Basic Computer Car Path Following

Good Progress!
I've decided to add a racing line that the computer cars follow loosely to within a few pixels, and so far it works and the computer cars go from one point to another around the race-track.

However, I still need to add gradual turning to the computer cars, as at the moment when they reach one checkpoint, they immediately turn and face the next point.

The checkpoints are easily added through the editor.

Back in business

Wow, everything seems to break at once!
After, installing a new screen in my laptop the power adapter failed, so I spent another few days without being able to work on my game, while waiting for a new adapter!

But, everything is back working now (Touch wood!).

no work makes jack go crazy

I have a cracked laptop screen, so I haven't been able to continue the good initial progress I had made.

Game Plan

Here are the definite features that should be in the game, and also possible features that might make them game, depending on progress.

Definite Features in the game
. Single Races
. Car and Driver Selection
. Editable teams and cars via editing the text files in a text editor
. Editable cars via editing the graphics files.
. Basic computer AI movement, following a standard root around the tracks


Very Possible to be included in the game
. A Championship. (Racing for points over various circuits)
. The Editor to change or replace existing tracks
. Car Damage, (Tyres and bodywork)
. Pit-stops for damage.
. Computer movement with varied roots around the tracks


Least Possible features that might be in the game
. Career Mode (Moving up through different formulas and race categories)
. Car Set-ups, Wings,
. The Editor to import new tracks.
. Pit-stops for fuel and tyres.
. Varied computer movement with overtaking.

Looking for someone to draw the graphics (the cars and circuit pieces) for my game.

I'm looking for help for my game, specifically, someone who can draw better than me.

1. The Car graphics, if you look at mine they are quite poor:


2. the track pieces, such as a straights, corners, grassy areas, etc.. (the following is an example of a one of the 'tiles' which all fit together to make the track:



3. Simple track objects, such as fences, tyre walls, pit crews, lights, spectators


4. The GUI (the menus) such as buttons, backgrounds, set-up screens, driver and circuit select screens)



if you feel you can help, please leave a message here, sign-up to the forum at (www.sionco.info) or send an e-mail to isionco(at)gmail(dot)com


I'd love someone to help partner me on this game, or even if you want to just draw the cars or the menus, I'd love any help, as to be honest my graphic skills are awful.

Adding Computer Car paths

Well, on Saturday, even though I was feeling tired initially, I managed to get quite a bit done on the game.

- I drew 12 different temporary cars graphics on the sprite sheet (hopefully someone can improve them later)
- In the editor the user can now add the start positions of all 24 cars
- In the game all the cars are now put into their grid slots depending on their position.
- Increased the size of the track tiles,


Today, I'm hoping to implement some basic form of movement for the computer controlled cars. I've been thinking about this yesterday and there are two different ways:
1.The Computer cars looks at the next piece of track and moves in that direction
2. The user creates the driving line in the editor and the computer cars follow this.

I chose the second option, as I hope to have at least two different driving lines for each track that the computer cars follows, and they change between them if they wish to overtake or there are too many cars in the same position. This way I hope to at least stop the computer cars from looking like they are all on rails in a line. Hopefully, if I programme neatly it will also able me to improve it and add new bits of extremely basic computer ai, along each step of the way.



If you can draw, please leave a message or email me at isionco(at)gmail(dot)com

Tired but motivated

I've only spent two afternoons working on the game, but I'm pleased with the progress, yes it may only be a moving car and a scruffy track editor, but my past experiences have helped, from the educational games mathematics and interface building to the recent platforms editor and and player movement.

Today, I'm feeling quite tired, so I don't think I'll get anything major completed, but days like these are used to do the little things, such as add a menu, draw some graphics, which may only be quick jobs, but usually these small jobs add up throughout the development progress, so it will be good to get some done.


As for the next major steps:

Game
1. Create positional array so cars position in the race are always known and they can be put into the correct grid position at the start of the race.
3. Add, basic physics or effects of the car going off track onto sand or grass areas.


Editor
1. Implement starting positions(grid positions/slots) into the editor.
2. Add more temporary track graphics like grassy areas, fences, stadiums
3. Add the ability to add objects, such as pit crews, checkpoints
4. Add the ability to create computer driving lines around the track for the computer cars to follow.
5.

editor, big to small, big to small.

I've completed a bit more on editor size as well as the scale size.

As show below the track can be created and viewed from a distance in the editor, so you can see the whole track layout as you edit it. (whereas in the game, the player gets a zoomed in view).

Below is a simple track layout I created. Currently,I have only drawn 6 different track pieces, (2 straights and 4 corners) but I hope to get some help from someone to draw them better and create more as well as other options such as the grass and sand run-off areas, barriers, grandstands, the pits.

Start your engines!

Progress on my racing game.

Well today:
1. Instead of re-using the platform games level-editor, I've created a new one from scratch, which I hope will serve me better. (but I hope no-one sees the code as it's a complete mess)

2. I've got a basic movement for the players car, allowing it to move, while the game keeps it in the center of the screen, as the car moves around the track or screen.


Initial Hopes and Dreams for the game:
1. It's going to be an arcade racer. (no advanced physics, as I don't think I'm that skilled and also just want to actually complete a good game, which I haven't done since the 'Klick & Play' days in the mid 90's.
2. I hope to include a championship, where the user racers around a number of circuits for points.
3. Ideally, there would also be a career mode with different formulas.
4. Easily editable, so players can make there own cars.
5. Cross-platform. I'm aiming for Windows and Linux, with the possibility of Mac.


Initial Progress Screenshot:

Pit-Stop! now Race on!

Yep, the inevitable has happened,

Since my last blog post I found myself doing less and less on the platform game every day and then every week, until I hadn't touched it for two months.

However, as I have free time for the summer, I have started trying to make a new game, a racing game. My initial hopes involve it being an arcade racing game, but with a championship or career mode, but I'm not making any promises this time that I'll actually finish it.

First I want to try and get something basic working, and then build upon it.

update. linux and enemies begin.

I got back to working on the game again today, and have begun the daunting journey of programming the enemies and objects.

But, for today's progress, the game now loads the enemies and objects from the level file created with the level-editor. Also, I've given gravity to the objects and enemies so they will fall if they walk of the side of a building.

I've also done some basic movement for the enemies (Well, actually they just walk to any building ledge, and then turn round and walk until they're at the other side. and so on.)


Finally, compiled the early development version for Linux, so you can keep up-to date with my progress, and I also want for people to test that it works.

You can download the windows and linux versions here.


Please tell me of any speed problems, or if they even work.

Level Editor Version 0.2b

Today, I've returned to working on the level editor. In that to be able to reach my first goal of finishing a single level, I'll need to add enemies and objects to the game, (and having this completed will also be a motivational thing for me to0).

So, today I've spent four hours working on the level editor, and have added a nice little menu that opens up so the user can change between adding the level tiles, (which build up the world in 32x32 blocks) and adding enemies and objects.

I did have a bit of a 'Damn it!' moment when I couldn't figure out why when loading a level it wouldn't load the objects, because I'd forgot to read the part of the level's file that tells the editor how many objects there are, so I wasted some time here, until I suddenly realized what was missing when I was eating a sandwich.

I have actually been putting this of for a while, as I wasn't looking forward to getting back into the messy code of the editor and adding all this. But, I guess it's a big relief to have it done.

Only a tiny bit of progress

Well I've been back at the game today, well only for an hour. I've finally fixed a stupid and basic little bug that meant the player wouldn't fall all the way down if he fell or the player moved him to close to a building on his left.

I've also tried to create my very first worklog or tasklist, so I can see what needs to be done, it's not very professional, and I will need to add a lot more to it, but you can see it here: http://sionco.110mb.com/worklog.html.

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Update,

I've started creating a new about section on the website, Even though I've just started, I hope to include may details of games I've tried to make during my childhood and early teens, such as eh-oh Bebo (who's 'telly-tubby like' recorded voice pestered my parents many times) and Military Bananas 1,2,3,4,5,6.

I have got back to game programming, and returned to BlitzMax for the time being, I'm thinking that I don't think I'l release mobile versions of my games at first, so I can concentrate on getting the game done, without worrying about scaling, memory, resizing, etc. But I will re-access this when I've finished the game.

Sometimes a rest is good.

I know I hadn't really started on my game, but a collision problem I was having with the players movements in jumping from building to building had got me stumped and due to being busy with work and having a cold which seemed to not go away, all this de-motivated me, and as you can see from the date of my last post, I didn't touch my game for about two weeks.

But after watching some movies based on comic book heroes, today I decided to jump back in and my god, I solved the collision problems in an hour, it also seemed so simple today, that I don't know how I didn't fix it before.

So, I guess it's true, sometimes if your lacking in ideas, it's best to have a good rest and totally forget about it, so you can come back fresh faced and with a fresh outlook.

Player Movement/collision

Ok, I've started creating the player movements and collision detection today.
It's been a bit of trial and error, as I've never created a platform game before (well except in gamemaker or klick & play).

I've spent a few hours working on this and had some hair-pulling moments such as working out the stupid errors I had made in my code that meant either the player sometimes was half in a wall, or on some blocks the player floated just above the ground when walking and others he walked perfectly. But, I managed to solve these (hopefully)

As for now, the player now moves left, right, jumps and falls down if he walks of the side of a block or building. The code for this is pretty basic, but it works okay for the moment, and I'll come back to it at another time and improve it and also add new movements.

I'm very happy with my switch to glbasic at the moment, and the movement I've programmed is a lot better than the movement I managed on blitzmax in about the same time.

GLBasic

I've recently been playing around with a few different programming languages and frameworks/engines such as java and slick, and some basic variants such as playbasic, blitzmax, and I've decided to switch to glbasic.

I really like the cross-platform capabilities of glbasic (Windows, Linux, OS X, iPhone, Windows Mobile, GP2X/Wiz, and for a bedroom coder like me, who's main aim is to actually finish a game, this would be a great help. It's also a basic variant so similar to Blitz3D/Max which I already know a little bit of.




Sion

Created a weather engine

Today, I haven't had much time to get into any serious programming, so I used the little time I had to try some not so important stuff in the game. So today, I created a simple weather engine, that can be used to create snow and rain effects (and maybe more to be added) for the game. It works quite well, and will definitely look better with some nicer rain and snow graphics.

I've also used the time to change tiny bits of code to make them either more efficient or more readable, which I like to do when I only have half an hour free to do programming.

Level-Editor

Well since I've got home from work (10:00pm), I've spent the night working on the level editor. It's now 02:12

It works a lot better now.
I've added the ability to create a new level with the user selecting the width and height of the level before they create it.
Also, I've added the ability to load and save to different files before starting and during the level editor running.

My level editor code is extremely messy, and unorganized, but I'm not to bothered about this, as it only consists of two files. It's the game that needs to be neat and organized and so far the basics framework I've started for it is.

gravity works! game codename: in darkness...

It's only a couple of minutes since the previous post, but I'm quite happy with the simple physics and gravity I've implemented. Basically, I've created a character class, and have given the man basic movement and gravity, so he can currently move, jump and will fall if he go's off the building.

Level editor

Ok, I've had a bit of a busy week, with preparing my students in my real job for exams, so I haven't had much time to work on the game.

But what I have done, is re-written the level editor slightly, and created some temporary tiles and stolen a character graphic from another game just for temporary purposes to see what the game could look like.

Here is a screenshot of the current progress, showing a character falling from the sky (as there is no collision detection yet) and the tilemap working

Level-Editor

Even though I haven't decided on the exact type of game that I'm going to make, I have several rough plans and ideas, and no it's probably going to be tile-based, so I've decided to make a rough level editor, nothing to fancy, just something that can read from a tilemap image and change the tiles when the user clicks on one.

The basics are finished, but I've yet to implement a scrolling map view, file select to choose which file to edit or edit the level size without opening the files separately.





I know it's only taken me an afternoon to get to this point, but I'm relatively pleased, as I plan to make some tile-based games, such as a platformer, over-head and puzzle games, as well as the main game I'm going to focus on.

Framework

First things first, and that's to create my own framework, or modules for common things that will be used in all my games, such as I have a graphics module, a navigation module to provide a simple navigation template where screens or levels can easily be inserted into games, and also a navigation bar that is easily editable and inserted into any screen.

RE-LOAD!

As you can see from the dates on the previous blog entries, I haven't updated in a while.

Well for 2010, I've decided to start from scratch, so I've removed the old website and put a temporary intro page until I have some work to show, I've also designed a new pixel type logo, which I like better than the old one.

What's new on the development side?.
Well I've decided to move back to Blitz and BlitzMax not just because it's fun, but I found PureBasic just to fiddly from things that should be simple such as moving from a windowed screen to a fullscreen. However, I think I may use it again if I want to make an editor for a game level or an editor to help edit game data.

Speaking of games. Even though I did get quite a few of the mini-games working in my educational software, through lack of motivation and the fact that I have no money to purchase the type of images, art and animations that I think the software would need (as I can't find enough royalty free images) I have decided to put my educational game on hold. Maybe, I will pick it up one day in the future. At least I will have a working demo to show others and a base to start on.

I have decided to make a game that I want, a game that I WOULD WANT TO PLAY.
I have got a good idea and have nearly finished my design documents, and have found myself coming up with what appear to be good ideas at the unusual times.

I haven't decided on what game to make yet, but I've been playing with a few ideas and made a couple of demos.