JDog053 DevBlog

[fog]

Cool.  Bet you're glad it's nearly over

I still remember the relief of finally finishing my 5 years at college.  I was working at the time so just went 1 day and two evenings.  Getting home at 9:30pm on those college days soon got boring when I had left the house for work at 6:30am.  Not fun

[T_M_C]

Hang in there Jdog.   

TMC

[JDog053]

Thanks folks! Work is progressing on coursework at a steady state

Still, having a notepad next to my desk allows me to think of FAT BAT, managed to draft an artsy friend of mine into penning a few of the enemies, that I can then 'stylise' back into NES restricted graphics He's also helping me design a few bosses (just bigger versions of the enemies).

Thought of maybe adding an attack aswell, because as much as I enjoy dodging enemies, I also like killing stuff too... the attack in question is a Sonar Blast! You'd press a big and easy to press button at either side of the screen to unleash a radial blast.

No plans on refining the editor yet, quite fond of just opening paint, having a scribble and loading it in

[T_M_C]

Thats a good idea to keep a notepad handy.

Never know when inspiration will strike.   

TMC

[fog]

The only notepad I use is the one that comes with Windows

I never scribble ideas down on paper for some reason....which is a bit weird thinking about it as game ideas can be summed up much better in a simple sketch than they can in a bunch of words.

[JDog053]

Going away this weekend, so don't expect much progress! Coursework is going well however and should be completed and handed in ontime...

[T_M_C]

Hope the weather's not too bad for you.

TMC

[JDog053]

Was good weather thanks, popped to Alton Towers with a massive group of friends lol!

Managed to let most who were there have a play with bat game (an older build) on the device and nealy all replied positively a friend suggested I added tilt/flap controls aswell 'for a bit of fun'... I said "after the game's made i'll see about it" Everyone seemed really pleased with the system anyway so Thanks for the idea Fog and The Khakinator

All of my deadlines are next Thursday so will resume work afterwards... i'm in the process of planning a large scale demo level, feauring all normal enemies all collectables and all events to see if everything is working properly

[Prime_8]

cool.

[TheKhakinator]

Cool.  Bet you're glad it's nearly over

I still remember the relief of finally finishing my 5 years at college.  I was working at the time so just went 1 day and two evenings.  Getting home at 9:30pm on those college days soon got boring when I had left the house for work at 6:30am.  Not fun

Cannot. Wait. To. Graduate. XD

[fog]

Cool.  Bet you're glad it's nearly over

I still remember the relief of finally finishing my 5 years at college.  I was working at the time so just went 1 day and two evenings.  Getting home at 9:30pm on those college days soon got boring when I had left the house for work at 6:30am.  Not fun

Cannot. Wait. To. Graduate. XD

You as well?  Good look chaps

Managed to let most who were there have a play with bat game (an older build) on the device and nealy all replied positively a friend suggested I added tilt/flap controls aswell 'for a bit of fun'... I said "after the game's made i'll see about it" Everyone seemed really pleased with the system anyway so Thanks for the idea Fog and The Khakinator

You can't beat a bit of feedback.  Not only does it help iron out any problems with the game, it does wonders for your motivation

[JDog053]

Hey folks

I am now all done with Uni till results and ultimately graduation day. My intentions/focus now are to polish up my last 2 major pieces of coursework and add them to my portfolio, these being my..

Seasonal Snow Globe
and
Rigid and Soft Body Physics Engine with Multi-Threading and Networking (which was my last piece of coursework).

The intentions are to sort the code out, make it readable and efficient where necessary. Then for the Snow Globe to improve it visually with shaders and a few other things The Physics engine, I hope to add proper rigid body physics (instead of the hack i'm using now), add a few different shapes, instead of just square and triangle. Improve the soft body i've written and allow multiple soft bodies with collisions... and make it so you can network the soft body aswell... improve the broad phase and add more threads to improve the performance.

Then the task of applying for jobs starts, but don't worry, I intend to continue bat game, but it will most probably be for the PC and not the Phone!

[fog]

You must feel great now that you're almost done with Uni

Then the task of applying for jobs starts, but don't worry, I intend to continue bat game, but it will most probably be for the PC and not the Phone!

Why the PC route?  Are you still using XNA or something else?

[T_M_C]

Congrats Jdog.

It seems you've been at Uni forever.

And now you're all but done.

I hope you get the results you're after.

What did you think of the Uni course overall then, now that it's completed ?


As regards the physics engine stuff.

I presume you're using a 3rd party physics engine.  I can't imagine you attempting to write a rigid body physics engine from scratch. 
I would have a very hard time doing that and i've been messing with physics for years.

As an alternative approach, have you thought about using verlets.  Atom based spring physics.

It's much much easier to code than rigid body stuff and gives the same results.

I've coded a verlet physics system for a car physics project i've been working on and off with for many years. I could certainly help you out if you wanted to have a go at it.

TMC

[JDog053]

Thanks Masked and Fog

I'd say the course was awesome on the whole, 4 good but tough years and indeed fingers crossed for the results! 1st year was easy, 2nd and 3rd year were hard, 4th year was interesting and hard and probably the most enjoyable.

Funny you should say that Masked but no, we had 7 weeks to create a 2D rigid body engine from scratch... had no choice to code it as it was a coursework piece, so yeah a hard task! The version I submitted wasn't rigid body it was just very very close using a 'hack' that made the rotations look right. My aim now is to make it proper rigid body which requires me to find the intersect point and use that as a basis for angular velocity calculations.

The softbody was also done from scratch and I hope to add soft body to rigid body collisions aswell as soft to softbody collisions in the near future. In short though, it was one hell of a coursework to be set at the end lol.

As for FAT BAT Fog, i'll most likely finish coding the full game for the PC first, then port it back to the phone, which is just a case of sorting the already well tested phone controls out Hate to say aswell that i've been recoding some sections of the game after getting used to virtual functions and overrides as its making design and additions alot easier.