Well basically...there has been no progress haha. I don't have time during the week anymore now that I work. On the weekends, like today, I need to study for my online course and do other things that must come first. So for now, my project is on the back-burner until I am done my online course at school. That should be around August 13th. Once that is complete, I should have my weekends back and will invest greatly into my project. I still think it is going to be awesome and I can't wait to get into again!
Aside from that, work is pretty cool. I still need to learn all the tools that have already been made and also to learn the coding information that I need. Namely programs that interact with excel files as well as networking. Hopefully I can learn that as quickly as possible so that I don't spend my days trying to figure out code but rather make or improve new tools to help out my team.
Saturday 14 July 2012
Friday 6 July 2012
Inspiration Update #1
Since my last post, I've spent quite a bit of time planning out how I was going to tackle my latest project. 90% the way through, I came up with a better, simpler and potentially cheaper way of doing it. I still finished my initial plan to see if it was in fact feasible, which it was, though more expensive and much more complicated. My new revision of the implementation no longer requires transmission towers, in fact, to prototype, I only need to purchase a few new parts. For the rest, I already have the hardware required! So what I am learning now is networked multiplayer over an ad-hoc wireless connection. Right now, things are looking pretty good, one key element is functioning (tested it last night), I'm going to start learning networking, and the rest of the hardware is coming in next week. If everything works out semi-nicely, I should have my prototype up and running next weekend :-)
Wednesday 4 July 2012
Latest project inspiration
For a while now, I've been trying to think of a way to bring games into the real world, mainly to get gamers out and about. I think I've finally found the way to do it. I don't want to speak to much on the idea yet until I have a prototype running, but it will require me to learn a lot of things I have no clue about. I will need to learn augmented reality, set up a server as a hub for players to connect to, and finally, I need to learn how to build small transmission towers to communicate with the players. Yup, this is going to be quite the adventure...
Things are looking good!
It's been a while since I last posted, since then I changed some game mechanics in Slime Jumper, got my XBox 360 and Kinect from Microsoft and got a job at THQ! :-)
Starting with Slime Jumper, instead of having a "slime boost" mode when you can do some crazy stuff, I instead added counters for the items you catch. When the counters reach 0, you can drag an item specific bomb onto the screen that will cause some stuff to happen (more trash falling, player duplication, etc). Last thing I completed was the dragging gestures of the specific items into the middle of the screen. I had problems with that because tapping and dragging can both be gestures, but it only sees a "tap" if the fingers touches down, doesn't move much and lifts off. But that means that you can hold your finger down, wait for the right time to jump, then lift off and jump. This is not what I wanted, I wanted the tap-jump to occur immediately. This was conflicting with my use of the dragging gestures however. In the end, with some boolean flags I was able to distinguish between immediate taps and dragging gestures to achieve the controls I wanted.
As for the XBox, I got it in the mail...some time ago, I actually don't remember exactly when hehe. Anyways I've been playing quite a bit of that lately, I had my spurt of gaming at the beginning and now it's under control. :-P I've mainly been playing Forze Motorsport 3 (because I got it for free last year from the Great Canadian Appathon), and some arcade games. It was fun looking through and playing trials of the arcade games because it gave me ideas for the games that I want to make. Oh and Fruit Ninja Kinect...amazing!
Lastly and definitely most importantly, as of Monday July 9th, I will be a full-time permanent employee at THQ!!! I'm too excited to say much more lol
Starting with Slime Jumper, instead of having a "slime boost" mode when you can do some crazy stuff, I instead added counters for the items you catch. When the counters reach 0, you can drag an item specific bomb onto the screen that will cause some stuff to happen (more trash falling, player duplication, etc). Last thing I completed was the dragging gestures of the specific items into the middle of the screen. I had problems with that because tapping and dragging can both be gestures, but it only sees a "tap" if the fingers touches down, doesn't move much and lifts off. But that means that you can hold your finger down, wait for the right time to jump, then lift off and jump. This is not what I wanted, I wanted the tap-jump to occur immediately. This was conflicting with my use of the dragging gestures however. In the end, with some boolean flags I was able to distinguish between immediate taps and dragging gestures to achieve the controls I wanted.
As for the XBox, I got it in the mail...some time ago, I actually don't remember exactly when hehe. Anyways I've been playing quite a bit of that lately, I had my spurt of gaming at the beginning and now it's under control. :-P I've mainly been playing Forze Motorsport 3 (because I got it for free last year from the Great Canadian Appathon), and some arcade games. It was fun looking through and playing trials of the arcade games because it gave me ideas for the games that I want to make. Oh and Fruit Ninja Kinect...amazing!
Lastly and definitely most importantly, as of Monday July 9th, I will be a full-time permanent employee at THQ!!! I'm too excited to say much more lol
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