Platypotamus

Here are links to the orbital simulations that we looked at in class, in case you want to mess around with them some more:

• Two Stars
• Two Stars + some Planets
• Two Stars + a Planet (animated)
• Two Stars + a Planet (animated, "ice cream scoop" orbit)
• Three Stars, Figure 8 Orbit (animated)

Also: We didn't get around to chatting about it in class, because I wanted you to have some time to get together with your groups, but don't forget to consider the implications of non standard orbits, axises, and rotations. Consider Uranus, so tilted as to be pretty much perpendicular to it's revolutionary orbit. Consider the distance of your world from it's star, and how long it takes to orbit said star. What implications do the orbital lengths/axis tilts have on seasons, and what implications do those, in turn, have to life on your world? Life would be quite different on a planet that went through a winter period that lasted an entire generation's life span!

Since I was on vacation in the Bahamas over the past couple of weeks, I don't have a big Dungeon Generator update ready. Not to fear though, I've been meaning to do a slightly related update for awhile now, and this gives me a good reason to do so.

First, a small sidebar: I think the blog is an important part of this process, particularly once things get far enough along that there's actually something for you to play with. It's a great way for people interested in the project to know what I'm thinking, and eventually, me to know what they are thinking.

So as I started this project, I committed to maintaining a development blog alongside it, both to keep my thoughts organized, and to share the project with folks. I probably wouldn't have, though, had I not been inspired by a couple of similar blogs.

Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress is a truly remarkable indie project that has seen a number of releases and is about to see a new one. In the game, you manage a small expedition of dwarves in a bid to create the next fantastic fortress with a functional economy, defense, etc. It has possibly the most detailed procedural world generation I've ever seen. It also has a fantastic development blog, updated daily, with news on exactly what was accomplished that day.

Zero Gear

Zero Gear is a kart racing game currently in development by a friend of mine from back in the Troika days. He's also behind devbump. I'm not sure if he ever sleeps. He and his cohort have been working on Zero Gear for awhile, and they've kept up a blog covering their advances. One of my major goals for this blog is to get to the point where I am posting a lot more video/images/interactive updates, the way they do over there. Also, it looks like from their count down that they are attempting to enter the IGF. Good luck guys!

For a couple of different reasons, it became a really good idea to break dungeons apart into regions. So I did.

Building a Bigger Dungeon

The first of those reasons is efficiency. By breaking the dungeon apart into regions, and placing rooms via those regions rather than seeking a great spot in the entire dungeon, it becomes a much more streamlined process. Not pictured here (unfortunately), I've successfully generated dungeons roughly 6 times larger than are supported with the build here on the site. Unfortunately, the process is still really unstable for large dungeon sizes. I've got a couple ideas for ways to fix that, but they're all massive pains, and I've decided to push them back for now as honestly, do I even need dungeons that big... ever? I see little advantage to it, honestly.

On to some better news, however...
Read the rest of this entry »

Several of the projects in the Casual Games class feature a replacement for the mouse cursor. Depending on how you implemented this, you might run into the dreaded "flickering mouse cursor" problem. It was a bit of a puzzler at first, but here's a quick walkthrough on how to solve the problem...

Read the rest of this entry »

I spent all day Sunday making some improvements to the random dungeon generator (for great justice). I had wanted to release a new demo build for you to play with, but it's not really there just yet, so I've captured a screen shot:

Read the rest of this entry »

Today I'm going to talk a little bit about how I got started on the dungeon generator. The first step in any programming process is establishing your project's requirements. That is where I began as well. Here are some of the capabilities I required of my dungeon generator.
Read the rest of this entry »

I've had a couple of students ask me what the easiest way to figure out which key the user pressed is. So I wrote a quick and simple sample program that does that very thing.

I've added it to the sample code page.

Hopefully it explains everything thoroughly, but if any questions remain, please let me know!

Well, the dungeon generator is finally far enough along that I'm comfortable unveiling it here for you folks. In the coming weeks, I'll be sharing some interesting details that have gone into its development so far. As new features get added in, I'll share those as well.

Quick summary, as well as a link to see it in action below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here are the promised details on the homework assignment:

Take the "FirstLoop.as" file and modify it. Instead of outputting the stats as numbered stats, each stat should be given a name. There are six stats, and we've been using the D&D example quite a bit in class, so let's just stick with those stats. Thus, in order, your code should output: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Should be relatively simple.

Extra Credit:

Update this program to use a more update stat generation system: roll four six sided die, and add the three highest together to reach the stat. This makes it more likely that your character won't suck.

Also note: The course page has been updated with a link to the sample code from class

Hey Gang,

Here's the video that Jesse found of that gameboy from the first Persian Golf War.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBeTXPaewMo

What's even more amazing: This totally is a different gameboy than the one I saw images over before.