Part of something bigger

I've taken the plunge and signed up for a one year membership with the IGDA (International Game Developers Association). Figure if I'm going to get serious about working in the business then I might as well be a card carrying member of the party club. Some of the perks include discounts on conference tickets, reference books and of course attending local monthly meetings with the Brisbane Chapter. Can't wait for the next get together.

House stuff

Turned out to be a bit of a home improvement weekend. The state of our lovely home has fallen into some disrepair and clutter which is understandable given that I've been ill for the past week and we'd been in Sydney the week before. More clutter obviously means that we need more storage space so Als and I decided that it was about time for a trip to our favourite Ikea outlet.

The first task we decided to undertake upon our return was to set up two 'floating' shelves in the main bedroom. After much measuring and ten thousand pencil marks later I felt we'd pretty much outline where what needed to go. We even bought a mini spirit level to prevent any unwanted slopage in our outlines. Now it was time to make the holes.



Of course this meant drilling into a concrete wall again so out came the drill and I started pounding away (Which I'm sure our neighbours appreciated to no end). I'm glad to say at least that I was a little more competent than my last attempt and managed to drill ten holes right on the mark.



Putting the dynabolts in for the upper shelf on the other hand turned out to be a bit of a saga. The dynabolt wasn't sticking out enough for us to get the cap onto it so I started pulling it out with pliers... of course the problem with that is that dynabolts are effectively springs without the cap so when I let go the screw flew straight back into the wall. We fiddled with fridge magnets to try to get the screws out for a while (useless exercise) before I had the bright idea of substituting ramset plugs and normal screws in those holes I guffed up. Worked a charm and I think I'm on my way to becoming a little more handy around the house.



Now today we'll just have to go out to find more clutter to put on these two new beautiful shelves.



The next assembly was a small book shelf for the study downstairs. This one wasn't as challenging, aside from the crazy number of nails they require you to put in for the back board. I left that to Alison as she's far better with a hammer than I am.



Fits perfectly next to the computer desk and is well within easy reach.



And now at last I have space for my growing collection of reference books.



On a less constructive note, Als discovered an unsettling amount of water pooling behind the washing machine yesterday morning. At first we thought one of the taps or pipes must be leaking but on pulling the washing machine back and running another test run it seems as though the cause of the leakage might actually be coming from within the wall itself.




The water is even seaping out on the other side of the wall into the internal corridor which really suggests a problem with the pipes if you ask me. We'll monitor how things go over the next few days and get the body corporate to call out a plumber if things get any worse.

Looking back

Haven't had a chance to work on the game much in the past week as I'm trying to fight this stupid virus. Still coughing up half my lungs and it's been going on for far too long now so we're off to see the doctor in an hour.

I have however tentatively settled on a name for the game. It was one which I'd been considering for a while but James suggested it unprompted so I think we're on to a winner. Elementals. Probably make more sense if you knew more about the game though so I've included a link to the latest design documentation in case anyone is interested in having a flick through. It's still an early draft though so be gentle.

On a game related note, I checked out Google Pages for the first time and I'm loving the free webspace that my favourite company provides. To make use of it I've put up a link to a page I created that details my previous attempts at game projects with a few screen shots. Half of them are old DOS Pascal programs which don't run all that well in Windows so it was pretty challenging to get screen captures of them. Really should have written more games by now if I want to call myself a Games Programmer though. :P

A stroll down memory lane

New look... sorta

Seeing as this blog has actually lasted for over a year I figure it's about time to update the little beast with all the new functions that Google have provided. Probably doesn't look all that different to the casual observer but I really like what I see in the new Blogger beta that Google have on offer.

• Funky new UI for customising templates
• Collapsable archive links (nifty!)
  
• An "Older posts" link at the bottom of each page (Finally!)
• Support for labels (Yahoo!)

Of course now I'm going to have to go back through over a hundred posts to apply labels to all of them... consistently.

I've also removed the recently added search bar on the side when I noticed that the navbar above already includes a Google powered search feature. Seems to work a heck of a lot better than that add in anyway.

The only downside to upgrading to the beta is that they don't support direct HTML changes to the template so I've lost my favicon and collapsing comments. Guess I'll just have to wait till Google takes it out of beta. Not a comforting thought when you realise that Gmail after all these years is still considered a "beta" product by the company.

Looks like I've managed to "prolong" my holiday after all. I've been at home resting for the past two days trying not to hack up my lungs into the sink. Taking lots of fluids and popping pills like tic tacs but it looks like I'm going to be in for a long fight to recovery.

Show holiday Sydney

Well Als and I have been down in Sydney for the past few days seeing the sights, sampling the produce and supporting the retailers. James and Dora were very gracious hosts once again and took time out of their busy schedule to accomodate us. This even after we broke their toilet seat (sorry James) but we won't dwell on that.

We must have walked around most of the city from the Rocks to China Town and the Opera House. I haven't had the chance to explore Sydney on foot before so it was nice to mingle around with the locals. There were a few occasional odd balls including a middle aged woman screaming obscenities and vulgarism at us as we walked by but that's part of the charm of big city living.

Any trip the two of us make will always revolve around food of course so one of the main goals was to track down this "authentic" takoyaki store in China town that Dora had been raving about. Alison was the first to spot it as we were wandering about the street and kudos to her because this has to be one of the most random shops we've seen. In true Chinese fashion this one store provided an assortment of unrelated food and services from the aforementioned takoyaki, pearl milk tea, dried preserved fruit and as a stunning finale... three neglected arcade machines at the back of the store.

But on to the takoyaki. At least the guy looked the part and they did bake the balls the way you're supposed to (as opposed to the deep fried variety you get around here) with heaps of sauce and fish flakes. Unfortunately the crispy exterior concealed uncooked but scalding batter underneath and rubbery octopus, so I'm afraid to say that the quest for the ultimate Australian octopus ball shall have to continue.



Our visit to the fish market was a little more positive but wasn't without its share of disappointments. Als and I took the ferry to Pyrmont and trekked down to the markets only to discover that the daily deliver of sea urchin roe didn't make it through. I managed to compensate by ordering large trays of raw fish though. All that for just $20 AUD.



We also finally got a chance to try out Krispy Kream donuts which we've heard a lot about. Definitely better than the dried out husks that we find up here in Brisbane but still not up to Dunkin Donuts quality if you ask me.

Seeing as we missed the Ekka show holiday on Wednesday up here in Queensland, James and Dora thought it would be nice to take us out to Luna Park on Friday evening to get a fun fair experience. Shame that no one else had the stones to actually go on any rides with a thrill factor above a school yard see-saw, so I was resigned to settle for the heart stopping excitement of dodge-em cars and a ferris wheel. We also succumbed to the temptation of sideshow games where I won a zebra for Alison (we call him Bogart) and Dora got some bunny ears.



Other than that I found a huge Kinokuniya book store in opposite the Queen Victoria Building. Alison was quite sick of the site of the store by the end of the trip and I managed to pick up a few books...



In my defence they're all cheaper than what I could have gotten them for in Brisbane AND they had a 20% discount on all computer books. Great stuff. As an extra bonus I found a nice parcel on the door step when we got back home so I now have my Amazon delivery too.



All in all a nice holiday which was all too short as usual. Now it's back to work and lots of reading for me to get more ideas for my game. :)

Seek and ye shall find

I've just added a nifty little Google search bar to the side bar (Look that way --->)

Hopefully this will help look for all your favourite posts... ah who am I kidding I'll be the only one that uses it. :P

Als and I will be flying off to Sydney to spend the rest of the week with James and Dora. Can't wait to get to the fish market so I can eat uni by the bucket load.

Marching cubes

Still spending all my spare time working on the game and have made good progress. Particularly proud of implementing path finding and 3D object picking in the last week.

Path finding has always been something I'd been interested in implementing but never got a chance in my previous projects. For the uninitiated path finding is basically calculating the best way to get from one point to another. This is especially important in an RTS game like this one as players will constantly be issueing orders to their units to move to sections of the map or attack the enemy.

I've utilised a modified version of the A* algorithm to solve my path finding problems in the game. The basic gist of it is to partition the area into sections which the unit can move through. Then move through all these sections prioritised by proximity to the end point while ignoring any obstacles along the way. Thanks to my decision to compose the map as a grid of 19x19 squares and elimination of diagonal movement the search space actually turned out to be fairly small and simple.

After finishing that I had to take a break from the game engine to add a few more features to the graphics and local interface. My main focus was to add functionality to the mouse cursor.

You would think that calculating what a user clicks on with the mouse wouldn't be too hard. All my previous games which supported a mouse have been two-dimensional. It's fairly trivial to determine if a user has clicked on an object in two dimensions as you just take the mouse screen coordinates on the click (x,y) and check to see if this coordinate falls within a rectangular area.

In three dimensions however the screen doesn't translate well to object positions in the world due to the current position of the "camera". In order to determine what a user has clicked on in this case a ray has to be calculated from the camera origin into the world space and intersection tested against all objects. The closest intersected object is the object clicked on. Sort of like using a laser pen to point at something in the room.

With that out of the way and a few graphical improvements (still all placeholder textures mind you) I'm now about ready to get back to working on the game engine logic. Next steps are to support unit attacks, unit creation and capturing structures. Phew, going to be busy.

He eats again

Alison and I decided to head into the city yesterday night to have dinner and do a little shopping. I ordered a few books from Amazon some weeks back and haven't received them in the mail yet. Impatient as usual I decided to pick up some reading material that's a little out of my league at the moment but interesting to flick through none the less. Can't wait to get most of my game engine running so I can concentrate on the eye candy.

Anyways, on to dinner. I've been eager to try this new-ish steak bar called SSS BBQ Barn in the city that's supposed to have decent slabs of meat on the menu. Main draw point for me was the "Challenge" which requires you to eat an entree, huge beef shank and dessert all by yourself in order to qualify for the honour roll and a complimentary hat. I've always been up for a food challenge and after the 15 pieces of chicken I must say that I was feeling fairly confident at the time.

Then the meat came out...



I swear, there was about three to four large steaks worth of meat on the darn thing. Which wouldn't have been a problem if the shank was nice but this was just plain dry and stringy. My jaw cramped up halfway through from all the chewing as the meat grew cold and harder by the minute.



It took about two hours all up I think for me to finish that cow leg and I have to say that I'm seriously considering a switch to vegetarianism. At least pesco or polo. Alison was very supportive all the way through and refused to let me give up after wasting her evening watching me eat half a block of meat.

In the end I was finally triumphant and polished off my dessert before wobbling into a cab to get home. Due to technical difficulties (accidentally deleted them) I don't have any shots of the bare bone of the meal but I do have photographic evidence of my "health" and hard won hat.



I gave the waitress my name so it should appear on the website honour roll in a few weeks hopefully. Check back later to share my glory. Definitely the hardest food challenge I've ever had to do.

What's up buttercup

Haven't written a decent ramble of miscellaneous events in a while so I figure it's about time to torment the cyberworld with an update.

We attended Tom (Alison's cousin) and Kelly's weekend on Saturday which was a good excuse to dress up swanky. I've been trying to be good over the past few months and have cut down my daily consumption of unhealthy consumables from "life threateningly hedonistic" to "grossly overindulgent". As a result I've had the good fortune of rediscovering some breathing room in the previously restrictive confines of my daily attire. My weight loss in fact has been effective enough to allow me to fit into an old Armani (which I wore to the wedding, there's a point to all of this you know) that I haven't worn since my graduation in Canterbury some five odd years ago. Must say I was rather chuffed with the result.


Oh and Alison looks pretty good too...

The vendor that we bought the unit from has returned from his round the world trip and saw fit to contact me directly last week to arrange access for some tradies to do some work on the unit. After much pointless bickering I agreed to take the day off work yesterday to let his people through to get the work done. I don't have the time or the energy to convey the magnitude of our dislike for this man so it's an understatement to suggest that we'd be glad when we don't have to deal with him anymore. Alison has pulled the short straw and will be staying home this Monday to let more people through to install some fly screens and hopefully that will be that.

Other than that, the other bit of business that's been taking up the majority of my spare time is a new personal project that I've started. Most people who know me will be familiar with my ambition to one day work in the Games Industry. Previous attempts (some of which were fairly recent) to apply for such positions have been met with unencouraging silence so I have decided to "get off my arse" as it were and put some work together to demonstrate my motivation and perhaps some talent.

To this end I've decided to begin work on a solo game project that will in all likelihood take me the better part of a year to complete. Hopefully it will be an entertaining and educational experience with a fun final product and a shining flagship for my portfolio. It's going to be an RTS (Real Time Strategy) game that's been heavily influenced by numerous boardgames which I love. I don't actually have a name for it as yet but I figure that part can certainly come later. For now I'm just concentrating on fleshing out the documentation and writing as much code as I can so that I can get to the good stuff later on. Now this is still early and it's about as pretty as a baboon's chocolate starfish but here's the first chronicle screenshot I've taken of the game in progress.



With luck I'll be posting further updates as we go and won't give up this phase too soon. Hey, I originally thought this whole blogging business would be a phase but the anniversary of this blog will be coming up on the 20th of August. :)