New Trophy: Game Engine Complete!

Posted by Matt in Game Blog on Oct 24th, 2011 | 0 comments

Hello archival readers (My traffic is currently 1 person a week…)

Let me explain my current progress as a great programmer.

I. I’ve created an HTML5 engine. This would have been great to write blog entries about & I regret not doing it. I’ve learned a heck of a lot doing it. Little tips such as embracing JavaScript’s quirks to design object based parameters for easy to manage code & low cost; Tricks such as the ol’ (# | 0) for flooring numbers; and lessons such as not implementing a callback based update system.

One of the decisions I made early on was to use event listener systems for everything. I overrode the onclick event for various purposes (I wanted to take advantage of any efficiencies in browser pipelines). However, this proved problematic when timing was off.

I ended up reading a tutorial on javascript game loops that showed how to create a better loop. I didn’t implement all the ideas but it did get me a fast solution for my gameloop.
Link: http://nokarma.org/2011/02/02/javascript-game-development-the-game-loop/index.html

Tonight, I was finally able to get a megaman character to slide across the screen using my framework. All that’s left is to get some art & start programing my gamestates & I’m in business!

II. RESTINCT
The Chicago Unity3d Game project has been coming along pretty darn well! We had a exhibition where viewers could enter and play our various minigames. Once they finished, they would write feedback for said games & we would update them by a few days time. This exhibition lasted a month & a half. I actually drove down and viewed the exhibition while meeting the rest of the team. It was a great experience as everyone I met on the team was great!

I’ve been learning a lot of lessons while looking at the old code (especially for mary’s game). The biggest dumb decision came down to how to handle offsets of the blocks (ie: positional data from center to bottom left). I won’t go into details, but a lot the code I wrote (while clever) could have been much simpler. It’s a lesson I’ve learned the hard way & something I’m going to be more aware of in the future.

III. Pong 3D
While the original idea was to create a better 3D DirectX 10 engine and use it for pong, I’m focusing on what’s important in the now first. I also would really like to finish “Effective C++ (Scott Meyers)” before I finish the engine (I don’t want another Singleton fiasco of Summer 2011).

IV. GDC Online – Austin, TX
I went to GDC online. I’m going to be honest here. The sessions weren’t the best. The HTML5 stuff was either way over my head (I know nothing of webworkers {although I need to change that}) or irrelevant (sorry, but I’m not aiming for ie7 compatibility).

The best parts was the following:
A. The Networking. That’s of course the #2 reason why I wanted to go. I met a lot of really nice people. I hope I get to meet them again. I wonder what you are supposed to do with your business cards now that you have them.
B. Austin. Man, I love a big city. Austin is my current #2 favorite (San Fran takes top spot). Everyone there is super friendly & down to earth. I also had the best tacos ever (yes…ever.. *drools* 8p….).