Is Flash going to be any different? This is a very big question. Now that Microsoft has their eyes on Adobe, things could go badly for Adobe if they make any big mistakes. The big thing that they have on their side is Microsoft not wanting to be cross platform or open. Yes, there is an open version of Microsoft's WPF/E, but the only element that would make me consider switching to it (3D) is not include and I am kind of stubborn about this cross-platform requirement. With no big reason to switch (though it looks like it would be a fairly simple transition) I will stick with what I know and re-evaluate the situation in a couple of years.
I have been following Flash with some interest since Flash 3, and have been actively programming Flash since Flash 6 (thanks to the introduction of Action Script in Flash 5). ActionScript, the language used in Flash, has now reached version 3 which is pretty much a full blown object oriented programming language. Thanks to the Flex 2 SDK, it is even possible to develop Flash programs for free. Of course, the thing that makes flash nice to work with is the animation abilities, and that is something you really need a tool to do properly. Flash 8 was the last version of Flash to use ActionScript 2, so I was quite excited when I found out March 27th that Flash CS3 was about to be released. In fact, I pre-ordered my copy of Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium edition. Thankfully I am eligible for the upgrade price as it is a very expensive product which I could not afford if I had to pay the regular price of US$1,599. ]]>Generalhttp://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=74Mon, 2 Apr 2007 20:10:00 -0700April Fools Day
http://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=73
If I am considering Coffee Quest to be a separate project, then one would have to consider Ultimate Retro Project and One of those Weeks as separate projects. Likewise, the Silly Stuff collection already is a collection even though it only has a few items in it. The Dozen Days pentalogy only has one partially complete game in it, but it will be expanded out to 60 games so it will have it's own project.
At this point, I have covered all the game projects that already exist on the site. I have one additional project that people who followed my year plans (which by the way are still active as this change doesn't alter any of my development plans but I will be more focused so don't expect all the plans I set forth at the beginning of the year to be finished by the end of the year). That project is not one of the six new ones, but may be added later in the year.
As anybody who has visited Blazing Games after the initial change may have noticed is that the bar of buttons on the side have been removed. This is because the home page is now linked to the logo so that button wasn't needed. Nor was the game button as the home page is now the main game index. The project based nature of the site means that coming soon isn't needed. About and Links have been moved to the extra links on the bottom of all the pages. This leaves the articles button. My solution was to create a books and tutorials project which makes the articles button no longer needed. No buttons needed, no button bar!]]>Generalhttp://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=73Sun, 1 Apr 2007 22:03:43 -0700Overflowing Plates
http://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=72
The one thing that I did notice while working on the contract work, is that focusing on only one task actually increases productivity. One issue I have been trying to deal with on Blazing Games is that I have way too many different projects on the go at the same time. Part of this is due to the obvious fact that I am doing this work in my spare time so I obviously want to be working on something that is interesting to me. I have so many varied tastes, that as a result I always end up with way too many projects going on at the same time.
While I have tried something similar to what I am going to be doing in April in the past, perhaps I just wasn't quite prepared. I am thinking that perhaps my big problem is my insistence to putting something out every week. It should be obvious that one person is simply not going to be able to put out games of the quality that I want to make in the short time periods that I want. Another thing that I have to take into account is that the time I spend developing games, unless I am being paid for it, is my own time. If I am only putting in 10 hours a week on a project that my visitors want, those ten hours could have just as easily been put into playing games on the Wii so if it takes me longer to finish the project that my visitors vote for, and months go by with only article and open source releases, that will have to be the case. Unless I am being paid for work, I don't owe my time to anybody so visitors should be happy with what hours I do put into the Blazing Games site. I suspect that most of my visitors understand this (I'm the dummy just realizing this obvious fact) so I am sure that with only a few exceptions, my visitors will understand any delays between major game releases.
]]>Generalhttp://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=72Sun, 25 Mar 2007 18:34:15 -0700Final Vote results posted.
http://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=71
This year's change to the site was going to be a very minor navigation improvement. Navigating through the site is more of a burden then I would like. So I started thinking about how I could make navigation easier. This got combined with restructuring the four categories that I use to group games. These categories no longer accurately reflect the direction Blazing Games is headed, so I am going to be modifying those. Taking those changes to their logical conclusions ended up with a very minor change to the site coding wise that actually will have a fairly large impact on the site.
This is kind of a nice twist. As a programmer, I am use to having to write large chunks of code to end up with very little visual change to a program. Some clients understand this, many do not. In fact, that is probably the biggest reason that big companies re-design their user interface with major releases. While the re-design of the interface may not require much code, the user notices it. The 99% of the code that actually does the work is not seen by the user so they don't care about it.
]]>Generalhttp://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=71Sun, 18 Mar 2007 10:56:00 -0700Lost in a dungeon
http://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=70
BlazingGames.com for details.I was sure that Dungeon Romp would be ready in time. Unfortunately, while testing I found a flaw in my design. You see, the maze generator I wrote only guarantees a winning path, not that all parts of the generated maze are accessible. This means that anything chosen that is not on the path through the maze may not be accessible. While placing items and monsters in non-accessible areas is not a big deal, placing ladders and the key in such areas is a bad thing! My solution was to keep the monsters and items randomly distributed, but have the ladders on the endpoints of the winning path and the key and markers in the middle of the path. This means that they will always be accessible and the game will always be winnable. This change has been made so the game will be released this week.]]>Generalhttp://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=70Sat, 10 Mar 2007 21:50:17 -0700Wii Remote
http://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=69
The reason I like the Wii controller is due to the nunchuk and the way this works. For those not familiar with the Wii, you can essentially plug in extension controllers into the remote. Right now there is only the nunchuk and the classic controller, but I suspect that in the future there will be other plug-in controllers to facilitate specific games, such as a guitar shaped controller or a dance pad control. While having this flexibility is nice, for me the big thing I like about the controller is that my hands aren't clamped together. Having the controller broken into two halves was just a brilliant design. Now if only Nintendo could get rid of the wire between the remote and the attachment things would be even nicer.
The motion sensing is kind of neat as well, but I personally found that it was not as accurate as I would like. I have had instances where I did the proper move with the remote, but the game just didn't notice. More to the point, where the remote is pointing to on the screen does not necessarily reflect where the cursor is. This means that shooting games require a cursor on the screen. While this is not that huge of an issue, it is a bit of an issue.
If there is actually a human reading this, they may be wondering if Blazing Games is going to be supporting the Wii. I wish I could get a Wii development kit and develop a commercial game for the Wii, but I doubt that will happen. The browser functionality does support flash (but not Java), though I don't know which version of Flash is being supported. When the final version of the browser is released I will look into the flash support and see if I can get my flash games working on it. If the browser does not support Flash 9, then my future development will not work on the Wii. If Flash 9 does work, then I will do my best to get my games to work on the Wii, which in theory shouldn't take much work.
As I have no intention of purchasing a Playstation 3, I can not test my games on the PS3 even if it supports Flash 9 (no idea if it does). If someone want to send me a free PS3...didn't think so.]]>Generalhttp://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=69Sun, 4 Mar 2007 11:15:47 -0700A Fleeting race through a Dungeon
http://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=68
Generalhttp://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=68Sun, 25 Feb 2007 13:58:33 -0700Coffee Quest Before 4 plans
http://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=67
Papervision 3D. This is a very impressive software 3D engine which should be able to handle everything that I need for Coffee Quest 5 and 6 (and then some). That is the good news.
The bad news is that the source code is in private beta, which means that while I may be able to play with their code right now, I am not suppose to release anything that uses their code. Or at least that is my interpretation. That means that the 3D aspects of CQFS exist but won't be officially implemented until sometime in the future. So, for you fans who are wondering what is going on with CQFS (and more particularly the Coffee Quest games that are going to be using this) I will outline my work plans for Coffee Quest Before 4.
I am currently going to finish the new entity/skill system that I have been working on for quite a while (about 25 hour so far) which is a much more flexible version of the entity system that is being used in Dungeon Romp and Melee Combat. While this was originally going to be a quick port of the existing code, the changes and additions I have made to this system (such as having it use xml, a much cleaner template system, and a skill system that is very flexible) have pretty much required a re-write from scratch. This entity system covers all the creatures, items, and NPCs in the game as well as the player so finishing this exceedingly important. Once I have the system working I will post it just so fans can see that some progress is being made.
Once this is done, I will get a proper character sheet and inventory working. In theory this shouldn't be too large of a step, but it will probably take a lot longer than I want. Of course, this is very visual so at least non-coders will have something to look at. I will get the stores working at this point as well, if only so I have an easy way of getting items in and out of the inventory. Yes, there will be stores, and towns, in CQb4, CQ5 (just a store) and CQ6 (many different cities).
The next step will be the map system. This is actually far along in development as before switching CQFS to Flash I was doing this in Java so it is just a matter of porting code that already exists (no, it's not functioning which is why it was not released. I have a personal policy of not posting code on a public repository until it is functional [not necessarily complete, but it should compile and run]). This leads to the combat system, which should cover all of the role-playing parts of the engine. If Papervision3D isn't ready at this point, I will have a bunch of difficult decisions to make, which I will probably have polls for so Coffee Quest fans can have their say.
Once the CQFS stuff is done, it is just a matter of making maps, data files, artwork, and implementing CQb4 related puzzles. Yes, there is a lot of work ahead of me before CQb4 sees the light of day, but I think it will be worth the effort.
]]>Generalhttp://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=67Sun, 18 Feb 2007 11:44:20 -0700Putting the table category on the table.
http://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=66
BlazingGames.com site, I would like to address the problem I re-discovered with the game. The game uses the enter frame function to handle the movement of all the game sprites. While this in itself is not a problem, if the flash player is not able to keep up, frames get skipped. This has no effect on the game other than the fact that the movement for that frame is also skipped, meaning that the frame slows down. No big deal, except that the game is timed. This means that slower machines will have a disadvantage as the game will take longer to complete. I have encountered this problem before so should have been aware of it, but quite simply was in a rush to get the game out and forgot.
The preliminary version of the dungeon generator for Dungeon Romp has been posted on the ultimate retro project repository (https://ultimateretroproject.dev.java.net/) but there is still a lot to do yet. This week's vote winner on the Blazing Games coming soon page was Coffee Quest Before 4. The area of that game that I am working on is a longer way from being posted than I had hoped, so I may work on a different section of that game just so that I have something to post or I may come up with a better solution to the problem I am having that won't take as much work. I'll let you know next week. Table games are my final category in my plans summary. To get to these in the 2007 plans game, simply guess correctly on the coin toss. I am kind of cheating with this categories primary project. The Dozen Days Pentalogy is a collection of five games which themselves are collections of a dozen games. I had mentioned the first game in the series a while ago (A Dozen Days of Dice) but when paying work threw my schedule into turmoil, it got pushed to the side. Now, this is sort of a cop-out project as it really is a collection of 60 games divided into five different themes.
On the open source front I am going to be finishing off Fleet 2 and then finally getting my Ultimate Retro Project Cribbage games complete.
]]>Generalhttp://spelchan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=66Sun, 11 Feb 2007 13:50:34 -0700