DarkCampainger's realm

L4D2 Goes Live-!

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:35:14 GMT

Official Announcement:

When L4D2 will go live: * Monday, November 16th, 9:00 PM Pacific Standard Time * Monday, November 16th, 10:00 PM Mountain Standard Time * Monday, November 16th, 11:00 PM Central Standard Time * Tuesday, November 17th, 12:00 AM (midnight) Eastern Standard Time * Tuesday, November 17th, 5:00 AM Greenwich Mean Time * Tuesday, November 17th, 8:00 AM Moscow Time * Tuesday, November 17th, 2:00 PM Japan Standard Time

...

I wasn't expecting it until tomorrow afternoon! Preloading now :)

If it releases on time, maybe I'll get to take it with me to Chicago :)

It's just a jump to the left,

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:30:27 GMT

Well, it's been a while since I've posted on actual game development. Unfortunately I only have a little eye-candy to show, and nothing really to release.

I've currently got ~6 projects "on the shelf," or in other words I haven't fully decided to lay them to rest and may one day continue them. ::

My current primary project is "Breach," a strategy board game for two players. I also believe it's the oldest of the games among those 6.

In Breach, players take control of a small formation of units, and try to break through the enemy line. For the most part, units can only move and fight within their columns. Battles between units are done using a dual-tiered rock-paper-scissors bonus system, where units can have an advantage or disadvantage against enemy units based on their respective equipment.

The last few days I've been working on the game's GUI, trying to decide how to relay information to the players. One concern I've had while working on it is that I might be "giving away the game," in that I could be automating too much.

For an example of what I mean, consider the game of Chess. It is common in computer versions of Chess for the game to highlight possible moves pieces can make when selected. Generally, I think most agree this is an acceptable automation. However, consider a version where the game also highlights any pieces of yours that are in danger of being captured during your opponents next move. Would such an automation not kill some of the game's fun if players wouldn't have to worry about a "I didn't see that!" moment? The game's strategy would technically be intact, but I think it hurts the social or human aspect.

Which brings me back to Breach. How much should I have the game communicate to the player as to the state of the game? Currently, whenever you select a unit, its "outlook" is displayed. An outlook can range from excellent to average to grim, based on the bonuses that unit and the next enemy unit it could encounter will receive. I think this is a reasonable amount of automation, and helps players more quickly wrap their heads around the bonus system.

However, I was also considering adding colored arrows onto the battlefield indicating for each column which team currently has the advantage at the skirmish line (where the two teams meet at that column). Is this too much automation? Would this kill "surprise" attacks and other subtle strategies? It's likely too early to tell without having a playable version of the game out, but if I included a game option to enable or disable both this and/or the outlook feature, which do you think you would turn off? (keep in mind this would be a game-wide setting, so both you and your opponent would be playing with the same visuals)

(Note: "Run Them Through" was the game's previous title. I've also fixed the off-color backgrounds seen in the screenshots..)

My GIAD entry, Iron Reaper, has also seen a few minor updates (although they haven't been released yet). In Iron Reaper, a group of players cooperate to complete mission segments; somewhat like a cross between Mech Warrior, Gauntlet, and a shoot 'em up.

At the time of its submittal, all of the projectiles in Iron Reaper acted like homing missiles, never missing their target and doing 180° turns to track them to the ends of the earth. This was not so much out of laziness (it would have taken less effort to use pixel projectiles) but rather part of a design goal to create a game that took advantage of client-side processing whenever possible. The new version still uses missile() to send projectiles, but they now fire "in the direction of" instead of "to" a target. This may sound like a minor change, but it required a fair amount of fiddling with hidden objects and the missile() process to get it looking right.

I also revised the control scheme to use WASD and the mouse, but I think I might set it back to using a targeting system. I also wrote a cool little control option page that lets players set keys themselves.

Oh, and I added the ability to jump forward. This should be a great a tool for dodging enemy ordnance, covering ground quickly, and getting over obstacles. And I drew a tree.

Well, with the new isometric support, of course I had to take a stab at making an isometric platformer!

It's lacking any real content at the moment, but most of the physics (pixel-based, booyah) seem to be working smoothly. I'm torn between turning this into an all-out platform/puzzle game, or into an RPG like SMRPG.

The graphics were generated using Blender, thanks to a great tutorial I found. They took several hours each, but that was more-so due to my inability to grasp the Blender interface. I'm told it's one of the most intuitive and streamlined interfaces on the market, but my ears are still shooting out smoke.

Not much progress has been made on my Static Lighting Generator. It's rather a specialized tool that eats game resources, so I'm not surprised no one has found a use for it. Heck, I haven't even gotten around to implementing it in the game I originally designed it for (not mentioned in this post, "Ultimate Laser Tag" was my Get Something Done entry, which if you can't tell, did not get done)

I've run through all of the math and theory behind turning it into a soft light generator using penumbra, but haven't found the time to actually implement it.

Also, now that I have a C++ class under my belt, I was considering offloading all of the drawing onto an external .dll, if I could figure out how to set one up (maybe my fancy $140 C++ textbook will have the answer.. nope, no surprise there). I looked into it online, and it looks much more complex than I expected. More than likely, I'll just use C since my generator doesn't really take advantage of OOP. Incidentally, I ran across an article on dll injection, and I'm now tempted to play with that on some old, offline games :P

Oh, and for reading this far, here's a contest: if you can tell me why my generation isn't perfectly symmetrical about both axes, I'll buy you a membership, or give you 20 BAP.

In non-programming news, I scored the entire Kaze No Yojimbo anime series on ebay for only $20. I've already watched the first 9 episodes, and while some of the animation is mediocre, I love the story and characters. The style reminds me of a detective video game. If you're curious, the first three episodes are on youtube.

Oh, I might finish my blog layout one day.

Wow, that turned into a much larger post than I had planned. I hope the pictures adequately broke it up so it wasn't too boring ;)

L4D2 Early Demo finally released?

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:00:56 GMT

Decrypting now. I saw Mikau was in it for a second?

Hurrah!

L4D2 Demo Early Access opens at 1:00PM PST

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:47:28 GMT

If you preordered L4D2, you can get early access to the demo starting tomorrow at 1:00PM PST. Demo access will be open for everyone starting Nov 3, at the same time.

So, I guess I won't be staying up all night before a full day of classes. I'll be heading to my Programming I class (my last class) when the demo goes live, so I can't decide if it's even worth lugging my laptop around. Not to mention this is 1:00PM PST Valve time*...

Oh well, it should be out by the time I get home :)

New L4D2 Trailer Leaked

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:07:20 GMT

VG Cats and no doubt many other sites have already posted this, but in case you haven't heard:

(View the video on youtube for HQ)

I have to admit, the characters are growing on me. When I first saw the new group of survivors, I didn't think they would be able to fill the shoes of Zoey, Bill, Louis, and Francis... but dang, that one guy reminds me of the scout :P

Now I'm off to bed, to dream sweet zombie-blasting dreams.

(Oh, and GeoCities is shutting down? Hahahahahaha. Although a part of me is glad to see it go, I'll miss all of those random sites filled with just the information I needed when doing research...)

Just preordered L4D2 and preloaded the demo :D

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:39:53 GMT

I can't wait until Tuesday, I wish I didn't have class so I could stay up all night and play it the minute it goes live. I think I might bring my laptop with me to Chicago and play it in between classes, maybe my Game Dev teacher will be interested in seeing it :P

Anywho, I'm looking forward to the next 2-3 weeks. If the original L4D was any indication, the time right after release will be a blast until the players start finding things to abuse. The spitter was an interesting solution to corner camping, I can't wait to see how it works out.

Gonna go bag me a clown.

(Also, anyone heard which map the demo will be on? I'm hoping for Dark Carnival..)

Starcraft II Map Editor

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:50:32 GMT

It feels like they haven't advertised this aspect of SC2 much, but the map editor is going to be freaking awesome.

Grafting, First Person, Custom UI... I can't wait to see what kind of stuff people make with it! I think I'm going to start off by making a chess game when I get my hands on it, then maybe a basic RPG (especially if I can get first-person working well) like PSO.

I hope all of those features and more make it into the initial release. The map marketplace sounds cool, too :D

Also, if the map editor can do that kind of crazy stuff, I can't wait to see what the official campaign is like! Since they're breaking it into three seperate games, I have high expectations :P

(Oh, and please excuse my dust! I'm working on a new CSS. Check out the main page to see what the finished product will look like)

GIAD: Yea sure, why not?

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:09:39 GMT

Well, I just called in sick to work; my Dad thinks I have bronchitis or something. I don't know if it's connected to the two days I spent down in Chicago, but I am exhausted from it.

Anywho, what better way to spend a day than GIAD? I'll be going with the Mechanical theme, although what I'm doing is a secret for now :)

I'm marking my official start-time as 1:00PM CST, since I only woke up a little bit ago...

A Little Update, a Lupdate

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:24:28 GMT

Does everybody know what time is it?
~~TOOL TIME!~~ OBLIGATORY LIFE POST THAT WILL HOPEFULLY JUSTIFY MY HAVING A BLOG!

...TIME!

Hilarious allusions to nineties' television aside, a fair amount has actually been happening in my life.

First off, I'll be attending DePaul University going for a B.S. in Computer Game Development, starting next week. I'm commuting to save some $$$, so that means two hours on the train that I can spend studying/developing. I spent the past year at a community college chipping away at the Liberal Studies requirements, so I get to jump into some more interesting classes:

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES I: C/C++
ANIMATION FOR NON-MAJORS
INTRODUCTION TO SCREENWRITING
INTRODUCTION TO GAME DESIGN

DePaul is on a Trimester system, so I'll be done with these classes by Thanksgiving.

I'm also working on two games at the moment: Ultimate Laser Tag (which I started a while back for Ian's Get Something Done challenge) and Run Them Through. The latter of which is a casual-strategy game, and former of which will never be finished if I keep putting it aside. Regardless, I did manage to more-or-less finish that Static Lighting Generator (more in that is runs, less in that it is undocumented and designed for a specialized circumstance).

I'll post more on Run Them Through (which should actually be finished relatively soon) later.

Anywho, I'm supposed to be in Chicago in less than twelve hours, so I had better start printing out some maps and train schedules and stop procrastinating :P

P.S. They sell flash drives bigger than my hard drive now!

Microsoft .NET Framework update adds addon to Firefox

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:34:44 GMT

If you updated your .NET Framework recently, you may notice a new addon in Firefox:

Microsoft .Net Framework Assistant 1.0

.NET Framework Assistant is for launching ClickOnce applications into a security sandbox (something like java VM's sand box). The launcher will prompt the user if they want to download the app and run it (like other ActiveX and java applets). It is safer than than downloading an exe and running it, because it is in a security sandbox.

Security Fix: Microsoft Update Quietly Installs Firefox Extension

Annoyances.org: Remove the Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant (ClickOnce) Firefox Extension

Is Microsoft embracing its Firefox users? Or is it sabotage--an irremovable addon full of security holes?

Regardless, it's done in the usual MS fashion; installed without notification, and a pain in the butt to remove.

<edit>
It looks like MS has released another update that allows the addon to be uninstalled through firefox. Because, you know, they totally didn't expect anyone to notice them dicking around in other web browsers.
</edit>