Hey guys,
Steve here.
I had a wonderful spring break. As my last post was published on Monday, most of you already know that I went to Winter Jam 2015 in Fort Worth, Texas. But that aside, the rest of my week, though not nearly as exciting, was still good. Besides coding on my proverbial racing game, I worked out mostly every day, Spent time with my friends, chilled a little, and did a bit of gaming.
Due to the situation with reality software that I wrote briefly about in a post a few weeks back, I’ve played little to no Death Match: A New Beginning since then. Recently, though, things have calmed down considerably, thus I started to play it again. Last week, Danny took me on a bounty mission which took a good chunk of time to complete but was worth it. I myself do not possess any ship(s) required to do such missions, but am gradually working my way up.
Off the topic of Death Match, more work has been done on my racing project. As per the programming aspect, I’ve slowed down a bit, but progress is still being made and, that being the case, I have some stuff to report.
First of all, as suggested by someone on my forum thread, I’ve added the ability to drive backwards. I will demonstrate this on Wednesday night’s demo.
Also, I’ve put in some more work on the stats system, fixing some nasty bugs and having to rework it a couple times. I designed it so that all player stats are stored in the character folder which is located in the s quad racing program directory, as it currently stands. However, before this is over, I’d like the data to be stored on a remote server, to prevent cheaters and other such pests from having access to easily changeable content.
Anyways, I’ve not yet added anything in the way of upgrades. For that matter, there’s still only one track in the game, but that is soon to be changed. I had quite a busy weekend, so didn’t have much of a chance to code, and I really didn’t code much today as I’ve been taking a little break.
Besides that, there’s not much else to report. I’ll blog you all later.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
Category: gaming and technology
An Update On Game Development and Other Things
Hey guys,
Steve here.
Over the last few days, I’ve done quite a bit of coding on the Racing project I’ve been working on. Now that I completed the basics such as driving and such, I was able to begin on some things that should make the game much more interesting. One such implementation is the opponents’ rather comical ability to “rage” at you while in the midst of a race. As it currently stands, opponents driving by you can: glare at you, yell at you, or honk. I plan to add more amusing possibilities, but the aforementioned were just tests to insure that the system was working.
Similarly, opponents can now crash into obstacles, but at the time of this writing there are still some major bugs to fix: instead of Enemies always dodging obstacles, they now crash into nearly every single one. The most probable cause for this issue is that I coded it so there was a 1 out of 6 chance that the opponent would hit an obstacle, which averages just over 8 obstacles per lap. Considering that an average player only hits 1 to 3 obstacles per lap, I’ve come to the conclusion that this must be reworked.
More importantly, I’m currently in the process of coding in a stat management system. It is now possible to earn money at the end of the race, and level up as well. A detailed summary of this can be found here.
At some point this week, I’ll begin to work on some more built in tracks. In these next tracks, I’ll be adding more items: walled navigation sections, and perhaps power ups. I already have a good idea of how I want to build track two, and very much look forward to playing it.
Aside from the racing game, my weekend was awesome! Yesterday, I took a break from my coding and relaxing to attend the 2015 Winter Jam concert with my church. It was a total blast, and I wish I’d gotten pictures or something. It was a whole bunch of worship, rock and roll, Gospel singers, and… Skillet! :))
Well, I guess that wraps up tonight’s post. Expect another one later this week, along with an audio progress demo of my Racing game. Also, though I might need some assistance, I need to come up with a name for the game, because “My Racing Game” just isn’t gonna cut it!
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
Spring Break?
Hey guys,
Steve here.
I’m really confused. Here I am, a citizen of Texas, on the Thursday before spring break, out of school for a snow day. A quite large winter storm blasted us with around 5 inches of snow and ice last night, making this the 4th episode of winter weather in northern Texas since last Monday.
This time, however, I was not so unlucky as to be trapped in the house all day. In fact, despite the cancelation of school, my day started at 6 this morning, with a trip into the back yard to check out the left overs from last night’s storm. Against the common unwritten rules of being a teenager, I was neither tired or grumpy even though I went to bed just after two in the morning: these days, oh the few rare days when snow blankets the ground, are when “getting efficient rest” is the last thing on my to-do list. However, as I type this post, I reap the outcome of such a fun filled day of snow ball fights, sledding attempts, and no sleep.
Since the sun was out pretty much all day, most of that snow melted away, tipical for Texas. So, we’ll be going back to school tomorrow, but thankfully it’s only one day; next week is spring break, if you can call it that in light of recent weather patterns. 🙂
Moving on, I’ve officially entered week three of audio game development. Though it was very late last night, around midnight I think, I posted the audio demo for this week on the S Quad Racing Page. This reflects most of the changes I’ve talked about in the change log and blog post from the last week; the sound of the player’s car is noticeably quieter, the turning system far less flawed, and there are now opponents that can drive on the track as well, though that’s about all they can do.
As of yet I’ve not completed a fully functioning opponent intelligence. This is still being worked on, though, one step at a time. As I said in my last post, I began working on opponents on Sunday, and have only been making minor changes and additions since.
Moving on, my week has been relatively pieceful for the most part save the winter weather and asociated impacts. On a more negative note, amidst my normal routine of school, relaxing, gaming, programming, and reading, I was involved in a pressing matter that had to do with Reality Software, Danny’s game development company, for the first half of the week. Thankfully, it was finally resolved yesterday evening.
Aside from all of what’s been said, there’s not much to report, except that I’m really looking forward to this Spring break, regardless of what season and/or weather it happens to proceed.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
PS. The following are pictures from the snow day.
An Update
Hey guys,
Steve here.
I found this really cool, blind accessible Solitaire game for the IPhone. It’s $2.99 for the full version, but you will definitely get what you paid for. Here’s a very well done review of the game that I listened to, and if what I’ve already said about it won’t convince you to buy it, this surely will: http://applevis.com/podcast/episodes/blindfold-solitaire-audio-version-classic-card-game.
Speaking of games, I’m happy to say that I’m making a lot of progress on the racing game that I’ve been developing. It’s only been 10 days, and the player interface is complete. I performed several rounds of testing earlier to day and can’t seem to detect any bugs so far, so if any do exist they’ll likely be found once I create some opponents to race against.
Speaking of which, I’ve coded the structure for the opponents thus far, but as of yet haven’t done anything with it, and don’t think I will until tomorrow. The reason for this is that coding them will be far more complex than it was to program the player interface. The reasons for this are as follows:
- Unlike the player, the opponent can’t think about what decision it will make; if an obstacle appears in its path, it can’t decide it wants to move out of the way. While I could easily program it to automatically turn to avoid the obstacle, this would give it an unfair advantage over the player: one would be hard-pressed to win if the opponents that they raced against avoided every single obstacle while they hit at least one.
Fortunately, I have an idea of how I could code the opponents’ intelligence in such a way that it’s not always perfect, though I’ll not say what it is until I’ve proven that it works. - Player Interaction.
In this game, I’d like it to be possible to slow ones opponents down temporarily by coming up behind them and bumping them. Of course, if an opponent were to intentionally bump into the player, I’d like it to have the same affect on him. In theory, coding this should be a piece of cake, but previous attempts to do similar things proved this to be falsehood. Nonetheless, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this can be accomplished. - It will likely take a good chunk of time to program all necessary opponent actions. Despite the fact that I knew what I was doing and had very little trouble when coding the player interface, it still took a significant amount of experimentation and testing to get it fully operational. And now that I’m coding players that are out of my control during game play, it will be harder to notice smaller less significant bugs that occur.
Despite the challenges outlined above, I’m optimistic about this game. As I stated on the audiogames.net forum, I’m programming it because that is something I love to do, and I enjoy playing audio games very much.
For those of you who want to stay informed of how the development process is going, I recommend that you visit the S Quad Racing Game Page. It is where I post the daily change log, and weekly audio progress demos.
Off the topic of game creation, I had a great rest of my week. The snow storm that came in early Wednesday morning didn’t give us another day off of school, though I hardly expected it to. In fact, all of what actually fell as snow melted right after the event was finished; much of the precipitation was sleet and rain anyway.
Yesterday, though, was a completely different story. Temperatures, as they did on Monday, didn’t rise above freezing, and it snowed all day. I still had to go to school because the snow didn’t even start to fall until around 9 in the morning though. Today, while I’m sure the roads were quite treacherous, it didn’t affect me at all, that is to say, none of my plans were affected. I don’t think we’re done with winter weather yet; we could get some sleet on Wednesday. I wonder, will it actually happen?
Aside from what’s already been written here, there hasn’t been much else to talk about, though I got my 6-weeks report card and discovered that I made all A’s except for algebra, but I still made a B in that class.
Well, I’m signing off now. Have a good rest of your weekend, I’ll blog again some time next week.
Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.
Programming and Winter Storms
Hey guys,
Steve here.
Wow. A lot has happened in the last 4 days, as you can tell by reading the title of this post.
Yes, we got a direct hit from an ice storm. I’d known about this possible storm since about Thursday, but didn’t think it worth posting about as all other winter events that were possible this season missed us. This one, however, did the exact opposite.
As a result of the 1 and a half inch sleet accumulations we received this morning and a sustained temperature in the middle 20s, school was canceled today and will be tomorrow as well.
Though temperatures are expected to rise above freezing tomorrow afternoon, a second winter storm is possible tomorrow night, which could bring up to 3 inches of snow to the area. This one depends on some key factors, however, unlike the ice storm that just hit. for 1, the storm system that will be the catalyst for this second bout of precipitation must move directly over us in order for the precipitation to fall as wet snow. If it doesn’t, we could end up with just rain, or no precipitation at all. Secondly, the high temperatures on Wednesday will exceed 40, turning what accumulates in the morning into slush by the afternoon. Knowing Texas and it’s erratic weather patterns, though, this could very well change for better or worse.
In other news, I’ve once again had an active programming week. For now, I’ve set aside the word pad application that I was working on, as it is very low priority and has most of the features I was planning to implement. However, I have an actual audio game in the works now, something I’ve only attempted once before and discontinued due to lack of new ideas.
The current game I’m working on is a racing game. There’s nothing too special about it: turns, obstacles to make the game more challenging… that’s basically it. I’ve been building it for about 4 days now, and was only able to compile a half-working version tonight. Even still, this has a significant number of bugs, and lacks several features that are to be included in the actual release.
Since I’ve never worked on such a project before, the hardest part has been fine-tuning it: the opponents have to have just the right amount of speed, because we don’t want them to fall too far behind, but then again we don’t want them to go as fast as the player, as that could cause some problems, especially if obstacles are present on the map. In addition, I’m still experimenting with other things such as sound (panning, volume), initial placement of opponents, and track size.
At any rate, I’m making considerable progress on this game. It will definitely be addicting once I finish coding it.
That concludes this post. I’ll blog some time this weekend.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
Site Updates and Exciting News
Hey guys,
Steve here.
Well the last few days were good, in contrast to the period of time before last week’s post. Though it’s only been a few days and obviously not a whole lot of things has happened, I’m posting this because I do have a few things to tell you about—and some of those are very important.
Well to start things off, I’ll be going to D Now this weekend. It was a last minute deal—on Thursday, the friend I go with called me, and asked if I wanted to go this year. I think that things will be a bit different this year than they were in past years, but I’ll let you know. At any rate, I’m looking forward to D Now, and also to having next Monday off of school.
In other news, alter Aeon was a big part of my life for the past week. So far, I’ve spent almost 12 hours total playing the game, but that’s still not close to the 72 hours I accumulated on swamp during an 11 day period back in 2013 and early 2014. I have a good feeling that I’ll be addicted to this game for quite a while, so expect to hear more about Alter Aeon in the future; there’s so much to do, that I don’t think I’ll ever run out of new places to explore, story to read, and monsters to fight.
As a result of this Alter Aeon, I haven’t read much, so I’m still on Xenocide: Ender Wiggin #3. Nonetheless, I still read some, and have come to find that said book is highly philosophical. It’s a great book, but the amount of philosophy, mainly regarding evolution, the beginning of civilization etc., makes my head spin.
Moving on, I did something I haven’t done in a long time— changed up the site a little bit. Since I don’t create much in the way of software, but mostly create game books and swamp campaigns, I renamed the software page to computer creations. Of course, if I actually decide to create and publish some software, I’ll put it there, but you can also find game books such as the Stranded series there, and swamp campaigns such as twisted egg hunt, sniping mania and some others.
As you know, I’ve done quite a few podcasts, and 31 episodes of a podcast on one page is quite a bit. So, I’ve decided to organize the podcasts by year of release—if you visit the podcasts page, you’ll see 3 options—podcasts from 2015, 2014, and 2013. I thought this organization would make it easier for you to find the episode of the cast that you want to listen to.
On a related note, I’m finally back on schedule with the Steven D podcast. I didn’t release ep 31 last Sunday because I was feeling bad, and when I actually tried to record the podcast a few times last week, all attempts failed due to technological difficulties, so I decided to wait until yesterday to record it. At any rate, we’re back on schedule now, and if you like RS Games, or want to hear about it then stay in tune for next week’s episode.
That concludes today’s post. If anything interesting pops up this week, I’ll blog on Friday, but otherwise expect another post sometime next week.
Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.