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The Great Neglect of 2013-2014

On February 25, 2014   /   General, Paper Tanks, Super Base Wars   /   Leave a comment

Yes. I have been absent for an abnormally long period of time, however I’ve got plenty of fun things to talk about so let’s get down to business!

November/December

  • Neglected gamedev when I got really interested in becoming a twitch streamer, you can check me out at www.twitch.tv/triverske if you like Minecraft!
  • Hosted The War Games! It was a fun experience and got to give out hundreds of Steam games, would love to host another one in the near future.
  • Started up Dogecraft, a Minecraft server that gave doge out to those who played. An AWESOME social experiment and super fun.
  • Discussed plans with another dev about two potential productions that could be kickstarted. Really neat ideas, and I’d love to follow through with them.
  • My ad provider for Paper Tanks went bankrupt, and I have been too lazy to fix the errors

January

  • Met a lot of cool devs through Dogecraft, and for the first time ever I had a plugin custom-made for my server. Felt like a boss, still do.
  • Got to try out OUYA, seems promising! Maybe a production will somehow sneak onto your TV screen sometime soon.
  • Started practicing my competitive Smash Bros. because I realized that’s what life is really all about.
  • Did my first gamejam! My game sucked but not that bad, seeing as I focused on particle effects the whole time.
  • Had to dissolve Dogecraft ’cause I couldn’t help but give out 90% of my doge, will post results of social experiment soon.

February

  • A 3D version of Basewars is coming in the form of a Minecraft plugin, which should hold you off until I can release a standalone (Thanks spacerocket for helping with that!)
  • Outsourced some work for a Crypto Tycoon game.
  • Finished a script for a game called “The Lost Legionaire”, which will probably have to be rewritten but it’s promising to say the least.
  • Rebooted Dogecraft in the form of CryptoCraft which you can check out at play.cryptocrafters.net, still a work in progress.
  • Started work on an expansion of my gamejam game, I’m modifying a metroid engine so that it can support multiple players. Probably the most engine modding I’ve ever done. samusI’ll be back with more updates soon, and if you want me to post more shoot me an email at troy@triverske.net and tell me to hurry up!
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The Making Of Paper Tanks – Part One

On September 8, 2013   /   Paper Tanks   /   Leave a comment

initial

So I was brainstorming simple ideas for video games that could potentially work on mobile devices, something I’ve never done before. I really wanted a simple idea where I could potentially expand in the future without disrupting the flow of the game (in other words no changing physics and the basic gameplay altogether). Paper Tanks was the end result of that little brainstorm session. I want people to remember the time where they drew little stick figure wars on their papers during class, I’m hoping the whole paper art style will invoke that kind of reaction. I want Paper Tanks to have a kind of innocence despite it being about blowing up enemy tanks and just want it to be fun to play around with for a bit. Those little thoughts would mould some of the ideas for the gameplay of Paper Tanks. Now, the gameplay of Paper Tanks is not completely original, but rather inspired by the 2006 video game “Wii Play” which included several minigames one of which was called “Tanks!”.

"Tanks!" from Wii Play

“Tanks!” from Wii Play

I recall spending a ton of time with my cousins trying to beat all the levels, but at the end of the day it was only a minigame and my attention was attracted elsewhere. If only it was more than a minigame, think of all the directions it could go! My cousins and I probably had a conversation over half a decade ago regarding the complexity of “Tanks!” and how we were just longing for more. Well other than wait for Nintendo to do something about it (which I don’t think is in their plans) I figured I would make the game I wanted to play, which tends to be a reason developers make games in the first place.

One of the first questions that plagued me is how can I stay true to the original while implementing new features while understanding my limits? So far the only answer I can give you is that you need to test your features with people who aren’t you. What’s just as important is that they are someone who is willing to say “I don’t like the way … works” or “I think this could be better by …”, and you need to be the kind of person that will listen to them. I’ve got friends in the industry who are incapable of responding to feedback effectively, and I think it’s holding them back as a developer.

The next question was regarding how I would make the art style work. I’m not going to go into detail on how I make the art, but I will let you in on a little secret. Make an assembly line for your art. I’m not an artist, but I know I’ve got to stick with the style to make sure things don’t look out of place. Write down all the assets you think you will need for your game (in my case I needed tanks, walls, floors, bullets) and then I would draw the outline for every single one. After that we move moved to the next step in the assembly line which was shading them the way I wanted. By doing all of the process in separate steps you’re assuring that all the art fits in your scene correctly. Make sure to write down the steps (and the details on each one) so that if you need to add assets down the line you can.

That’s all for now, I’m sure you’ll see some in-game footage of Paper Tanks very soon!

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Introducing Paper Tanks, the completely inaccurate tank simulator

On September 5, 2013   /   Paper Tanks, Super Base Wars   /   Leave a comment

papertanks

Sorry I’ve been out of the loop for a little bit, college started back up so I’m back to being busy. I’d like to semi-formally announce Paper Tanks, it’s much like other tank games but slightly different because these tanks are made of paper. Don’t just tank my word for it though, pick it up and November for the nice price of free! This is my first iOS game, and I’m super pumped to see how well it works out for me. I’ll keep y’all updated right here with screenshots and videos when they’re ready and if you’re lucky you might be able to pick up a pre-release version.

You might be asking yourself about the progress of Super Base Wars, you’ll be happy to know that development is going nicely but it is a very complicated game (I’m not going to say the most complicated 2D game ever, but sometimes I think it is) and it should be ready Q1 2014.

superbw

I’m bringing in some extra help to work on art assets so I can stick on the programming side. Regarding the pricing of Super Base Wars all I can say is it will be free with ads on some systems and it will be a one time payment on others. I’ll try to update you on Super Base Wars before November, but we’ll just see what kind of progress is made.

Until next time send me stuff at troy@triverske.net, let’s have a conversation about ray tracing or something.

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Super Base Wars – Experimental without a cause (Part one?)

On August 7, 2013   /   Super Base Wars   /   Leave a comment

My new favorite term is “avant-garde” which means innovative or experimental. I am accepting the consequences of trying to make the engine for Super Base Wars a little too avant-garde.

So one thing the 3D video game world has over the 2D counterpart is the ability to animate limbs rather than making an animation for every single action. So the other day I was thinking to myself and I was like, “Self, why don’t we try to make two dimensional video games have some of the features that the third dimension has to offer?”. And thus began a prolonged period of pain in my life.

Meet Crystal, my lovely armless test subject.

Meet Crystal, my lovely armless test subject.

So the idea worked initially as planned, which made me really pleased with myself. I simply could not figure out why people hadn’t attempted this s0rt of idea with this particular genre of game. However, it didn’t take long before it hit me, or rather I hit it.

And for my next trick, all of her limbs will not work well with wall collisions!

And for my next trick, all of her limbs will not work well with wall collisions!

Collisions, the bane of my existence (to date)

Here’s what’s happening in the picture: Every body part is separate from the others (like I wanted), but whenever I hit a wall the parts that are touching the wall stay in place, but the parts that aren’t touching the wall will continue moving since there’s no wall there to stop it.

After several late nights, a little too much caffeine, and not enough sleep I finally got my implementation working. Basically any time a body part hit a wall (the current 3 parts are the midsection, head, and legs) I needed to let the other parts know that they shouldn’t be moving. To do this I gave every limb a variable “colcheck” and when that variable is zero it means the limb isn’t colliding with a wall, but when it’s one it’s touching it. When any limb’s “colcheck” (no, not colon check) is one I made the x positions of the other two limbs the same as the one that’s colliding.

So what happens when more than one limb is colliding with the wall? The solution I came up with involves a hierarchy where limbs take priority over other limbs (head > feet > midsection) however it really didn’t matter what order I put them in.

Calculating the y position during a collision proved to be slightly more difficult though.

This could be one of those unsettling art pieces.

This could be one of those unsettling art pieces.

So then I reused my colcheck to test for the collisions, and whenever it detected one I set the y values of the different limbs in reference to where the colliding one is. For example if the head was colliding with a wall on top I would say to set the midsection’s y coordinate to be the head’s y coordinate minus 15 or so.

I’m sure I’ll run into more collision problems when I start putting in more animations/actions but until then I guess the game works as it’s supposed to!

 

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Welcome! Nothing quirky to say here yet

On August 7, 2013   /   General   /   Leave a comment

This is the blog of Troy Bonneau, if you were looking for a famous comedian, software developer, or synthesizer enthusiast I’m afraid I am far from well known and you must have been misguided on your way here.

What I do have to offer is the small adventures and random encounters as I go through life day by day, which apparently is sometimes interesting to others around me. If you want me to blog about something you have to tell me, as my telekinesis has been rather weak lately. (My email is troy@triverske.net and I check it daily) This blog is self funded, I’m not planning on putting adverts up as that’s just counterproductive with all of the users hooked on adblock these days. If you feel like I deserve money for writing random crap that happens to me then please see a psychiatrist and then consider purchasing any games/software/music albums I put out in the very far near future.

Thanks for visiting, I appreciate it

-Troy
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