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RST update

May 14th, 2012

Someone noticed I had not posted recent search terms for a while, so I figured I'll do an update. Here's a sampling of the ~7400 keywords that have found this site recently.

"why" make your own 3d game engine

To learn. Doing a minimalistic 3d engine isn't all that difficult, actually. Then again, that's what they say about raytracers too, but I haven't managed to make one yet.

best awy to render alot of cubes

Bake the cubes into one primitive, so you can render lots of them with one draw call.

best way texture map sphere

I'd go with a cube map.

can we hack dll

Yes. A "hack" dll is usually a DLL that has the same signature (i.e, same entry points) as the "real" dll, which passes the calls to the "real" one, possibly changing some values from the program's calls.

can you code a windows application in c? winapi -"c++"

Yes. Microsoft has, in the past at least, been careful to enable using plain C in windows applications.

game why split render and tick

So that your game "physics" will run at the same speed regardless of the computer speed by skipping rendering (which, traditionally, has taken more time thatn the "physics").

how do you win death rally

Finish before the others.

how expensive is smoothstep

Let's see.

((x) * (x) * (3 - 2 * (x)))

I see three multiplications there. However, compared to whatever you're going to apply smoothstep to, this is probably rather trivial cost.

how much is it to rent a sandwich kiosk

Over 9000?

how to find amplitude and period

In your sampling, find the minimum and maximum value. That'll be your amplitude. The time between two peaks is the period.

how to make a sphere using paper

First, find a sphere you can use, like a football or glass sphere. Next, tear the paper into tiny bits. Boil the paper bits for a while, and then, while it's still wet, cover the sphere with the paper. Let dry. You may need to apply some glue, but I can't remember how that bit went. Anyway.

i finished my army service how can i write in my cv

Assuming you weren't doing anything classified, just write truthfully and you should be okay.

i have an idea for an mmo how to get started

Get lots of money.

i need to start my own mmorpg game

You have a problem telling needs and wants apart. You NEED food, water and air. You WANT a copy of the latest pop single.

i really want to make an mmorpg

That's better.

object hanging at rest from the end of a spring

Hangman?

sphere tessellation algorithm without duplicate edges and vertices

I suppose you could detect the wraparound in a shader.. or use a cubemap..

things you can do with bit shifting

Shift bits.

unique development studios source code

Lost. Forever. Gone. Assuming an employee didn't steal it before it was destroyed.

what can i use l-systems for

To generate content procedurally. Plants are an obvious use, but with some thought you can apply the same idea to whole cities, for instance.

what does r6030 crt not initialized mean

The runtime library gets called before being initialized. This may happen, for instance, when DLLs get initialized in a wrong order. It's tricky.

which is faster operation bitmask or left shift operator?

Depends. Benchmark it. In most cases, it doesn't matter.

why do full screen old games conflict with explorer direct draw

Microsoft messed up. Most likely they just don't care.

why turn head toward faint sound

Survival instinct.

why was let it snow written

If we only knew. Oh wait, why would we care? Possibly for monetary gain, anyway.

In other news, I started this little tumblr photoshopping modern game screenshots.

Unity iOS Game Development Beginner's Guide... and stuff.

April 25th, 2012

Holy crap, time flies!

First off, here's another Unity book review:

This book does what the title promises: it walks you through the beginning of iOS game development with Unity.

Most of the book contents are very detailed step-by-step instructions on how to configure various things to get Unity talk to your iOS device and the App Store, as well as using the Unity asset store as well as some other sources for ready material, and several common gotchas and solutions to them.

Assuming reality remains constant and Apple, Unity or some of the other third parties don't change their offerings, the step by step instructions should be more than sufficient to get you up and running in no time.

While the book does cover some basics of Unity and scripting, you probably will want to pick up some other Unity book (such as Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials) for more detail on Unity itself.

What I felt was missing from the book was that it did not cover device differences at all, nor do you get any idea of how complex content the various iOS devices can run. But that you'll probably learn the hard way pretty quickly. Some performance hints are given, as well as an overview of iOS-specific scripting interfaces.

I'd recommend this book for anyone who just wants to get up and running with Unity on iOS without having to figure out the toolchain themselves.

I also got my hands on another book recently..

For those who have seen my Ludum Dare survival guide, the contents of this book are eerily familiar. It contains basically all the advice I give, but expands upon them, shows statistics and survey data, quotes from various game jam veterans, etc.

If you're planning on entering a game jam (such as Ludum Dare), picking up this book might not be a bad idea.

Talking of Ludum Dare..

The 10th anniversary 23th Ludum Dare contest was last weekend. I didn't make a game, but I made a few graphs. Ludum Dare has grown a lot - there were over 1400 entries this time. That's a big number, but to really comprehend it, you have to do some math..

Back when LD had around 50 entries, it was entirely possible, and actually expected, for all entrants to try out all the games. At around 100, this became rather difficult, but still possible. I applied my "30 second rule" and chugged through all the games. Twice. Rating them on the second run. It wasn't fun anymore. It was more of a job.

Now then.. 1400 entries. If you want to rate all of the games, and you do 4 hours a day 20 days straight, you get around 3.5 minutes per game. Including any time spent downloading, installing and troubleshooting.

But hey, 4 hours is such a short time, let's say you take a month's vacation and crunch 12 hours a day. That still gives you only 10 minutes per game.

So Ludum Dare has to adapt and change. LD has, for a some time now, used a randomized list of entries everyone should rate - everyone gets their own random list, so if everyone rates just 20 games, on average everyone will get 20 ratings. Can't force people to do so though.. some games will get more ratings than others. More accessible games get more ratings, prettier screenshots get more ratings. Famous people get more ratings. Some people won't rate at all.

A few things have been done and others are being considered, to help with this. First, you get a coolness rating based on how many games you rate. Originally you'd get a gold medal if you rate all games, but that would be a rather herculean task so now you "only" have to rate some number of games. I'm not sure how many, but 100 would probably be a good guess.

Second, when you rate games you can list the games by the number of ratings they have. In the last LD, there was a great push to get at least N ratings per game, and it was successful.

Third, having the combined "competition and jam" adds more voters for both the jam and the competition games.

Lots of things have been offered as solution - reducing the entrants somehow, like requiring an entry fee, are out of the question - the #1 priority is to get games done. Opening voting for public would mean wrecking the ratings whenever some famous person enters. Kicking out people who haven't rated at least N games would just lead to garbage votes. And so on.

But don't worry, there are things that are being done. It'll work out fine.

Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials Book

February 1st, 2012

Just one more unity book for now =)

This is by far the best unity book I've had the opportunity to read. It's well written, easy to follow, and covers a lot of ground. Unlike other books, throughout the book only one example game is made, but the game is far more advanced than if the author would jump from one game to another.

The book goes through all sorts of unity features, including the landscape engine, particle systems, animation, ui, HUD, physics, scripting (in both c# and javascript) - actually, plenty of space is dedicated to scripting, including a chapter that goes through basic concepts like variables, functions and logic structures, but this is all done in a way that's not dumbed down by any means.

Towards the end of the book you can find descriptions of things often forgotten, including doing finishing touches, optimization, steps to publish on the web or standalone, and so on.

If you want to buy one book on unity, this, in my opinion, would be it.

So.

In other news, the Ludum Dare #22 results were published some time ago, and here you can see the results for my 4.8 hour game. #6 in theme, #20 in humour - not bad by any means!

Unity iOS Essentials Book

January 20th, 2012

Our book review series continues.

If you have unity and feel like trying your luck on the iOS market (iphone, ipad), you might want to take a look at this book. It covers the major pitfalls and offers workarounds, as well as giving ballpark figures of what kind of content the devices can handle.

The book does a good job at educating the reader about what's different in developing for a handheld, with its limitations and different controls.

On the negative side, the book could be slightly better organized. As it is, it seems to jump back and forth between really useful information and game design advice which does not necessarily apply to any kind of game. The book also talks about the making of a couple different kinds of games, explaining issues related to them, but could have benefitted from a bare-bones example that would have explained the whole development flow.

So, if you're a unity veteran, and want a reference that covers the limitations and workarounds of the iOS target platform(s), this book might be for you.

MMXII

January 10th, 2012

Where to start..

The new year rolled on, and the world's still here. The new years' was much calmer here than back in Riihimäki, and our dogs actually got it in a relatively relaxed manner. They don't like the fireworks that much. It was also nice to notice that those damn kids didn't keep on using fireworks after the new years' - in earlier years we've had to bear that fun for a couple of months. You're taking your dogs for a peaceful walk, and suddenly something explodes, and then you have a couple of panicked dogs to drag along. Not fun.

As a tradition, I don't do new year's resolutions, but this year I figured I'd try to do some things as self-improvement. And as such, on normal days, I'll try to do a little bit of each of the following;

• Some form of physical exercise
• Some form of music
• Some form of writing

And I mean these in the purest checkbox form. Tap a key on a piano. Do a single pushup. Write something. Of course, I write something every day in the form of communication, but in this case I mean something.. more creative.

I've given myself plenty of loopholes here and it's by design. There are plenty of abnormal days, and sometimes I want to concentrate on one thing or another.

Now, the exercise has been conveniently provided by the snowfall that's finally here, as well as taking the dogs out for walks in less-than-optimal weather. Additionally I should remember to do my back-strenghtening moves, which I've let myself forget way too often.

As for music, I can't compose, I can't play, I don't know jack about notes or whatnot, but it's fun to play around, and I hope to learn. I bought a 100e USB midi keyboard a while back (Alesis Q49) and at the suggestion from my brother (among others), I bought license to renoise as well. The keyboard did come with a lite version of ableton live, and I did do some stuff with it (including sound to some ludum dare entry), but I think I have some kind of feeling of what's going on in the tracker format of renoise.

I may post links to some stuff I've managed to record. Maybe. At least if I can figure out how to embed oggs in some sensible manner. I've managed to play with music instruments a bit every now and then, sometimes with Niklas playing with me, other times alone.

Writing is something I'd like to get back at. It's been ages since I posted a story, for instance, possibly because unlike my other creative endeavors, I've rarely if ever gotten any feedback for my writing.

I've been thinking of starting a project writing down memories from the Fathammer era, also inviting memories from other fathammerians, but for some reason haven't managed to start. Part of it is that when leaving Fathammer, I destroyed a literal metric cube of notes which would have been an easy source for a book or two, so for most part I only have my memory to go on with.

Another part is writing about funny things without insulting anyone overmuch, including customers and work partners. And of course there are painful memories there as well.

I've been playing a bunch of games lately too. Dead Space 2 was a "more of the same" sequel, so get it if you have to continue the story. In the first game everything was new, there was plenty of mystey and so on, the second ties basically all loose ends, wrapping the dead space universe in a neat little box which means any further games with the same name will be just generic zombie shooters with nothing really special about them. Need zombies to shoot? Take your pick.. Evil god, virus, nanomachines, alien technology.. who cares, they're violent, brainless, anonymous and go into pieces when shot...

The steam sales came and went, and I surprised myself by not buying lots of games. Reason being, everything I wanted I already owned, or were still over 20e, and I can wait.

Still, I have a bunch of AAA titles already installed, so guess what I've been playing lately? A freeware visual novel/dating game called Katawa Shoujo, which translates rougly to "cripple girls". Note that the game contains plenty of.. well, "adult" material, so take this recommendation with several grains of salt. You can disable the most offensive material in the options menu though. If you like the genre, or are curious as to what's it about, do take a look. I haven't played much of it yet, but what I've seen has been excellent.

Visual novels are more or less like choose your own adventure games, where you've presented a situation and then a few options as to where to go. As these go, Katawa Shoujo doesn't give you a lot of options, but enough. And there's a lot of content in there.

Ludum Dare #22 came and went, and I managed to put 4.8 hours into an entry - one of over 700 in the contest - and as such I'm more than happy to get 6th position in theme and 20th position in humor (rather ironically, considering I've tried to kill that category several times now)..

I'll just leave you with a walkthrough youtube video of the game. It shows over half of all the content in the game.

(that's enough creative writing for the day..)

 

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