Bytes got Bits

16 hours of pure coding later and i'm finished with this assignment. its been fun but stressful yet something makes me wish it wasn't over. it was exhilarating doing the process and working as hard as I could to complete it.

3 and a Half hours into making this OOP assignment, roughly 16 hours left.

Ok so the oddly named "SpaceButterflyShooter" is going well. I've been at it roughly half hour and already some of the main assets have been created along with background music being implemented which suits it a lot better than I thought it would. Time to keep going

Due to a lot of personal circumstances, I've been left a mere few hours to complete my OOP assignment, which anyone who has been reading this blog will know is making a game. This is a nightmare but it is in part my own doing due to numerous restarts, including a fresh one today. I've never felt more anxious to restart an assignment 21 hours before it is due, which is utterly insane at this level.

So this will be the third time restarting this assignment. The first one, entitled "Sibling Rivalries" was going moderately well until myself and my partner hit a wall which we couldn't get over. As a result we decided to split and try separate projects which didn't look too bad. I found that working with someone was productive and it was nice to bounce ideas off someone, but at the same time I felt that one of the main problems was we had two different visions of how we thought the game should work and ultimately that led to our mental block.

So with that I started on project number two, which I entitled "InfiniteFlameMan" which was basically going to be an infinite run game mixed with platforming elements. I liked this concept at the time but due to a lot of personal issues in my life, I slowly but surely lost motivation to work on the project, especially as I seen that there wasn't much of a way I could see to get the graphics I required to make the game to the standard I wished it could obtain. It was with this project I realized that while working alone is great for working on your own time frame and not waiting on people, its also daunting the amount of work that you have to get through at the same time.

And so finally I sit here, with 21 hours left to do an entire assignment before I present it to a lab. I feel more anxious then usual especially considering that I've had no correspondence from my Lecturer as to whether or not I can even switch to a different game but at this point in time, I honestly don't care. I guess this anxious feeling is similar to what developers would feel with being on a strict time schedule that needs to be met.

Anyways I'll be posting throughout the night when major developments happen with my game. Hopefully i'll do it within the 21 hours. Take care everyone

So yeh, it's been a while. What with being sick and whatnot i've not been doing any development. So decided to get back on track today except I've found I've no passion for the project I was doing. I want to do something else.

You might be wondering why its a half day. The truth be told I haven't done anything more on the game due to my son not being well. Priorities and all that malarky.

Haven't gotten as much work done as I wanted but I have at least implemented my camera, or at least an iteration of it. I had a camera in it that would follow the X axis of the sprite which was centered and follow it but I couldn't get it to work with my scrolling background. After a bit of a mess around with my code however I removed a line and viola! It gave me the desired effect I wanted and all was good again.

Didn't update this yesterday as have been battling my body being rather annoying with not letting me sleep when I want/need to sleep. Regardless the game is coming on much faster than I anticipated. My Scrolling Background and sprite sheet are already implemented and I have a very clear idea of where I'm going with this game, including my potential UI for phones/tablets as the aim is to port the game to Android.

Today's task is to implement a 2D camera matrix so as to give the illusion that the screen is moving while the sprite sheet stays in place as I came to the conclusion the way I was implementing it was not going to be satisfactory. Once the 2D camera is done, I should start introducing the idea of randomly generated platforms and then after that, spawning and shooting enemies.

OK so my previous game that I was writing about is now dead in the water for the moment. Unfortunately me and my partner aimed a bit too high and are a little inexperienced, especially with regard to coding Game AI, for what we aspired to achieve with that game. Having faced reality we have both decided to do separate games as a result for our OOP assignment.

So I've had to do the grueling task of starting a fresh project and a fresh idea. It hasn't been fun that's for sure as a lot of work had gone into the previous project by both of us but I guess that's life. However this new game is coming along a lot faster than I anticipated. Two key game play elements which I thought were going to be hard to implement are already partially done which is quite amazing. I need to sit down and write out a design document so as I know where I'm going with this along with draw Flow charts etc. to hang on my walls so as when I get stuck (and I will get stuck), I can at least start to troubleshoot it.

Short post today since development has stopped for today due to uni and my head being melted through the amount of AI that was implemented last night.

Waiting to show the game and see if it's applicable to the Games Fleadh is annoying but luckily only 20 minutes to go until we see it's faith.

Work didn't go very far the last few days while sorting out a few bugs to do with the transparency of images as well as trying to fix a weird bug with how tank bullets were disappearing but finally implemented the AI today. It's a weird feeling you get to see something you've worked and struggled on work, I guess it's satisfaction at seeing it working or at least in my case almost working. 

The AI has a bug at the moment which I intend on fixing tomorrow but am going to record a video of first just because I think it's funny. Instead of my enemy soldiers wandering and looking for my soldiers, they're instead looking for the tank and once found, they end up killing themselves by running into the tank. 

It's been a long time since I wrote on this but alas for one of my projects in University, I've been tasked to write a developers blog as I'm developing my assignment, which I've chosen along with my mate to be a game!

So Sibling Rivalries has been in work for about two weeks at this point, and a good portion of the game is implemented. Assets are drawn and for the most part the player's movement and functions are fully implemented. However, implementing the game's artificial intelligence is providing to be a rather nasty job that I wish I hadn't of said I would do at this stage. Such is the joys of programming but it will be worth it at the end.

So keep an eye out here for screenshots and news on the development of our game. We're aiming to release it on Android so yeh that should be good.

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