Rewrites and an Audio Demo

Hey guys,
Steve here.

There I go again, with the whole not blogging for over a month thing. The problem is, I have been wanting to blog for at least the last week and a half… but then again it might be better that I waited this long to because some important things have happened recently that I would prefer to have gone in this post.

As I’m sure you could tell by the steady decline of enthusiasm I displayed towards S Quad Racing, and the increasing lack of work being done on it, I was definitely becoming unhappy with it. Since I’d started working on it so early, I didn’t know much about the language I started coding it in, causing me to do numerous things the wrong way, something I wouldn’t find out until the game really started taking off. By November, when I was trying to really ramp up the features, I realized that my code was pretty much just patched together, close-ended, buggy, and virtually unusable.

So, the last week of Christmas break, I finally decided to rewrite the entire game. There were still parts I copied from the old version, such as ambiance, playlist, checkpoint, and obstacle support, but everything else was completely scrapped.

After just a week of coding, I had a fully functional game. And when I gave it to my testing team, the bugs they found were only minor, easy to fix ones that usually resulted from forgotten or wrongly written lines of code. I’ve spent the last week fixing those, leaving only some minor bugs I just found out today. But thankfully, those that are occurring now are not the irreparable ones found in the old version, as I am more able to fix them now that I have a workable code base.

In other news, S Quad Racing is not the only project receiving a rewrite. Matt the Terrorist’s engine is receiving a rewrite as well, going from a 2d side scrolling game to 3d. The code base for this was not mangled like the old S Quad Racing, however it didn’t really have much in the way of flexibility, I.E. Implementing 3d support into it would have been next to impossible due to the y coordinate being used for up and down movement among other things.

Plus, since this game is not completely user friendly due to the keyboard layout, –we have keys for movement for forward, backward, left, right, up, and down, there are two keys (one for the left arm and one for the right), plus whatever keys will need to be added in future, I thought to add a keyboard configuration option. The way the keys will work in this new version are w a s and d for directional movement, r and f for up and down, (climbing ladders and controlling your jet pack), left and right shift being held down for the respective arms, enter to throw items, i to deposit them into inventory, and space to place. However, due to the complaints that will likely come about due to this rather odd key configuration, I’m working on a way for all aforementioned keys to be customized.

Aside from that, I’m really interested to see how three dimensional building will turn out in an audio only game. I don’t suspect it will be different from other audio games in terms of navigation, but we’ll just have to see, since the player will actually be constructing 3d structures without being able to feel or have them described to them.

That concludes tonight’s post, mostly anyway. Since I promised audio demos, I’ll provide this one for S Quad Racing since the Matt the Terrorist engine test is not in much of a playable state at the moment. Enjoy.

Play

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Flee, Flee

Hey guys,
Steve here.
I wrote this up for a number of reasons. I hope you enjoy it. It may not make sense to any of you, but if it does, awesome. If not, I hope you enjoy it anyway.
Flee, flee,
hiding in a tree.
Flee, flee,
what is it you see?
Flee, Flee,
What will it be?
Will you show your face, or will you hide from me?
Flee, Flee,
coming down the tree.
The bark is rough, beneath your feet.
But Flee, Flee,
don’t you see?
The feast that awaits is yours to be!
But flee, Flee,
no longer in the tree,
won’t get your boon, cowering before the beast.
Flee, flee,
the food you seak,
Can be yours, if you will just come and eat.

S Quad Racing: Gears, Track Building, and A Bit of Rewriting

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Despite what the absence of an audio demo that “should’ve” been released nearly a month ago might seem to imply, I have not neglected, or in fact been lying, about the current status of S Quad Racing. While there has been days when I haven’t worked on the game, (maybe even too many), I’m happy to report that development is still underway.
First of all, I’ve begun to rewrite and organize parts of my code. While the initial reason for doing such was to make the code a bit more readable, upon further inspection of what I previously had and after a bit of brainstorming on the gears system I discovered that my code was unintentionally designed so that any major changes, I.E. the implementation of things such as vehicles, gears, surface types, and other structured objects was out of the question, due to the way I’d programmed most of the game in its early stages in an effort to create a simple environment in which I could get a little taste of what I wanted S Quad Racing to ultimately be.
Now, though, the game has become more complex, grounds for a bit of a rewrite.
The following is a list of reasons I couldn’t possibly produce that audio demo, at least not tonight and maybe not even tomorrow:

  • I ended up organizing the code into separate files, and if I compile now I am bound to get some errors due to procedures not being declared and such and will likely have to make adjustments accordingly.
  • I’ve added a lot of new code that hasn’t been tested yet due to my not having finished making adjustments to the code.
  • I found a new bug. If you add a turn, and then strengthen or weaken it by adding another turn with greater or lesser severity right after it without first having a straight section, the game will not announce the name of the turn due to a bit of code I added without thinking, again, about the future. However, this one should be easy to fix.

    With all that said, there is good news to report. The above mentioned new code deals a lot with the gearing system, and I’m happy to report that I found and coded a solution that will work for this!
    In addition, I came up with a new idea to manage speed, and have implemented it as a result. This new way is not only future proof, but way more practical in terms of balance, as it basically tells the game how to handle each and every individual speed that a car can travel, without me ever having to touch it again. While you are unlikely to notice much of a difference when the new demo is released, the gears and ability to select different vehicles are bound to catch your attention.
    That concludes tonight’s post. Once all the code is sorted out I’ll likely be releasing two audio demos; one being on the track builder only, the second demonstrating the new gears system and ability to race with different vehicles.
    Thanks for reading,
    type you later,
    Steve.

  • Interesting Game Development Updates

    Hey Guys,
    Steve here.
    So I’ve had an idea for a rather unique track building system for S Quad Racing, and it is quickly becoming reality. In this track builder, which is nearly complete as far as current game functionality goes, users are offered two ways of building tracks.
    When a user first begins editing a track, they are placed at the starting line, and the builder is in driving mode. In driving mode, the builder works exactly how the game portion works, minus opponents. There is one difference, however. While driving in the builder, a user can hit the P key at any time to enter pause mode. When in pause mode, the car, and all obstacles, are frozen in place on the track. In addition, the turning keys are not used to move the car; instead, they are used to add turns to the track. The idea, is that a user can add either a left turn or right turn of any severity to the track, by pressing the corresponding arrow keys. For example: pressing left arrow once will set the turn type to easy, twice will make it moderate, a third press of the key will start a hard left turn, and the fourth and final press of the key will begin a hairpin left, the sharpest turn possible in S Quad Racing.
    When the user has selected the type of turn they want to insert, they would press P to enter back into driving mode, and their car would enter the turn, just as if they were encountering it in the race portion. When the user felt the turn was long enough, they could end it by first entering pause mode, and then pressing the opposite arrow key (if they were working on a left turn, for example, they would press right arrow), until they heard the words “go straight.” Upon entering back into driving mode, they would find that their car was no longer in a turn.
    While I’m sure my explanation confused some of you to no end, an audio demonstration of the system will be released within the next week, which should help to clear up some of the confusion.
    The second way to add turns to tracks, (the less confusing, more familiar way), is to use the built in track edit menu. This menu can be accessed only within pause mode, by pressing m. Using this menu, players can add or remove turns, change track settings, as well as build structures. The way turns are added in this menu is that the user keys in the start and end position the turn is to be placed on the track, and then the type of turn it is they are adding. As this is the more familiar approach in most other racing games, I figured I’d add this as an option.
    Still, even if the user chooses not to use the build-as-you-go method, they can still use driving mode to test and make sure their turns are placed exactly how they want them, making this a unique, flexible, easy to use system.
    Besides the track builder, I took out obstacle functionality for the moment. Obstacles are still in the game, but nothing happens if you or an opponent runs over them, as I have new ideas that are, in my opinion, far better than the systems I’d previously implemented. In addition, I finally encrypted all character data, to prevent people from going in and setting their stats to cheat their way through the game.
    As it currently stands, S Quad Racing will soon be ready for early testing, which comes as a relief to me, because after 5 months I’m about ready for people to at least try out my work.
    Coding aside, I’ve had quite a good couple of weeks. Besides it being Summer of course, I spent the first half of the week hanging out with my friend, and the rest of the time I’ve been doing a lot of sleeping in, working out, and, of course, GAMING!
    Thanks for reading,
    type you later,
    Steve.

    An Audio Editing Experiment and Some Updates

    Hey guys,
    Steve here.
    I know it’s been a bit longer than ten days since my last post to this blog, and I’m sorry about that. Fortunately, this period of extended silence has not been counterproductive.
    First of all, I generated an audio file. This was originally supposed to be an oscillation of about fifty different sound waves going up and down the frequency scale–an attempt to annoy people. However, after some heavy editing, and by that I mean using eighty percent of the audio affects in audacity, I was able to turn it into… a “Sci-phi frequency storm gone bad!”

    I’ll admit it’s a bit annoying, but it’s one of the most captivating things you’ll ever listen to! That is, if you actually listen to it.
    Moving on, after all that work I did on S Quad racing last week, I mostly fixed the winning system. It is now possible to win races and lose them respectively, that is, if you only race with one opponent. Even though I haven’t figured out why the game won’t work properly with multiple opponents, I will be releasing an audio demo by Wednesday that demonstrates a fully working race!
    Also on the subject of gaming, I returned to the swamp universe last week, though I haven’t been quite as addicted as I was in the past. Don’t get me wrong, Swamp is still by far the best game I’ve ever played, but I for one don’t want to end up having to renew my account at the same time I pay for the website, and not to mention I have a game to code.
    By the way, speaking of games to code, I might just have a small surprise in the works. This is far less substantial than S Quad Racing, but, judging by your reactions to Flamity Flame, it has the potential to get quite a few of you hooked for several minutes, or even hours, perhaps. Stay tuned!
    That concludes the posting for tonight. Stay tuned for updates and/or releases on that “secret surprise,” and be looking out for the next podcast episode, which might just be my demonstration of Psycho Strike, the new Grand Theft Auto-like rpg from VG Storm and Blastbay Studios.
    Thanks for reading,
    type you later,
    Steve.

    Death Match and Programming updates

    Hey guys,
    Steve here.
    I’m very sorry to say this, but I was unable to record podcast episode 34 this Sunday. This is because Lightstar had a rough encounter with Viper, a mean old battle ship that was piloted by a fellow player of Death Match, Kenny to be exact. Well old Kenny challenged me to a space battle, and I’d have been a fool not to agree, well, maybe I was a fool to agree. Because though I was able to vanquish him in 10 minutes, he significantly damaged my hull, and it took nearly 12 hours to repair.
    On Monday, when I found my ship repaired, I thought I’d go ahead and record that podcast. However, Danny was away from his computer, and I found myself getting bored. The result, was me going on my first actual true bounty mission, one that I profitted from. This time, I had a crew of three to four people with me, and two of them manning the warhead launchers. Even still, my ship took significant damage, though not nearly enough to call it a critical fight. This, along with the fact that I never managed to get Danny online to record the podcast, completely put pod casting out of the question. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll try again tonight.
    In other news, I’ve made quite a bit of progress on S Quad Racing. First of all, I’m glad to say that the track parser that took a good deal of time and frustration to get working has been successfully implemented. And, because I was in such a good mood after finally getting it working yesterday, I even added error checking that will prevent the track from loading and tell you where corrections are needed. This shouldn’t really be needed, since I’m about 93% sure that most people are going to use the in-game track builder anyway, but I figured I’d add it just in case since I myself made some mistakes in the beginner track. Meanwhile, in my free time I will be looking for rain sounds, particularly sounds of rain falling upon a car, and I’d prefer to have such sounds in varying degrees of intensity, though I’m sure I could produce this affect with a bit of audio editing. In addition, if at all possible, I want to implement random hailstorms that could damage your car, as this is indeed something that could happen in the real world. At the time of this writing, hail storms are more of a possibility than anything, as I’ve not even yet programmed a propper vehicle structuring system, and it’s more than obvious that you can’t damage something that’s not really there.
    To that end, implementing rain storms should take less than 20 minutes, if all goes well. Unlike most other track and weather features, I don’t need these to affect either the player or AI much, although I might make it necessary to slow down below a certain speed lest a player would like to experience the affects of a sticky mud obstacle, and that goes for the opponent as well.
    Another thing that might enspire game entities to want to slow down, is that I plan to make these storms move across the track as well, at roughly the same speed as a car, give or take some. And if you continue to move at a fast speed, you’ll be moving at nearly the same speed as a storm, so you’ll be under it longer.
    Overall, I plan for the main affect of these storms to be to impair a player’s ability to hear obstacles and opponents, to give the affect that heavy rain causes to sighted people. And since some storms could be farely large, you can rest assured that none will be included on the small beginner track. And if I decide that I want to put a few on the second track, they will occur rarely, and will not likely contain very heavy rain.
    Moving on, today is April 21, which marks yet another year I’ve been blogging. As most of you know, I started this blog in 2011, and some times go back and laugh at my posts from back then. In case you don’t know, I used to do the following things which I no longer do now:
    1. post like three or four times a day some times. lol
    2. Post nearly every day.
    3. not write very good at all.
    4. write blog posts that were sometimes frivolous, unnecessary, and boring. 😀
    More importantly, though, having a blog has improved my writing skills, and given me a place to talk tech when the people around me were too confused to listen.
    Well, I’ve certainly enjoyed these past few years I’ve been able to do this, and look forward to producing more posts as I get closer to becoming a programmer, and perhaps even a writer! Have a good week, everyone.
    Thanks for reading,
    type you later,
    Steve.

    updates

    Hey you guys,
    Steve again.

    I hope you are ready to read for a long time. I have quite a bit to tell you on this post, since I haven’t posted since April 3rd.

    So, I’ll start with weather.

    In the passed few days, there has been storms. I didn’t get to record them however, since I was at school. There is a pretty significant chance that we’ll get pounded again this Thursday morning, so maybe I’ll be able to record it. Other than that, it’s supposed to get up to 90 degrees today. That is extremely hot for the month of april in my opinion; it was in the 30’s last Wednesday and will be 60 degrees by Thursday.
    Now that I think about it, I’m starting to develope a hunch that a big tornado outbreak is coming soon. With all this wind, mad temperature swings, storms, and heat, it just seems likely that either a huge severe thunderstorm outbreak will occur, or perhaps a large tornado outbreak might occur in the next couple months. As you should know, tornadoes or tornadic thunderstorms form from cold dry air clashing with hot humid air. You could expect something like this especially if a cold front or dryline passes through during the afternoon/early evening hours, when daytime heating exists. That is why we need to watch out, and keep our fingers crossed should a tornado outbreak occur.

    Now that I have the weather thing knocked out, I should probably tell you what’s been going on with me lately.

    The first week of April wasn’t very exciting. Besides severe weather day, nothing much really happened. The second week of april was more exciting though.
    On monday of that week, I did my normal routine, along with Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Friday was the day that I missed school, so my o&m which means orientation and mobility teacher took me, my sister, and our friend out on a fieldtrip to the Galloria (I don’t know how to spell it, but whatever). There, I got a couple massages from Brookstone, explored some store that I don’t know how to spell the name of, ate at Rasing Canes, got lots of candy at Candyland, and in total spending about $13.35. After that trip, I had to return to school, but only for about an hour.
    After the school day ended, I went streight home, and got ready for Transition Weekend, a fun weekend for the blind and visually impaired.
    Me and my sister were both going to this weekend long camp, while my mom and dad were just taking us there. So, we left about 4:30, and arrived at the bus which would take us to the camp around 5 or so.

    The camp was in Cedar Hill, which was a 45 minute bus ride.
    As we drove there I wondered how the weekend would go. I wondered what activities there would be, what time we would go to bed and get up, what food we’d eat, when we would leave, and if it would be fun.

    As it turns out, I didn’t have any reason to worry. The weekend was a blast! After getting there, we unpacked, settled in, and ate pizza for dinner. The slices were litterally about a foot long, and the base was about 7 inches wide. I ended up having two slices (sorry if I am making you hungry), and those filled me up pretty good. After dinner, we got to know each other, and had an opening thing where we did activites and stuff.
    After that, we cooked these brownies. They were oranges that we scooped the pulp out of and replaced it with brownie mix. I didn’t eat one, because they were all eaten when I was in the shower.
    I did get a regular brownie however, which turned out to be pretty good.

    We went to bed at 11:00 that night, and got up at 6:30 the next morning. After getting ready for the day on saturday, then eating a good breakfast, we did more activites (but these were outside). They were just more activites to get to know and bond with each other. After that, we did some low rope activites, which was working on team work. Then, we had lunch. After lunch was the fun stuff. We had about an hour of down time, before it was time for rock climbing and zipline. I only got 4 feet up the rockwall, but did the zipline completely. My least favorite part of the zipline was standing on that 50 foot platform. If you don’t know this, I am extremely afraid of heights.

    It wasn’t that bad when I actually zipped down the line. In fact, it was real fun. The only bad thing about it was that I couldn’t go again.

    After that zipline experience, we ate dinner, had more down time, then went to the camp fire. There, we just sang, talked about the day, and socialised. After that comes the funny part.
    So, when we got back to the cabbin, the counsiler took us boys into our bunk wing.
    This guy was a real jokester, and actually made us think we were getting in trouble. It actually turns out, he just wanted to tell us how good we did, and I was deep relieved.

    After that, there was a store thing that people could use face money to buy awesome stuff. I got a deck of playing cards, and a pack of gram crackers. After that however, I headed out to the porch, where a silly string war was taking place.
    “Can I try?” I asked one of the boys.
    He handed me the bottle, which was broken. So, I had to ask the counsiler who talked to us earlier to fix it for me. He fixed it, but instead of returning it to me sprayed me. He got me in the mouth, the nose, and the chest. He also got my head when I ducked down.

    After that fun experience, I went and took a shower, and fell asleep after a long but fun day.

    Yesterday was the day it all ended. After eating breakfast, there was a closing saramony. That consisted of crying, talking, laughing. After that, it was time to go home. I went home with my dad, but he took me and libby to nanna’s. There we ate lunch, played cards, and returned to our home. There, I got on my home computer (I fixed it and got it to work). After that, I had my dinner, and things returned to normal.
    Now, I’m at school, and nothing much is happening. It is Monday, so tonight me and mom will be going to spin class once more. I can’t wait!

    Well, I guess that concludes today’s post. I will post again soon!

    Thanks for reading,
    type you later,
    steve.

    how my day went

    Today, I got up and went on a 4.39 mile walk with my parents. Then, I came home, finished packing, then did the 4-hour drive to Austin with both my parents and sister because me and my sister were both going for this camp. When we got there, we did the usual–unpacking, health center and registration and all that jibber jabber. Then, I just hung out with my sister and the staff (we got a new fun dorm staff), before me, my sister, and one of the dorm staff went and picked up all but 1 of the rest of the kids from the bus stop. Then, we came back with them, ate dinner, then had free time–I hung out with the people I knew and got to know the 2 people I didn’t. Then, I got on the blog. That is all I did today.

    how my day went

    Today was my first day in austin. Well, when I got up this morning, me and my mom just packed my bags, and I played on the computer and ate nachoes until it was time to go. We didn’t leave until Libby, who was at her friends, got dropped off at the house. She wanted to come with us to see the counsilers when I got dropped off.
    At around 11:15, we finally left the house. It was a long 3 and a half hour drive, and we stopped for lunch when we got to Austin. After that, we finished the drive to the school, which only took about 3 minutes. When we got there, we had to walk quite a way in the humid hot and thick air to get to the health center, where we would sign in and get my hair checked for lice. When we got there, I had a nurse check my hair, and almost fell asleep because I was tired, and it felt good. After that, the 3 of us got back in the car, and drove to my dorm. After getting there, my mom showed me to my dorm room, and the two of us unpacked while Libby socialised with the counsilers in my dorm.
    After I was finally unpacked, the first question I asked was “Where is the computer room?”
    Shortly after that, my mom and sister left, and I got on the computer, and posted a blog post. Finally, I just went in the kitchen and socialised with the counsiler Misty, and then ate dinner. When dinner was done, I just got back on the computer for a while, and socialised with some friends that I made. I can’t tell you there names, because I don’t know how to spell them.
    After talking and playing on the computer, there was a meeting that described the rules and schedule. This lasted about about 20 minutes, because my friends couldn’t be quiet. I admit, that I tried to start pillo wars with them, but that’s not the point. I still blaim the roudyness on them.
    Finally, the meating ended, and I got to post my blog entry. That is all I did today.

    how my day went

    Today, I got up very early because my mom and dad were at work. When I woke up, I just played with the kitties for a while, laid on the couch, then ate breakfast. I spent the rest of the morning playing on the computer, listening to my book, taking a shower, then getting ready for goalball. Then, I ate lunch, and hung out with my sister until my dad got home. Then, I just listened to my book until it was time for goalball. Me, Dad, and Libby went to goalball, had practice for 2 hours, then me and dad dropped libby off at her friend Madison’s house. Not to much later, I joined my sister and her friend at her house while my dad went home to lay down, and the treo of us ate some burgers and fries for dinner. Then, we spent the rest of the evening watching full house, before I posted my journal. That is all I did today.