Wow, it’s been so long. The last game I did TRC for was Atomic Betty, the Gameboy Advance game I worked on before leaving Big Blue Bubble. That would have been some time during July of 2005. That finished up, and I was a free man for August 1st. By TRC I mean Technical Requirements Checklist. Every platform holder has them, though they sometimes have a different name for them. A TRC is a combination of guidelines....
Still going… Might actually be at a week +/- a couple days now. That stuff above was important, and means the rest should be easy. Of course, *should* is a funny word. … and by +/-, I really mean +. ...
Still doin’ the perpetual “one more week”, but I’m close. Very close. If things go according to plan, we’ll be beta next Monday (September 1st). I want to sit on it a couple days and test the crap out of it, just to be sure it’s all good. Then off to Apple by Wednesday-Friday. I wanted the promo+box art done a couple weeks ago, but I amusingly keep pushing it back....
Yikes, it’s a weekend again already! Sunday too! Ack! Rule of thumb. When Mike says game will be out in a week or two, assume month. Then assume longer. Ahem. There’s always the chance that this mysterious iPhone game may destroy my ‘cred’ as a physics guy. Though, I’ve been doing some fun stuff in it to rectify that. I’ve found several uses for effects based on verlet and spring physics, even though the game lives in a world of tiles....
Ballistic Force wasn’t a long project, but development was dense. Early on, I attempted a poorly conceived idea of creating densely constructed particle landscape. I wanted a system sort of like molecular/planetary attraction to keep scenery together, and allow clumping like a cartoon snowball rolling down a hill. It might have worked on something highly parallel like a GPU or the PS3’s SPE’s, but my design really wasn’t well thought out....
This next engines name and story is a little complicated. Game development became a constant burn out for me. Since finishing Secret Agent Barbie (Gameboy Advance) and Polly Pocket (Gameboy Advance), it became clear to me the only thing keeping me going was my fascination with new platforms. Certainly not the subject matter. After we finished Polly Pocket, I asked for a month off to deal with my burn out. However, we quickly picked up a new game, Barbie: Gotta Have Games (Playstation)....
Over the years, I’ve given names to game engines I’ve worked on. Most of my professional experience has been working on platformers and mini-game collections. Mini-games rarely share much in common, so by engines I’m referring to platformers, or engines for games very much like platformers. I’d like to start talking about what I’ve been thinking about whilst designing my next engine. I need to set some context though, so I’ll be walking through some of more significant engines I’ve worked on....
Start the year right ‘eh? I think each year I’ve had a blog, I’ve told myself “Yes sir! This year we’re going to blog more often… and it’s going to be great!”. I’m not crazy enough to think that’s going to happen, but there’s always the intent. – – – – Some fun code I toyed with over the past couple weeks, completely unrelated to each other. The VST SDK (audio instrument/effects) and the WinTab SDK (tablets)....
Last post talked about the random thoughts I’ve had about how to pull off the rope dynamics in Umihara Kawase, this classic SNES game that drives us all mad. I made some bold suggestions, and decided to try them. After a couple hours of work, while not as complete as I want, it’s far enough along to be able to demonstrate to me if I have a right idea or not....
Raigan and I have had an extremely brief dialog on in game ropes. It makes sense, for a while we were both doing rope driven games. Well, due to my failings as a communicator, I sort of just never got back to him. Yet, I absolutely love the topic, and certainly spent much time puzzled by it. Apparently I’ve also made the conscious effort to push my way in to obscurity....