Day12: I’ve been spending what time I can spare on the game polishing various parts to make the whole thing a lot more complete.
Level building animation has been added, so the level doesn’t just appear anymore, but animates nicely into place. Same for level failed, when the spark fuse runs out, the board disappears in a fun way too.
I’ve also been tweaking the graphics, creating some nicer tile bases, and including a couple...
Day7: a lot of work behind the scenes cleaning up some of the rushed code that is inevitable when building something this fast and loose.
Day2/3: managed to get the spark logic working, this will also be applied to water droplets when I get to those.
Not sure how it was handled in the original game, I noticed that the spark doesn’t follow the curved line in the crossover tile perfectly, so I’m guessing it’s a grid, with special case for when a corner is reached. IIRC much of this sort of thing was handled back in the day by...
Ok, I’ve committed to this now, no going back. I have chosen a game that both holds a lot of memories for me, has a significant place in my personal career history, and is (I hope) doable in the timeframe, which should help me to get some library code and assets in place that will make some of the harder games to come a little more feasible.
Incentive Software were my first employer, back...
Photo By Bill Bertram - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, Link
A short while ago I began planning for a game creation challenge I’d set myself, I planned to create a game a month for 12 months. I have been working on game ideas for the challenge, and then had an epiphany. In honour of the 40 year anniversary of our most favourite little computer that could, I’m changing things up a bit. I...
There are three main aspects of the core architecture, the variant type used for data flow, the node types used for defining the operations applied on the data flowing through the system, and the rendering sub-system. It could be argued that the scripting language binding is also part of the architecture, as it’s going to be a key part of the system that will allow far more power out of the system than otherwise possible,...
Firstly, a bit of background. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been interested in the idea of procedural content generation, creating large amounts of detail from small seeds of information. This fascination was originally driven by my other passion, computer graphics and animation. My first introduction to procedural content generation was through the AL system from Stephen F. May, which I found out was influenced by the menv system developed at Pixar for...
Having spent a great deal of time integrating backend services into my recent game, Fruit Spritzer, in this case only very rudimentary ones, authentication and social leaderboard, I learned a number of things, but this one thing stood out above all else. The landscape for mBaaS providers is incredibly fickle. Let me explain my thinking.
A bit of background first, my game is built in PhaserJS for web, and (now anyway, another story) Godot for...
As techies, we all desire the latest and greatest hardware, the most recent and powerful MacBook Pro, the best of the best gaming laptop/desktop, but as developers, we should be mindful of the target audience and aware that not everyone is going to have, or want, such cutting edge equipment.
Clearly it’s more fun to develop on a high powered MacBook or Windows equivalent, things go faster, compile times are shorter, turnaround is instantaneous, etc....
As I spend more time exploring the potential of permanent, professional freelancing, I have been realising there is a pattern to the sort of projects that I’m drawn to depending on my mood. It didn’t take a great deal of time to work out why, it’s because I really enjoy writing simple, casual game code, in any platform, framework or language.
There’s just something about making a game, no matter how simple the game, or...
There was a time, not so long ago, when the web was just that, the “World Wide Web”. Times have changed, at an incredible pace, driven by improvements in the availability of high speed networks, and consequently, in the capabilities of web browsers and the breadth and depth of standardised web API’s.
This change was initially driven by the demand for higher quality web browsing experience, but developers soon realised they could do more with...
In my role as a technology leader, I’m occassionally asked by people looking to develop their career and move into software engineering:
What is the best language for me to learn?
My response is always the same, and has been for many years:
Don't learn a language, learn to program.
This probably requires some explanation to anyone who is not familiar with software engineering practices. Dedicating time to learning a specific...
