Author Archives: Dee Majek
Fancy Mansion: Aesthetic Goals
This week has been spent polishing our game design document before the deadline. Since we’ve prioritized the document, I won’t be programming until friday – so this week I’ll take you through how I wrote the aesthetic goals document! Disappointing, huh? I bet you couldn’t wait to hear vague descriptions of vectors and pointers and recursive functions!
Our defining aesthetic goals for Fancy Mansion (release title: Trespawsser) are discovery of the unknown, and the challenge of going undetected while groping around […]
Fancy Mansion: Aesthetic Goals
This week has been spent polishing our game design document before the deadline. Since we’ve prioritized the document, I won’t be programming until friday – so this week I’ll take you through how I wrote the aesthetic goals document! Disappointing, huh? I bet you couldn’t wait to hear vague descriptions of vectors and pointers and recursive functions!
Our defining aesthetic goals for Fancy Mansion (release title: Trespawsser) are discovery of the unknown, and the challenge of going undetected while groping around […]
Fancy Mansion: Level Design
So for the past two weeks, in between coding more items aka powerups and doing some bugfixes, I’ve been working on a level design for our game, to replace the boxy placeholder we had for alpha. I had a couple of considerations while working on the level design:
Backtracking is generally boring (tedious, repetitive). Since our gameplay involves on dragging stolen, heavy items back to the balcony, which impedes the player’s speed and therefore their ability to avoid Otto, I wanted […]
Fancy Mansion: Level Design
So for the past two weeks, in between coding more items aka powerups and doing some bugfixes, I’ve been working on a level design for our game, to replace the boxy placeholder we had for alpha. I had a couple of considerations while working on the level design:
Backtracking is generally boring (tedious, repetitive). Since our gameplay involves on dragging stolen, heavy items back to the balcony, which impedes the player’s speed and therefore their ability to avoid Otto, I wanted […]
Fancy Mansion: Lootable objects
So this week I’ve been working on some level design to replace the current placeholder level, expanding the waypoint system for the pathing ai, and adding some lootable objects. The lootable objects comprise our game’s “power-ups” (a minimum of three powerups was part of the assignment criteria). As our thief explores the mansion looking for valuable items to pocket and pilfer, they may come across larger objects that result in special effects while being carried.
Here are a few examples:
Candle: Increases […]
Fancy Mansion: Lootable objects
So this week I’ve been working on some level design to replace the current placeholder level, expanding the waypoint system for the pathing ai, and adding some lootable objects. The lootable objects comprise our game’s “power-ups” (a minimum of three powerups was part of the assignment criteria). As our thief explores the mansion looking for valuable items to pocket and pilfer, they may come across larger objects that result in special effects while being carried.
Here are a few examples:
Candle: Increases […]
Fancy Mansion: Waypoints
This week I’ll be discussing the use of waypoints as a method of pathfinding for our enemy AI. Taking last week’s CONCRIT into consideration, I’ll try to explain the how and why of my programming in a simplified manner that non-programmers can more easily follow along with.
Rather than go with A* Pathfinding, which is an algorithm that calculates the shortest possible route between two points, we opted to go for a waypoint pathfinding system. Our programming lecturer recommended we take […]
Fancy Mansion: Waypoints
This week I’ll be discussing the use of waypoints as a method of pathfinding for our enemy AI. Taking last week’s CONCRIT into consideration, I’ll try to explain the how and why of my programming in a simplified manner that non-programmers can more easily follow along with.
Rather than go with A* Pathfinding, which is an algorithm that calculates the shortest possible route between two points, we opted to go for a waypoint pathfinding system. Our programming lecturer recommended we take […]
Fancy Mansion: Patrol state
For this week’s discussion, I’ll run through how I started work on a form of pathfinding for our enemy AI.
Working with finite states, I created some states to handle behaviours for our enemy, Otto von Fancy: he needed to chase the player, attack the player, patrol along a set route, and stand still between patrolling waypoints. I created four finite states to accomplish this: a patrolling state, an idle state, a chasing state, and an attacking state. By having the […]
Fancy Mansion: Patrol state
For this week’s discussion, I’ll run through how I started work on a form of pathfinding for our enemy AI.
Working with finite states, I created some states to handle behaviours for our enemy, Otto von Fancy: he needed to chase the player, attack the player, patrol along a set route, and stand still between patrolling waypoints. I created four finite states to accomplish this: a patrolling state, an idle state, a chasing state, and an attacking state. By having the […]
Fancy Mansion: a change of setting
In Introduction to Game Development, students are to select a game concept created by another group in the previous course, and turn it into a fully playable game. Our group selected Fancy Mansion, a concept developed by classmates for a stealth game aimed at a younger audience.
The player will act as a thief, who’s stuck at the top floor of a fancy mansion. To be more specific; Otto von Fancy’s mansion. Due the the thief’s great debt to a notorious […]
Fancy Mansion: a change of setting
In Introduction to Game Development, students are to select a game concept created by another group in the previous course, and turn it into a fully playable game. Our group selected Fancy Mansion, a concept developed by classmates for a stealth game aimed at a younger audience.
The player will act as a thief, who’s stuck at the top floor of a fancy mansion. To be more specific; Otto von Fancy’s mansion. Due the the thief’s great debt to a notorious […]
Still More Dev Diary ~ Last Stand
Huff puff. Last night of work on our final assignment for Game Programming I. Spears were shaken, shields were splintered, a sore night, a red night, and the sun rises.
14/1 17:00-23:00
To do:
COMMENTING! ai in skeleton. -done
Made hearts drop “randomly” – rather than mess with srand and seeding, partner came up with the idea to have the hearts drop if the skeleton is killed while the player is on an even tile. If the skeleton is killed while the player is […]
Still More Dev Diary ~ Last Stand
Huff puff. Last night of work on our final assignment for Game Programming I. Spears were shaken, shields were splintered, a sore night, a red night, and the sun rises.
14/1 17:00-23:00
To do:
COMMENTING! ai in skeleton. -done
Made hearts drop “randomly” – rather than mess with srand and seeding, partner came up with the idea to have the hearts drop if the skeleton is killed while the player is on an even tile. If the skeleton is killed while the player is […]
Still More Dev Diary
13/1 18:00-22:00
Addressed an animation bug that was locking directional movement on a single frame (animations were being set to a null value if the player was standing still, in order to preserve the directional the player was last moving in. This was addressed by setting the last direction check after the player stops moving to a nonsense value. This prevents smooth animation (frame continues where it last left off if you stop moving) but also removes the movement bug.
Fixed sound […]
Still More Dev Diary
13/1 18:00-22:00
Addressed an animation bug that was locking directional movement on a single frame (animations were being set to a null value if the player was standing still, in order to preserve the directional the player was last moving in. This was addressed by setting the last direction check after the player stops moving to a nonsense value. This prevents smooth animation (frame continues where it last left off if you stop moving) but also removes the movement bug.
Fixed sound […]
Dev Diary
Closing in on the hand-in date for our final assignment in Game Programming I!
12/1 17:30 – 21:30
To do:
comment camera
sound effect on hit
gui
remove colliders when exiting rooms (we’re currently only removing the POINTER to the colliders, not the colliders themselves, resulting in a memory leak!)
get keys to work
Discussed how to get keys to work, and how to prevent global entities from displaying when entering new rooms. Decided to remove global entities, eg an enemy, when entering new rooms using an iterator […]
Dev Diary
Closing in on the hand-in date for our final assignment in Game Programming I!
12/1 17:30 – 21:30
To do:
comment camera
sound effect on hit
gui
remove colliders when exiting rooms (we’re currently only removing the POINTER to the colliders, not the colliders themselves, resulting in a memory leak!)
get keys to work
Discussed how to get keys to work, and how to prevent global entities from displaying when entering new rooms. Decided to remove global entities, eg an enemy, when entering new rooms using an iterator […]
Dev Diary
Work continues on our final assignment for Game Programming I.
10/1: 16:00 – 21:00
Went over how my partner wrote the Room manager. He took inspiration from the Sprite Manager and made use of enums (he will add documentation eg comments to his code).
Since in our game, walls, doors, and ground tiles do not need an update function (they have no “behaviour,” just information, relationships, sprites and colliders), my partner decided they need not be entities. We termed these “background objects.”
If an […]
Dev Diary
Work continues on our final assignment for Game Programming I.
10/1: 16:00 – 21:00
Went over how my partner wrote the Room manager. He took inspiration from the Sprite Manager and made use of enums (he will add documentation eg comments to his code).
Since in our game, walls, doors, and ground tiles do not need an update function (they have no “behaviour,” just information, relationships, sprites and colliders), my partner decided they need not be entities. We termed these “background objects.”
If an […]
Dev Diary
Work continues on our final assignment for Game Programming I.
20/12: 18:20-20:30
Met up on voicechat to organize, go over what has been done and plan for the next few days.
My partner suggested tiling for the background. Seems like a very good idea! Generate a room by reading in characters from a text file.
Partner went over animation again for me.
Decided to draw the sprite for the sword separately from the sprite for Link, that is, draw both sprites when an attack is […]
Dev Diary
Work continues on our final assignment for Game Programming I.
20/12: 18:20-20:30
Met up on voicechat to organize, go over what has been done and plan for the next few days.
My partner suggested tiling for the background. Seems like a very good idea! Generate a room by reading in characters from a text file.
Partner went over animation again for me.
Decided to draw the sprite for the sword separately from the sprite for Link, that is, draw both sprites when an attack is […]
Workin hard or hardly workin?
Our final assignment for Game Programming I is to recreate a mockup or clone of a classic arcade or console game, such as Frogger, Pacman, Tetris, Galaga, etc.
My partner in arms and I decided to challenge ourselves a bit and go for Legend of Zelda ’87. The holidays perhaps aren’t the ideal time for lots of coding, at least for a newbie like me!
Dev Diary:
Pre: Partner made an outline for a concept document with properties, behaviours and relationships
12/12: I filled […]
Workin hard or hardly workin?
Our final assignment for Game Programming I is to recreate a mockup or clone of a classic arcade or console game, such as Frogger, Pacman, Tetris, Galaga, etc.
My partner in arms and I decided to challenge ourselves a bit and go for Legend of Zelda ’87. The holidays perhaps aren’t the ideal time for lots of coding, at least for a newbie like me!
Dev Diary:
Pre: Partner made an outline for a concept document with properties, behaviours and relationships
12/12: I filled […]