Prism Break – GameCraft

I’m as pleased as punch to be able to say that I’ve finally managed to develop an entire working game at a Game Jam. The Pizza was excellent and the travel was civilised.

“Prism Break” was developed in 10 hours as part of the GameCraft Game Jam 10th Aug 2013 at SkillsMatter. The theme was “The Impact of Prism”.

Initial design was done during about an hour and a half in a group of 8 but since too many cooks spoil the broth I split off to work solo.

I used HTML5 and the Cloud 9 online development environment.

PrismBreak-sml

 

Link to game to follow shortly (I’m finishing up a few loose ends).


Pastures new

I’m trying to wind up the current version of pong, it just needs basic collision detection and response / scoring. Every time I settle down to finish that last 10% it seems to balloon to 90% in complexity, and just drags on and on.

With no visible light at the end of the tunnel, I’ve started experimenting with WebGL (and consequently JavaScript), Python and Unity. It’s surprising and disappointing how few free, suitable IDEs there are. The search for a (free) editor has lead me to Cloud9 IDE (web based), CodeLobster (which insists on using IE for previews) and Aptana (which is huge and Eclipse based). I haven’t tried Aptana yet, but both Cloud9 and CodeLobster provide code completion, which is good as I’m lazy and don’t feel like learning all the possible properties for WebGL, HTML5 and JavaScript objects.

Cloud9 is rather interesting and straigthforward to use, although occasionally it can be sluggish and I’m uncomfortable with it being web-based. There’s a local version available for Mac and Linux but, as I’m Windows based, CodeLobster will have to be my fall-back for now.

Using Unity and WebGL should allow me to post future projects on my web-site without the need for downloads, a good thing, I hope.

Python training is being provided via Coursera, it’s free, which is always nice.


By cracky, time flies

I’ve been deliberately holding off updating (can’t for the life of me remember why) but I think that’s proved to be counter productive… I think it’s high time that I re-started maintaining this site and trying for an update every month or so.

A lot has happened over the last two years. I’m halfway through Computer Games Technology MSc at City University. I’ve finished a couple of projects. And I’ve been made redundant, so I should have plenty of time to spend “productively”. I certainly won’t miss the four hour daily commute I can tell you.

Just finished helping after yet another Develop conference and I’m ploughing through a backlog of emails and other assorted poop.


Phew. That was pretty intense…

I’m still recovering from this year’s Develop conference in Brighton. As a head Conference Associate I seemed to spend most of my time rushing around like a blue-arsed fly and didn’t have nearly enough time to attend conference sessions. My own fault, I guess. I did manage to sit in on some Games:Edu sessions, and I made a point of going to David Braben’s session since I’m a longtime fan of Elite, Virus, etc. (many thanks to Janey for covering for me!). The other CA’s were a nice bunch, as usual. I also had a total fan boy moment in front of Peter Molyneux.

I’m finding that writng and maintaining the code for one’s own website can be a monumental drag sometimes. I’d rather be coding games but really, really need to finetune Gossamer. To complicate matters further, I sold my laptop to my mother a few months ago and still haven’t gotten around to replacing it. The morning and evening train rides have never seemed longer and that 4 hours a day is lost forever… oh, the pain.

I have two more projects to upload, a simple fireworks display (done as a challenge in two weeks) and a model viewer (which is a work in progress).


My, but how the time does fly

A version of Geometry Wars is available through Steam, so I’m looking forward to playing with that!

I’ve been suitably stunned by the awesome graphics of ICO, wow! Alas, the much-vaunted prequel Shadow of the Colossus has yet to impress. That blessed camera is driving me crackers!

Whoops! Meant to say, I’ve finally posted the source and executable for the “Asteroids” demo in the projects section, doco to follow… eventually… maybe. Usual provisos apply, download and use at your own risk, yadda, yadda