Jason Gosen's Blog

Post Apocalypse Postponed

2011-12-18T12:15:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been busy with school and work and have been unable to devote enough time to make a serious dent in my coding to-do list. I've somewhat lost motivation to complete Post Apocalypse. To try and get myself back into the swing of game programming I'm going to make a game with a much smaller scope. I might come back to Post Apocalypse in the future, but given my track record of staying on task I probably won't.

Speed bumps in Post Apocalypse development

2011-09-14T16:12:00.000-07:00

Progress has been somewhat slow in the last few days. Mostly because I don't fully understand how ActionScript 3 and FlashPunk work yet.

All of the player animations and some items are finished being drawn. Now I've got to build a tileset for making the maps.

I managed to get OGMO Editor to create some XML files which I successfully parsed and created maps from. There are some minor hiccups in the form of extra items being spawned on the map but I think that shouldn't take long to fix.

I've been struggling with getting a preloader into my game which will show a nice loading bar while the SWF loads. I don't actually have Flash so I have to do everything through code. Normally I would just add the preloader script to the first frame in Flash. However, I don't know how to add scripts to frames programmatically yet. I've found several examples on the FlashPunk community forums but haven't quite figured out how they work. It's not like the preloader is a high priority. It can wait until just before I'm ready to release the game. I think I'll save it for the last 10%.

I've been wondering how I'm going to make the player collide with the map. So far I've got a quick fix:

Save the player's current location.
Move the player.
If the player collided with the map then move him back.

This algorithm is brutally simple and doesn't allow for smooth movement around corners. In it's current state if the player even slightly touches the corner of a tile he will be moved back. I know that in the final game there is no way I can leave the algorithm like this. So my area of focus for the near future is Player/Tilemap movement and collision.

This week a lot of stuff happened. I got a full time job and I went back to school. My schedule is going to fill up with homework so the pace of progress will slow dramatically. I am not giving up hope! Bit by bit I will code this damn game.

Take an item, leave an item

2011-09-04T13:57:00.000-07:00

I've completed the code that makes the player pick up and drop items. There are only 2 items in the game: the mailbag and the hammer. Download a copy of the latest build and play around with it if you wish.

Download link...
Post-Apocalypse-0.002.zip

Controls:
Arrow Keys - Movement
Z - Pick Up/Drop

Player sprite is coming along nicely

2011-09-03T00:27:00.000-07:00

The mailman!

The project is churning along. I'm almost finished drawing the sprite sheet for the player. Here is a shot of the mailman about to deliver a letter. This is one of 5 different states that he can be in. So far making the sprites has been a breeze because of the low resolution. I'm using a very low-fi visual theme for the game, all of the game images will be 20x20.

Once the player's sprite sheet is finished I'm going to move onto items. Then I'll get all the code planned out for grabbing/dropping items and have another build released.

Learning the FlashPunk library

2011-09-01T00:45:00.000-07:00

I've been spending the last few days aquanting myself with the FlashPunk library for ActionScript 3. So far I've learned how the engine manages entities, collision, resource loading, animation, and input handling.

So far I've got a basic shell with just the player running around.

Download link...
Post-Apocalypse-0.001.zip

I've got all the basic animation frames done, now I just need to make more for when the player is carrying/using different items.

In the next update I'm going to add a tile map with basic collision with solid tiles. Then I'll keep adding whatever I think fits in next. More updates soon.

Happy coding!

Finally! A new project!

2011-08-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

I'm going do it. I'm going to buckle down and complete a game.

In the last year I've been jumping from language to language, library to library, and I've never stuck with one long enough to do anything. It seems I either didn't have enough discipline, or I wasn't pleased with the tools I was using.

Well I think it's mostly the former.

I'm going to begin making a new game called "Post Apocalypse". It's about a mailman who must survive and deliver mail in a post-apocalyptic setting. I'm keeping the scope of the game very small so I can actually complete it and polish it. The features it will have:

title screen, game screen w/ pause menu, credits?
Tilemap
8-way player/enemy movement
animation
super simple enemy ai
multiple levels
extremely basic cut-scenes (final polish stage)

I really doubt that I will add anything else. I want to avoid scope creep as much as possible.

The target platform for the game is the Flash Player. I'll be using FlashDevelop and FlashPunk.

FlashDevelop is a great tool that uses Adobe's free Flex and AIR SDKs to build .swf files from ActionScript code. ActionScript is essentially JavaScript (EMCA Script), which is increasingly becoming one of my favorite languages behind C++ and Java.

My Pickin' Sticks clone is finished!

2010-06-12T12:06:00.000-07:00

I've finished the simple game I started to work on a little over a week ago. There actually isn't much of a difference from the last update. The only addition is a "Game Over" screen.

So here's Pickin' Sticks 0.3.zip, probably the final version unless I come back to work on it in the future.

Pickin' Sticks demo update

2010-06-11T20:16:00.000-07:00

I've made some additions to my Pickin' Sticks game. The zombies now start off walking in a random direction, and they bounce off the walls.

I didn't explain the controls in the last post...
Arrow Keys = Movement
Control = Shoot Laser
Escape = Quit (Why would you want to quit?)

Download link...
Pickin Sticks 0.2.zip

Pickin' Sticks playable demo

2010-06-06T00:47:00.000-07:00

There is still some work to be done on this game. The zombies don't have any AI yet, and there is no main menu or game over screen. But here's what's done so far!

Download link...
Pickin Sticks 0.1.zip

Pickin' Sticks with Java and GTGE

2010-06-05T02:19:00.000-07:00

I've started work on a game originally made by Racheal Morris, but with a few changes. Zombies and lasers! You've got to earn enough points to advance to the next level. You can do two things to get points... pick up sticks, or shoot lasers at the zombies trying to chase you down. No matter what you do you'll have to avoid the zombies or you get a "Game Over" screen. Here's a screenshot of what's happening so far.

I've chosen Java for the game because that's what I'm learning in school at the moment. Originally I planned on using C++ as I had a tiny bit of experience with it. However, I didn't want to confuse myself by learning Java and C++ at the same time.

GTGE is an easy to learn game engine for Java that's very object oriented. It provides a nice framework to let you start programming the actual game logic. A lot of time (was/is being) spent pouring over the documentation, tutorials and demo game source code.

So this is what I'll be working on for a while.

New Blog

2010-06-03T00:33:00.000-07:00

Woah. A new blog! I'll be posting stuff related to computer programming. Mostly Java and game related.