Thursday, December 16, 2010

Yay! Spam!

Look i won some money


Dear Gmail user
You won £ 500,000.00GBP. (CGPN):**************, Ticket number: **************,
Serial numbers:/BTD/***********, Lucky numbers:12-12-23-35-40-41(12). Contact
Mr. Graham Benfield for more details: E-mail: g.benfield121@gmail.com

Sincerely,
Mrs. Bettina Paulson

Awesome!!!!

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

The Next Game

Heres some concept type stuff that ive been working on for my next game.


"But Josh!!! You need to finish your other game before you go making a new one. You have deadlines!!!"
Yeah, I know, but heres the deal:

At this stage, my tower defense game is going to receive about 3 more features. (Most of which can be seen on my checklist that i posted on this blog not too long ago) And the rest of the stuff is polishing, balancing, making images look better, lame stuff like that.

Which is very good!

but.. It doesn't challenge me at all.
Its like busy work from your history teacher named Eric.

And theres only so much of that busy work that i can do before my mind explodes.

So consider the last few days working on this NEW game to be nothing more than a very short break that will end soon.

It WILL end soon. Because, yes, I have deadlines.

Which i will talk about at another time.
Kbai.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Interview With Guy Who Knows Stuff

Forum Mod
Design and programming developer
Game developer for EGOSOFT
games for steam
Language developer called Epoch


questions

What language should i be using?
What kind of goals are good to have?
what would be best to spend my time working on?
What are some good resources out there to use?
How is college going to help me?


Recommendation: start *small*. Write Pong. Write Tic-tac-toe. Write Tetris. That'll give you an idea as to how long it'll take to make a small, simple game. Now, multiply that time by 100 for a bottom estimate of how long it'll take to do a simple commercial game. Multiply by at least 1000 for how to do the super-big hit of the year.

Well you could watch the Itunes Standford Java or C++ video's if you are bored with Python.
If you go on to college you will most likely have to learn Java or C++ sooner or later.
Looking back to when I was your age though I would just keep writing programs/games in Python if you are already comfortable with it.
Besides like you said you've only made "small" stuff from what it sounds like. When you start making complete games is where it starts getting hard!

Keep using Python. Really develop your skills there and put out some high-quality, finished, polished games. If you ever encounter a situation that Python cannot handle (and this is a big "if"), then you can start worrying about what other tools to pick up. Depending on the problem you run into, you may want to go with C#, or Java, or Lua, or LISP, or whatever. Maybe you'll have to take a dip in the inky, rotted, corrosive brine that is C++ (although I hope for your sake that you don't!).

Finish every project you start.

Every time you finish a project, when you pick your next project, pick something that you don't actually know how to do. This will ensure that you are constantly stretching yourself and learning new things. Just be careful not to bite off more than you can chew.

Lastly, but most importantly, enjoy it. If you stop having fun programming, go the **** outside and do something else that you actually like doing. Life is too short to waste your youth on preparing for a career that you don't actually enjoy.

I believe there is an old saying. Those who can't, teach. You will find that even if your teachers have experience in the working world it is usually decades out of date. Remember the degree is a piece of paper that gets your resume past filters, and the learning begins when you get your first job.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

symphony of specters

This company makes music for indie games
they have some really good stuff and are a great reference point for me as far as what video game music should sound like
symphony of specters
its too bad for me that they charge for music but i still use them as inspiration when making music for my games.

Inspirational Video!!!

This interview talks a little bit about the indie game development community and it also talks about joining music and the game together really awesomely.
(which is something that i want to focus on with my next game)
(it also has some really cool music playing in the background)


PixelJunk Shooter 2 Developer Interview - E3 2010 from Jeriaska on Vimeo.


Heres another Interview that talks about combining narrative and video game design
(which is also something i want to do for my next game)

Gemini Rue Designer Interview - E3 2010 from Jeriaska on Vimeo.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

A Cool Bug

Alot of people think that bugs in software are serious issues that ruin and cause destruction everywhere they go.
I, however, like to classify bugs into 2 different groups.

1) Cool
2) Not Cool

The "Not Cool" kinds of bugs are ALOT more common.

ALOT.

Those "Not Cool" bugs are stupid. EVERYONE hates them.

EVERYONE.

They will come at you from stupid obvious "noob" typos and
They come at you from the most obscure places.

Sometimes they cause your game to act retarted.
And other times (and more common) they will simply trip your game and leave you to read a large blob of (in my case red) text that your interpreter vomits back out at you after choking on a large piece of useless stuff.

But thats the sad side of bugs.

And to keep things interesting i decided that this post im going to be talking about the "Cool" side.

They are not very common. In fact, im pretty sure ive only ever had, something like 3 of them in my entire programming history.
One of them made me laugh in public, one was so cool that i had to keep it in my game, and the last one (which i came across today) caused me to struggle between looking into its frustrating cause, and marvel at its awesomeness.


Bug #1
The first one came when i was trying to program an enemy to chase me around the screen.
This was during my first graphical project so i was a total know nothing head. At the time, I had no knowledge of vectors, so the movement of my enemy was super basic. The main issue was that every frame, the enemy would move up to your same x position. But if the enemy had a greater speed than the distance from your x position to his, then he would jump past you to the other side.

If i was 5 above the enemy, then the enemy would be told to move up.
So lets say the enemy had a speed of 10.
when the enemy moves up, he is now going to go from 5 BELLOW me to 5 ABOVE me.
and the next frame the enemy would be in the same position as before, just on the opposite side.
This would cause a crazy effect where the enemy would spaz out and move up and down super super fast (30 times a second).
So this whole thing was confusing me greatly and i had no clue why the enemy was being a spaz. So i decided to turn up the movement speed and see what would happen. I put it to something like 300 and then when i ran it i had this blur of color flying from one side of the screen to the other very fast.

And also the enemy would kill me in one hit.

so there i was, trying to frantically stop any contact from an enemy who darted across the screen 30 times per second. It was crazy, unexpected, and (to me) very funny.

I happend to think it was so funny that i started laughing in the middle of math class and everyone started looking at me all wierd. Needless to say, that quick blur soon killed me, and i was left with no other options but to turn down the movement speed and get on with my life.

Bug # 2
this one involved a new tower that i was working on for my tower defense game called the homing tower. It would shoot an orb that would follow the target until it made contact. The orb would then explode and damage the target.

I had the homing towers working for awhile when i happened to be messing with something and the collisions got disabled with the orbs and the enemies. This caused a (really) cool bug where the orb would fly to the enemy and pass right through, then turn around and go right back towards it. This one is very similar to Bug #1but a whole lot cooler.

So i was sitting there watching this awesome thing zig and zag its way around the enemy desperately trying to register some kind of collision that would end its meaningless existence. But I knew the collision would never come, and i also knew that this sporadic orb looked a whole lot like a fly. Which is when I thought something like: "Whoah!! thats awesome!! im gonna turn that into its own tower!"

Which is exactly what i did.

Bug # 3
This one was really cool, but not really feasible as an actual tower.
It happened when i was working on my new beam towers. In order to get their new attack type working, I had to change a bunch of general ways that attacks and targeting was handled.

After i got them working, I then tested the orbital towers again.

They didnt work.

So after fixing some of those "Not Cool" bugs, they were working again, but not the way that i was expecting.

The thing about the orbital towers is that the target of their shots is actually the tower itself. It constantly circles around the tower and tries to get down to its center (which some programming of their velocity and stuff has made sure) will never happen. Even though their target is the center, I have made it so anytime they hit an enemy, they will do damage.

So due to some label and naming errors, for some reason the target was not the actual tower, but became the nearest enemy they could find. This created a sort of cool effect because all of a sudden the shot would orbit around a moving enemy and it would move in more of a cork screw pattern instead of a real orbit.

This one took me a while to figure out the issue. and I would love to keep a tower like that in my game but it really cant hit anything. So until i can find a way to make it useful i guess i will just have to tell stories about it.

There you go, my 3 different "Cool" bugs.

wow this post is really long.
1051 words to be exact
thanks and have a nice day.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

New Tower Paths

After planning some new towers i decided to make a new tower path

Which i am thinking of naming the tech path. or maybe science, alien, i dont know.. something scientific sounding

so when im all finished there will be

basic which will upgrade into
army ( with 3 more options(each with another upgrade))
nature (ditto)
and that science one (ditto)

the science one will have things like freeze/slow tower. Gaussian Beam, Repeater Beam, Focus Beam, and other stuff similar to that. (so scientific sounding, isnt it? ;)

I also plan on moving the Orbital tower into the nature path and renaming it Planet
It will then be upgraded into Galaxy. It will still have things orbiting around it just different theme.

Im planning to then fill the empty space in the Army path with a Splash Tower.
Im not yet sure how i will go about doing that, but not knowing how to approach a new idea has never
got in my way before!

The Tech path will have the options of
Freeze ---> Time Warp
Plasma Repeater --> Ion Repeater
Focus Beam --> Gaussian Beam

I will post a complete path tree soon with more "official" names and descriptions.

When i am done with all my towers i WIll have a total of... DRUMROLL....

22 TOWERS!!!!
RAHHHHH!!! MEGA TOWER POWER!!! TO THE MAX!@#!@$@#^O&!$&%!&$%!

Beam towers

These use a new targeting type that i have been working on.
They dont shoot a projectile
they shoot a beam towards the target which instantly hits and deals damage



heres a screenshot


They are not done yet but I will soon have them up and running.

I plan on making a whole path of towers centered around this type of targeting.

It should be about 7 more towers total

Reference Sources

http://www.pygame.org/docs/ref/rect.html
and other pygame documentation

pygame irc #pygame on Freenode.net

These are the sources i use most.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Volcano Towers!

these guys are pretty awesome

They:
shoot in completely random directions
shoot about 15 shots per second
shoots explosive shots
the shots travel slowly and self destruct after they get to the end of the range (which is about 2.5 tiles i believe)
are under the nature path (which adds more options and makes the nature path more awesome)

Yeah thats it
heres a picture


yeah, they are awesome

Updated Priority list

After, what 3 weeks? or so since my last posting of my priority list, there have been a lot of changes.
My last posting of this was before my submission to the IGF student competition.
I was able to get a lot of the stuff done between the last posting and have added some new things to the list.

THIS THING SAVED MY LIFE




PRIORITY 1- Urgent!
    balancing (not too hard but still a challenge, no "best" way to play) CURRENT
    EXE creation -JoshC

    better bee towers (more attack) FIXED
    handle all maps completed (game won) - Josh C FIXED
    load game menu buttons(delete/save file buttons) - Josh C FIXED
    scaling (making new basic towers cost more after bought/ making enemies exponentially increase difficuilty) FIXED
    handle single map completed (map complete screen) -FIXED
    save game function (auto) -Josh C FIXED
    load game function displays after main menu -Josh C FIXED
  
PRIORITY 2-
    info box displays not enough money/ other errors... -Josh C
    different variety of enemies (colors) -Josh C
    orbital shots respawn time -Josh C
    tower replacement mode -Josh C

    fade out and into game -Josh C FIXED
    fly tower image -Tyler/Chris? FIXED
    fix in game menu buttons -JoshC FIXED
    fix pause screen image -Chris FIXED
    towers more spread out in tower paths (redo paths? too little in nature) -FIXED
    shrink tower placement info box FIXED
    orbital shots auto destruct after orbital is destroyed -Josh C FIXED
    orbital shots maximun number -Josh C FIXED
    orbital shots range issues -Josh C FIXED
    raise shot kill boarders (homing disapear -Josh C FIXED
    get rid of prints -Josh FIXED
    hotkeys -Josh C FIXED
    new homingII image (just more flashy homingI) -Tyler/Chris? FIXED

PRIORITY 3- Would be nice
    center and crop all of the tower images -Josh C
    rotate towers towards target -Josh C
    make map.draw, HUDs.draw go faster (performace speed) -JoshC
    change question marks in select map menu to locks -JoshC
    toggle sound button (ON/OFF) -Josh C
    flamethrower tower -Josh C/Tyler
    in game sounds -Tyler/Josh C
    new shot colors - Josh C

    change wave font - FIXED
    fix in game buttons to be python generated instead of photoshop images -FIXED
    fix while loop lag in mad_cloud_games startup -Josh C FIXED
    nicer bee tower image (outline/shading?) -Tyler/Chris? FIXED
    machine gun tower shoots faster, weaker, and more inaccurate -Josh C FIXED

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Download Color Tower Defense

If you have a PC running windows, then you can

download the game here

Theres no version for Mac right now but im working on it!

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

100% CLEAN" Softpedia award

I gave my site an nice shiny award thanks to Softpedia

Check it out

Email from Softpedia Editorial Team

Heres an email that the Softpedia Editorial Team sent me.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Congratulations,

Color Tower Defense, one of your products, has been added to Softpedia's
database of software programs for Mac OS. It is featured with a description
text, screenshots, download links and technical details on this page:
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Games/Color-Tower-Defense.shtml

The description text was created by our editors, using sources such as text
from your product's homepage, information from its help system, the PAD
file (if available) and the editor's own opinions on the program itself.


"Color Tower Defense" has been tested in the Softpedia labs using several
industry-leading security solutions and found to be completely clean of
adware/spyware components. We are impressed with the quality of your
product and encourage you to keep these high standards in the future.

To assure our visitors that Color Tower Defense is clean, we have granted
it with the "100% CLEAN" Softpedia award. To let your users know about this
certification, you may display this award on your website, on software
boxes or inside your product.

More information about your product's certification and the award is
available on this page:
http://mac.softpedia.com/progClean/Color-Tower-Defense-Clean-88286.html

Feel free to link to us using the URLs above. If you choose to link to the
clean award page for your product, you may use the award graphic or a text
link: "100% CLEAN award granted by Softpedia".


If you feel that having your product listed on Softpedia is not a benefit
for you or simply need something changed or updated, please contact us via
email at webmaster@softpedia.com and we will work with you to fix any
problem you may have found with the product's listing.

--
Sincerely,
The Softpedia Team

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Softpedia is a library of over 400,000 free and free-to-try software
programs for Windows, Mac OS and Linux, games and gaming tools, Windows
device drivers, mobile devices and IT-related articles.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Softpedia - the encyclopedia of free software downloads
http://www.softpedia.com/

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
this is pretty exciting for me because it allows a bigger audience to get access to my game.
And also, Softpedia costs money to get products uploaded. But they did it for free for me :)

Thursday, November 4, 2010

IGF Game Submitted! Part 1

I got my game all submitted to IGF this week. But it wasn't easy.
For starters, i must have spent 5-10 hours every day trying to finish things up. Pretty much most of the stuff on that list that i posted got finished or canceled.

THE LIST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For IGF game competition:

PRIORITY 1- Urgent! (MUST be done before game is submitted)
balancing (not too hard but still a challenge, no "best" way to play) CURRENT
load game menu buttons(delete/save file buttons) - Josh C FIXED
scaling (making new basic towers cost more after bought/ making enemies exponentially increase difficuilty) FIXED
handle all maps completed (game won) - Josh C
better bee towers (more attack)
handle single map completed (map complete screen) -FIXED
save game function (auto) -Josh C FIXED
load game function displays after main menu -Josh C FIXED
EXE creation -JoshC FIXED

PRIORITY 2- Needs (should be done before game is submitted)
info box displays not enough money/ other errors... -Josh C
fly tower image -Tyler/Chris?
fix in game menu buttons -JoshC FIXED
fix pause screen image -Chris FIXED
towers more spread out in tower paths (redo paths? too little in nature) -FIXED
shrink tower placement info box FIXED
orbital shots auto destruct after orbital is destroyed -Josh C FIXED
orbital shots maximun number -Josh C FIXED
orbital shots range issues -Josh C FIXED
raise shot kill boarders (homing disapear -Josh C FIXED
get rid of prints -Josh FIXED
hotkeys -Josh C FIXED
new homingII image (just more flashy homingI) -Tyler/Chris? FIXED
fade out and into game -Josh C CANCELED
info box displays not enough money/ other errors... -Josh C CANCELED
different variety of enemies (colors) -Josh C CANCELED

PRIORITY 3- Would be nice (should not be worked on unless priority 1 & 2 are clear)
center and crop all of the tower images -Chris CANCELED
rotate towers towards target -Josh C CANCELED
make map.draw, HUDs.draw go faster (performace speed) -JoshC CANCELED
change question marks in select map menu to locks -Chris CANCELED
toggle sound button (ON/OFF) -Josh C CANCELED
change wave font - FIXED
fix in game buttons to be python generated instead of photoshop images -FIXED
fix while loop lag in mad_cloud_games startup -Josh C FIXED
nicer bee tower image (outline/shading?) -Tyler/Chris? FIXED
machine gun tower shoots faster, weaker, and more inaccurate -Josh C FIXED
flamethrower tower -Josh C/Tyler CANCELED
in game sounds -Tyler? CANCELED
new shot colors - Josh C CANCELED

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks list! i couldn't have done it without you!


-the story of monday night-
The submission time was Monday night at 11:59
and i had been working on balancing/submission applications/fixing critical bugs ALL day.
I was feeling pretty good about myself and was all like "Hey i could actually do this."

so things were looking pretty good and it was 40 minutes till the deadline. So i submitted my application and it went to the next screen when i got a prompt saying: please upload your game to our FTP server.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?!?!??!?!?!??!?!?!?@#%$#@^&$%&@$^#%&@%$&*@$%&^#$%

first of all, ive never heard of FTP.
second, I have a half an hour.

half an hour.

I assumed that you needed to upload your game to a project hosting website, and then
you would send them the link. This is exactly what i had done in preparation; I uploaded my game to code.google.com. and sent them a link.

after some stressful research, I downloaded a FTP client...

-------------------------------------------------
Important information-
FTP stands for file transfer protocol.
posting something on an FTP server involves
downloading a FTP client and using it to transfer
the data from your computer to their server.
-------------------------------------------------


After getting an FTP client. I then went through the process of uploading my game.
Then the errors started rolling in. Were talking:

critical file transfer errors
login errors
write privilege errors
... just to name a few.

Remember that this was now less than 30 minutes before the deadline.

What was the spectacularly amazing helpful thing that happened to come along and save me?

part two coming soon

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Independent Games Festival

I found out about this whole Independent Games Festival yesterday and I decided that i would submit my tower defense game into the student competition. Its kindof stressful because my game is not done yet. I figured that I would work on it as much as i could and submit what i have.

The current state of my game

In order to prioritize everything that needs to be finished before the game is submitted i made this task list:

PRIORITY 1- Urgent! (MUST be done before game is submitted)
    handle all maps completed (game won)
    handle single map completed (fadeout/ win game screen)
    save game function (auto)
    load game function displays after main menu
    scaling (making new basic towers cost more after bought/ making enemies exponentially increase difficuilty)
    load game menu buttons(delete/save file buttons)
    balancing (not too hard but still a challenge, no "best" way to play)
        better bee towers (more attack)
  
PRIORITY 2- Needs (should be done before game is submitted)
    fly tower image
    raise shot kill boarders (homing disapear
    next wave button is messed up
    different variety of enemies (colors)
    new homingII image (just more flashy homingI)
    fix pause screen image
    towers more spread out in tower paths (redo paths? too little in nature)
    shrink tower placement info box
    orbital shots auto destruct after orbital is destroyed
    orbital shots maximun number
    orbital shots range issues

PRIORITY 3- Would be nice (should not be worked on unless priority 1 & 2 are clear)

    rotate towers towards target
    center and crop all of the tower images
    machine gun tower shoots faster, weaker, and more inaccurate
    nicer bee tower image (outline/shading?)
    new shot colors
    change wave 6 font
    change question marks in select map menu to locks
    fix in game buttons to be python generated instead of photoshop images
    make map.draw, HUDs.draw go faster (performace speed)
    toggle sound button (ON/OFF)
    in game sounds
    flamethrower tower

As you can see, there is alot of stuff that needs to be done. I just hope i will have a decent version of my game to submit.