I've been a long time fan of the show, and very happy to have it back on the air. 8 seasons and it all is going to finally wrap up. There have been some up seasons and then some slumps, but hopefully they shake it all up for this final inning. At the same time I am now reading the novels by Jeff Lindsey (thank you Burlington Public Library), which have a lot of nice surprising twists to them, not to mention that the rhetoric is razor sharp with Dexter's inner monologue.
Began our conversations with the lawyers yesterday about the contact and all I have to say is, ick.... legal... Its like an alien language all by itself, purposefully made to be entirely too dense. We got a translation, making some changes, waiting for a reply. How it goes i guess. Till then we just keep plugging along with whatever we can.
Had some other thoughts about how the adventure game could work out. Might break away from the code and experiment. Yesterday we successfully got combat to initiate from an event (A bunch of slavers where appeared) which is pretty awesome. Going to try to put as much control as possible into the event system so that you can indicate how many enemies there are, if they hit the party with a surprise attack first causing X character to lose some health before the fight, etc. Flexibility is the key.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
221B Baker St.
So this past weekend I finally watched Sherlock... I had been one of those hold outs who never believed it could really as good as everyone said it was. But as I soon found out, the answer is Yes, yes the show is actually that good.
Though I have a few minor reservations about what I don't like about the show, since I'm a fan of the original material - The book was given to me by my sister who bought it second hand( the thing is OLD, like original old, yellowed pages, creaky spine, and tobacco smoke infused into the pages, the works)
But overall the show was great, and not being a great watcher of British broadcast had no idea that each episode was an hour and half, which means that I watched way too much Sherlock this weekend.
As for work, Waiting on the lawyers still. They are talking to us today. So hopefully forward momentum will quickly follow. Until that point in time we will continue work on the Adventure game. Matt got ranged combat working, now we are working on integrating it into the event system. That means we need to reshuffle how PARTY and SQUAD are created and make sure those are passed into all child classes or at least have them accessible.
I switched gears to help setup a contact artist who will be redoing our animations in Pathogen so at least we have that iron in the fire. Otherwise I ended up doing a bunch of writing which was a nice change of pace.
Reading: LoveDeath - Dan Simmons
Listening: Rambling Man - Lemon Jelly
Though I have a few minor reservations about what I don't like about the show, since I'm a fan of the original material - The book was given to me by my sister who bought it second hand( the thing is OLD, like original old, yellowed pages, creaky spine, and tobacco smoke infused into the pages, the works)
But overall the show was great, and not being a great watcher of British broadcast had no idea that each episode was an hour and half, which means that I watched way too much Sherlock this weekend.
As for work, Waiting on the lawyers still. They are talking to us today. So hopefully forward momentum will quickly follow. Until that point in time we will continue work on the Adventure game. Matt got ranged combat working, now we are working on integrating it into the event system. That means we need to reshuffle how PARTY and SQUAD are created and make sure those are passed into all child classes or at least have them accessible.
I switched gears to help setup a contact artist who will be redoing our animations in Pathogen so at least we have that iron in the fire. Otherwise I ended up doing a bunch of writing which was a nice change of pace.
Reading: LoveDeath - Dan Simmons
Listening: Rambling Man - Lemon Jelly
Monday, July 8, 2013
The Misadventures of Riding a Bike to Work
And the morning began so perfect.
Work up to after rain and a sky without a single sun in it. Cool for the first time in a week and everything went swimmingly until about halfway to Burlington from Winooski. Yes, I'm too cheap to by a car so I bike to work every morning. And at the halfway mark, right where Riverside does its strange five way intersection at the new gym it begins to rain... At first it was, not that bad, but it soon escalated to more than just a little down pour. lucky me for not remembering rain pants. 15 minutes later and very much so wet I arrive at work.
But came in to good news, Marguerite received a contract last week and now we are just waiting on the lawyers! Cross your fingers we could actually be employed to finish Pathogen.
In the mean time work will continue on the adventure game. Beginning to realize how messy branching storytelling gets. Need to figure out how deep a hole I want to dig for myself. Matt is working on Ranged combat, which is great. Maybe we will link combat to events today.
Work up to after rain and a sky without a single sun in it. Cool for the first time in a week and everything went swimmingly until about halfway to Burlington from Winooski. Yes, I'm too cheap to by a car so I bike to work every morning. And at the halfway mark, right where Riverside does its strange five way intersection at the new gym it begins to rain... At first it was, not that bad, but it soon escalated to more than just a little down pour. lucky me for not remembering rain pants. 15 minutes later and very much so wet I arrive at work.
But came in to good news, Marguerite received a contract last week and now we are just waiting on the lawyers! Cross your fingers we could actually be employed to finish Pathogen.
In the mean time work will continue on the adventure game. Beginning to realize how messy branching storytelling gets. Need to figure out how deep a hole I want to dig for myself. Matt is working on Ranged combat, which is great. Maybe we will link combat to events today.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Dog Days
Its been muggy hot, not your typical humid sort of hot, but the hot like Vermont took its summer vacation in Florida. Which means that along with all of the 90ish degree weather we have also been under siege by these flash rain storms that are here one moment, gone the next, with the sidewalks completely dry two minutes later.
In other news, we are currently still in development limbo. Pathogen is still sitting there patiently waiting for the situation to sort itself out. We prototyped a new concept, liked it and threw it on ice for later review and now have turned to another project. A pet project of mine which would result in a much larger game than we have worked on before.
But we went in knowing that we were only building the skeleton of the creature, no need to get fancy. Which all in all provides some great practice in how we setup larger systems. At the same time Matt is slowly, insidiously passing down the dark art of programming. I'm learning the correct way to create those Getter's and Setter's along with creating a more standardized method of variable naming.
This week has a lot of potential in it, we could very well see the elusive glimpse of a contract. After almost 3 months of hunting I'm not entirely convinced that everything will turn out shiny in the end, but its looking brighter than it has in a long while.
In other news, we are currently still in development limbo. Pathogen is still sitting there patiently waiting for the situation to sort itself out. We prototyped a new concept, liked it and threw it on ice for later review and now have turned to another project. A pet project of mine which would result in a much larger game than we have worked on before.
But we went in knowing that we were only building the skeleton of the creature, no need to get fancy. Which all in all provides some great practice in how we setup larger systems. At the same time Matt is slowly, insidiously passing down the dark art of programming. I'm learning the correct way to create those Getter's and Setter's along with creating a more standardized method of variable naming.
This week has a lot of potential in it, we could very well see the elusive glimpse of a contract. After almost 3 months of hunting I'm not entirely convinced that everything will turn out shiny in the end, but its looking brighter than it has in a long while.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
News
Haven't posted in while, so here is all that happened.
New Space
One of the biggest changes was that we moved office spaces. From the Champlain Mill on the Winooski/Burlington border to down near Perkins Pier in downtown Burlington. We are on the second floor of the JDK building. Its a shared living space that is quickly filling up with other creative talent in Burlington. Its pretty great, feels more alive + internet that kicks our old internet speeds into last week. However its about $100 more a month, but we don't pay for utilities/internet, which ended up totaling near $100 anyway. So nearly even. Its a bit farther, which means I'm biking to work which is fine except for the pouring rain yesterday.
Pathogen
A frustrating series of events have cause us to bring development to a standstill for the moment while we try to figure out what our publisher situation actually ends up being. At the moment it is in a pretty solid place with the whole local multiplayer and single player campaign complete. The next big move for development is the production of our online component, which could take anywhere between 3 and 6 months depending on what road we want to travel down.
As a result of stalling development we have begun prototyping a new iP, which is pretty exciting and more information about it may follow in the future, but for the moment we are going to keep it under wraps.
That's it for now, pictures of the new space will go up eventually when I remember to bring a camera to work.
New Space
One of the biggest changes was that we moved office spaces. From the Champlain Mill on the Winooski/Burlington border to down near Perkins Pier in downtown Burlington. We are on the second floor of the JDK building. Its a shared living space that is quickly filling up with other creative talent in Burlington. Its pretty great, feels more alive + internet that kicks our old internet speeds into last week. However its about $100 more a month, but we don't pay for utilities/internet, which ended up totaling near $100 anyway. So nearly even. Its a bit farther, which means I'm biking to work which is fine except for the pouring rain yesterday.
Pathogen
A frustrating series of events have cause us to bring development to a standstill for the moment while we try to figure out what our publisher situation actually ends up being. At the moment it is in a pretty solid place with the whole local multiplayer and single player campaign complete. The next big move for development is the production of our online component, which could take anywhere between 3 and 6 months depending on what road we want to travel down.
As a result of stalling development we have begun prototyping a new iP, which is pretty exciting and more information about it may follow in the future, but for the moment we are going to keep it under wraps.
That's it for now, pictures of the new space will go up eventually when I remember to bring a camera to work.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Build 1.9
Its finally here.
Build 1.9 is a huge step sideways in development. We are back to where we were about a month ago, however everything is now different. Without the crutch of the Flash Display list we have been forced to come to terms with the actual huge number of sprites in the game. The cell animations in particular are pretty huge, spanning 3 full 2048x2048 sheets. To compensate we have had to optimize in every conceivable way. Starling has given us the tools to do some pretty fancy things like creating dynamic scaling textures (as used in the vast majority of our UI as backgrounds).
The learning process was pretty swift thanks to the fact that the parent/child/syntax from Flash professional has been maintained in Starling. And as a result I would probably never really go back, though Flash Builder has its own set of quirks. (Autocomplete?!)
And now its mostly there, at a full 60 fps. Menu systems have been completely scrapped and rebuilt in a number of instances from how you interact with the later campaign levels, to saving/loading in the map editor, to how you manage adding/removing players in a local game. The number of changes is so vast that I don't even know exactly how much we have changed over for the better.
Tomorrow we are headed out to Burlington High School to talk about the development of Pathogen & design in general. Friday we are moving into our new space located in downtown Burlington near Perkins Pier. We will be in the shared space that JDK owns which is pretty exciting to be around more creative people.
Pictures will be up soon as we step into our second year as Birnam Wood Games
Build 1.9 is a huge step sideways in development. We are back to where we were about a month ago, however everything is now different. Without the crutch of the Flash Display list we have been forced to come to terms with the actual huge number of sprites in the game. The cell animations in particular are pretty huge, spanning 3 full 2048x2048 sheets. To compensate we have had to optimize in every conceivable way. Starling has given us the tools to do some pretty fancy things like creating dynamic scaling textures (as used in the vast majority of our UI as backgrounds).
The learning process was pretty swift thanks to the fact that the parent/child/syntax from Flash professional has been maintained in Starling. And as a result I would probably never really go back, though Flash Builder has its own set of quirks. (Autocomplete?!)
And now its mostly there, at a full 60 fps. Menu systems have been completely scrapped and rebuilt in a number of instances from how you interact with the later campaign levels, to saving/loading in the map editor, to how you manage adding/removing players in a local game. The number of changes is so vast that I don't even know exactly how much we have changed over for the better.
Tomorrow we are headed out to Burlington High School to talk about the development of Pathogen & design in general. Friday we are moving into our new space located in downtown Burlington near Perkins Pier. We will be in the shared space that JDK owns which is pretty exciting to be around more creative people.
Pictures will be up soon as we step into our second year as Birnam Wood Games
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Almost back to where we started
Whew, almost there.
Over the past few week we have learned a ton about Starling and how to get it function. Today is another milestone in terms of efficiency and development as we are compressing our sprites sheets down to the smallest possible configuration. We have been tackling the issue of loading assets and yesterday Matt seemed to crack it.
We are building a preloader which displays a loading bar at the beginning while we background load all of our assets from our condensed sprite sheets to their targeted texture atlases. Which is just a complicated way to say we load everything up front so that the experience is smooth without any additional loading times.
The Campaign structure has been rebuilt better than ever thanks to the Scrolling properties in Feathers (a UI extension of Starling). All of the modes have been added as well except for the Invasion Game mode. Today is going to be another gloss over on the map Editor, putting the save/load functionality back in and Matt is going to be tackling the undo/replay functionality again.
We were using a flashbased library to render the Pie Chart originally, however it was not compatible with Starling so we ended up converting it over which is pretty awesome since no one else has done graphing in Starling apparently, so we should be posting that pretty soon on their forums.
In about two weeks we are headed to Burlington High School to give a talk about development/show off the game and right now the goal is to do that with the Starling build and we seem to be on track.
Over the past few week we have learned a ton about Starling and how to get it function. Today is another milestone in terms of efficiency and development as we are compressing our sprites sheets down to the smallest possible configuration. We have been tackling the issue of loading assets and yesterday Matt seemed to crack it.
We are building a preloader which displays a loading bar at the beginning while we background load all of our assets from our condensed sprite sheets to their targeted texture atlases. Which is just a complicated way to say we load everything up front so that the experience is smooth without any additional loading times.
The Campaign structure has been rebuilt better than ever thanks to the Scrolling properties in Feathers (a UI extension of Starling). All of the modes have been added as well except for the Invasion Game mode. Today is going to be another gloss over on the map Editor, putting the save/load functionality back in and Matt is going to be tackling the undo/replay functionality again.
We were using a flashbased library to render the Pie Chart originally, however it was not compatible with Starling so we ended up converting it over which is pretty awesome since no one else has done graphing in Starling apparently, so we should be posting that pretty soon on their forums.
In about two weeks we are headed to Burlington High School to give a talk about development/show off the game and right now the goal is to do that with the Starling build and we seem to be on track.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Been Quiet
Last couple of weeks have been pretty quiet from us. Rewriting the entire game has been kind all consuming, but we are getting closer now. Pathogen is playable again with the Starling Framework, which is exciting. The code is looking a lot better now, way more structured and hopefully more efficient. Slowly putting functionality back in, Matt is tackling undo/replay and I'm setting the campaign structure up again.
Overall its coming together, we have about another full week of this before we will be back to where we left off. Then from there it will be learning the in's and outs of Game Center.
Overall its coming together, we have about another full week of this before we will be back to where we left off. Then from there it will be learning the in's and outs of Game Center.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
So, kinda a big change.
After months and months of working on Pathogen we have come to the realization that I built it on the wrong kind of foundation. There had been warning signs, questions raised about "Why can't we animate this?", or "Why is it running so slowly?".
The answer is that Flash Professional was never meant to create full fledged games, animations/prototypes yes, but full games no. The reason is the Flash Display List. Every time you call addChild(thing), that object is added to the display list. It doesn't matter if all of those children are being drawn to a parent object, each is being drawn individually through the Flash Display List. Which means that every frame (in our case 24 times a second) the whole of the flash display list is being redraw. In a normal game that breaks down into each "tile", all 228 of them on a small map is being redrawn, each of those tiles have a grid space, so double that, add the player selector buttons as well as the GUI objects and your talking somewhere in the realm of 500+ objects being redrawn every frame for just a small map.
This limitation is what causes those little loading hiccups when switching map sizes on the game setup screen as well as loading a game in general.
It also limited the number of artifacts we could have moving around in the background, how fast the slider responds, and was one of the big reasons why we decided to ditch phone development.
So after a long talk about it, we have decided to address the problem. The answer is to virtually rewrite the game using a known flash engine such as Citrus, Starling, Flash-punk or Flixel. These engines are created in such a way that all assets, no matter their number, are all drawn at the same time and thus drastically increasing efficiency.
The first step in the process is research. What do these different engines have to offer, how active is the community, how well does it integrate, etc.
After a few frustrating days of testing we have come to a decision, Pathogen will be rebuilt using the Starling AS3 Framework.
Why did we choose Starling? Well, it had a lot of things going for it.
1. Adobe seems like they wholeheartedly officially support the engine, which means in the future they may plan with it in mind.
2. The community is pretty strong, a lot of big name games (Angry Birds) have been created with it and there are some great tutorials out there.
3. It mimics the native Flash syntax, addChild, EventListener, all has a Starling variant making it far easier for me to switch my thinking over to a newer system.
So a wide new world await us, tomorrow I will be talking about my experiences in getting Starling working(not an easy task) as well as what the big code changes will be making the switch over to this engine.
The answer is that Flash Professional was never meant to create full fledged games, animations/prototypes yes, but full games no. The reason is the Flash Display List. Every time you call addChild(thing), that object is added to the display list. It doesn't matter if all of those children are being drawn to a parent object, each is being drawn individually through the Flash Display List. Which means that every frame (in our case 24 times a second) the whole of the flash display list is being redraw. In a normal game that breaks down into each "tile", all 228 of them on a small map is being redrawn, each of those tiles have a grid space, so double that, add the player selector buttons as well as the GUI objects and your talking somewhere in the realm of 500+ objects being redrawn every frame for just a small map.
This limitation is what causes those little loading hiccups when switching map sizes on the game setup screen as well as loading a game in general.
It also limited the number of artifacts we could have moving around in the background, how fast the slider responds, and was one of the big reasons why we decided to ditch phone development.
So after a long talk about it, we have decided to address the problem. The answer is to virtually rewrite the game using a known flash engine such as Citrus, Starling, Flash-punk or Flixel. These engines are created in such a way that all assets, no matter their number, are all drawn at the same time and thus drastically increasing efficiency.
The first step in the process is research. What do these different engines have to offer, how active is the community, how well does it integrate, etc.
After a few frustrating days of testing we have come to a decision, Pathogen will be rebuilt using the Starling AS3 Framework.
Why did we choose Starling? Well, it had a lot of things going for it.
1. Adobe seems like they wholeheartedly officially support the engine, which means in the future they may plan with it in mind.
2. The community is pretty strong, a lot of big name games (Angry Birds) have been created with it and there are some great tutorials out there.
3. It mimics the native Flash syntax, addChild, EventListener, all has a Starling variant making it far easier for me to switch my thinking over to a newer system.
So a wide new world await us, tomorrow I will be talking about my experiences in getting Starling working(not an easy task) as well as what the big code changes will be making the switch over to this engine.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Sound...
Thanks to Ryan for letting us know about the continuing AI issues, Matt turned around and took another look and I think we plugged the rest of the holes for AI.
Learned that the way I had been loading in external libraries into Flash was all wrong, as a result the game had a ridiculous build time as well as a bit of lag time when running a level for the first time. Now I know what not to do.
When Pathogen first launches, it sits on a pure black screen for a second or two before actually loading the game. That black screen I discovered is the initial load period and a splash image can be displayed if named correctly and loaded into the IPA, looks a little more professional now.
Sound...
Sound/music is kinda my blind spot in game development. I don't know where to even begin, so i've been avoiding it for a long, long time. But finally, I have come to the realization that we do really kinda need it. So I started simple, no button sounds, just a background track that loops. Since Matt has come aboard he has shown me the awesome power of Static classes (not something i learned about in school) So the music stuff came along a lot faster in part because of that, but also because i found a really great sound code library called ASound, which simplifies the calls you need to make and gives a breadth of control over the tracks that are being played.
Learned that the way I had been loading in external libraries into Flash was all wrong, as a result the game had a ridiculous build time as well as a bit of lag time when running a level for the first time. Now I know what not to do.
When Pathogen first launches, it sits on a pure black screen for a second or two before actually loading the game. That black screen I discovered is the initial load period and a splash image can be displayed if named correctly and loaded into the IPA, looks a little more professional now.
Sound...
Sound/music is kinda my blind spot in game development. I don't know where to even begin, so i've been avoiding it for a long, long time. But finally, I have come to the realization that we do really kinda need it. So I started simple, no button sounds, just a background track that loops. Since Matt has come aboard he has shown me the awesome power of Static classes (not something i learned about in school) So the music stuff came along a lot faster in part because of that, but also because i found a really great sound code library called ASound, which simplifies the calls you need to make and gives a breadth of control over the tracks that are being played.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Build Day! Pathogen 1.06
Single player should be coming to an iPad near you (if your a tester)!
Which means a host of new changes.
Patch Notes for Pathogen 1.06
- New Grid art!
- Visual bugs with the cell selector have been address
- Introduction of a new mode: Erosion! Erosion Zones on the map will randomly decay over time, allowing for new paths and areas to appear throughout the game. The new erosion tile has also been added to the map editor.
- Single Player-
This is our first release of the single player experience. As we continue development we will be adding additional levels, elements, and difficulty levels to this campaign. At the moment the farthest you may progress is to the levels Underdog & Win in X Moves.
The single player campaign will save you progress with every level unlocked & each game is saved when exited to the main menu so that a local game can be played.
Which means a host of new changes.
Patch Notes for Pathogen 1.06
- New Grid art!
- Visual bugs with the cell selector have been address
- Introduction of a new mode: Erosion! Erosion Zones on the map will randomly decay over time, allowing for new paths and areas to appear throughout the game. The new erosion tile has also been added to the map editor.
- Single Player-
This is our first release of the single player experience. As we continue development we will be adding additional levels, elements, and difficulty levels to this campaign. At the moment the farthest you may progress is to the levels Underdog & Win in X Moves.
The single player campaign will save you progress with every level unlocked & each game is saved when exited to the main menu so that a local game can be played.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Plugging Away
I think we are going to make our end of the week deadline for a build. Having a little problem with the AI, its causing the game to crash in certain instances, but Matt is working through that today. Initial saving feature for the campaign is in, if you leave a game to go do a local game the campaign remembers were you were, auto launches the level, and reloads the map to where it was at that moment.
The tricky thing i still have yet to do is save all the the game's history as well... This would allow the replay system to be fully functional after completing a level.
Laid out a preliminary list of achievements that we will be including, which is always fun. Looks like we should have a pretty large chunk, more that 25 at least.
The tricky thing i still have yet to do is save all the the game's history as well... This would allow the replay system to be fully functional after completing a level.
Laid out a preliminary list of achievements that we will be including, which is always fun. Looks like we should have a pretty large chunk, more that 25 at least.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Mid Week Overview 4/10
Have done a few things this week.
Looked a little bit into the future at some of the up and coming game development competitions and the next one is Indiecade, and their early registration ends on May 1st. So that becomes our next "major" deadline.
I think we are on/ahead of schedule, i don't know, our development feels like its in a really good place at the moment. Matt has polished the AI to the point were we are comfortable in having people try to take it on. Its also been integrated into the single player campaign, so by Friday we will be releasing the beta experience of the single player campaign to get some feedback.
A new victory screen went in for the single player to avoid the jarring transition between ending a game and the post game screen, the post game screen also got a little love. Matt may have finally fixed one of our major Pie chart bugs which could on rare occasions cause a full crash.
I made a tiny art change, which ended up pretty drastically altering the game board as a whole. So let me know what you think of the new game board grid when you get hands on.
Oh, finished the erosion zone mode. It is essentially an inverse of the capture zone mode. Erosion zones begin the game as normal t4 grey walls, but as the game progresses zones will randomly decay, allowing for new areas to open up and cascades to be more effective.
Looked a little bit into the future at some of the up and coming game development competitions and the next one is Indiecade, and their early registration ends on May 1st. So that becomes our next "major" deadline.
I think we are on/ahead of schedule, i don't know, our development feels like its in a really good place at the moment. Matt has polished the AI to the point were we are comfortable in having people try to take it on. Its also been integrated into the single player campaign, so by Friday we will be releasing the beta experience of the single player campaign to get some feedback.
A new victory screen went in for the single player to avoid the jarring transition between ending a game and the post game screen, the post game screen also got a little love. Matt may have finally fixed one of our major Pie chart bugs which could on rare occasions cause a full crash.
I made a tiny art change, which ended up pretty drastically altering the game board as a whole. So let me know what you think of the new game board grid when you get hands on.
Oh, finished the erosion zone mode. It is essentially an inverse of the capture zone mode. Erosion zones begin the game as normal t4 grey walls, but as the game progresses zones will randomly decay, allowing for new areas to open up and cascades to be more effective.
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