Steven D Podcast Episode 3: The Obvious Problem with Running Away from your Problems!

Well, I think the title says it all! In this exciting and suspenseful episode, listen as I demonstrate an epic new game that Sam Tupy is working on! The game is called Constant motion, and is actually a series of several minigames that will have you jumping at every turn, cursing in frustration and anger, and your heart beating way too fast to be good. You won’t want to miss this action packed podcast!

As usual, if you have any comments, suggestions, or feedback, visit stevend.net/podcast to fill out the form. You can also see more episodes, subscribe if you haven’t done so already, and drop a donation if you feel the podcast is worth it!

Steven D Podcast Episode 1: Oh… Shiiiiit!

This is the first episode of the Steven D Podcast!

It features myself, and guest host Baylee Alger, taking the game I created known as Oh Shit, and putting it through the grinder! I start out playing a regular round of the game, but end up messing up the mechanics so badly, that it turns into something that not even the best regular Oh Shit players would be able to play!

You won’t want to miss this episode. It’s filled with fun, jokes, and best of all, interaction with listeners just like you! If you missed out on this live stream, don’t worry! You can still write in through the form on the podcast page, mention me on twitter, or of course catch the next stream! Also don’t forget to subscribe!

A Long Awaited Update

Hey guys,
Steve here.
So, it’s been nearly two months since I last posted here? Seriously? There’s no way I can believe that. Time has flown by these last couple of months. And when I said it would be one or two weeks, instead of four, before I posted again, only the last part of that statement was true. Unless, of course, I meant one or two months, not weeks.
Over the last month and a half, I did some work on S Quad Racing, though not as much as, perhaps, I should have. Nonetheless, I completed a few things, such as adding proper menu sounds, improving the artificial intelligence’s, well… intelligence, Creating an achievements system complete with the possibility to earn experience points, and completely fixing all bugs that could be found in the game thus far, but that’s about it. I sat down and wrote an outline for Arcade Mode, and will try to compose a sort of to-do list, so I can at least try to structure my coding into priorities, something I have failed at doing in the past. This is not to say I’ll end up sticking to that, but it’s worth trying.
On a loosely related note, the very basics of Matt the Terrorist have been established, in the form of a primitive, and I mean extremely primitive, game where all you can do is walk around. There’s a platform that spawns, but you can’t even interact with that, yet. But I guess every game has it’s starting point. To my credit, even though you can only walk around, tiles have a property called thickness. And for platforms, depending on the thickness, a different footstep sound will play. For example, if the thickness is 10.0, it will play the sound of walking on stable wooden boards. However, by the time it gets to 2.0 or lower, you will hear yourself walking on very unstable wood. So even though the game seems primitive, I’m still a bit proud of myself for what I did manage to code in under an hour.
In other news, part of the reason I haven’t been coding and writing as much, is my recent spike in gaming. Recently, Danny and I have been playing a two player pong game, created by Dragon Apps. I must say, I kind of feel bad for Danny. Because out of all the matches we’ve played, and I’d say that’s about four or five, he hasn’t won a single one. We’ve played one “long” game, where the winner was the one to reach a score of 21, and the rest were “short” games, in which 11 was the winning score. The closest he came to winning was the long game, where he managed to achieve a score of 16 give or take, due to a streak of complete failures on my part. That’s okay. Because even after several months of frequently playing, he still owns me on Audio Quake most of the time, so I think we’re even.
That wraps up this post. I’m not necessarily done catching up, but I’ll save the rest for a later post. Do not worry, this is not, my last post of 2015. I’m not sure what happened that got me out of blogging in October, causing that lengthy silence (besides that poem), but it won’t happen. I’ll blog again next week, I mean it this time.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

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.