Technically Thoughts

Delays

2011-09-17T22:12:00.001-04:00

Delays in production and blog posts are due primarily to Minecraft 1.8 and acquiring a new Android Tablet (the ASUS Transformer, the first one was DOA).

Blog posts are going to resume for Tuesday and Thursdays starting this week.

Platformer

2011-09-08T09:00:00.001-04:00

For my first project, I have decided to create a simple platformer. Platformer games are fairly straight forward, have simple puzzles and controls but hold a lot of potential for variety. Developing a platformer will also teach me to use my engine of choice more efficiently (thus, not only allowing for smaller load times and shorter development times while I go, "duuuuurrrrr").

For this, I chose a simple theme, escaping from a cavern. I did a thesaurus search and I found a word I like for a labyrinth: Skein. Skein is actually more a reference to a severe tangle than a physical place, but it seems appropriate. Furthermore, I learned a few things about Dionysus, the Greek God of wine, madness and epiphany. More specifically, Wikipedia gives me this description of him in the first paragraph:

Dionysus /daɪ.əˈnaɪsəs/ dy-ə-ny-səs (Greek: Διόνυσος, Dionysos) was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete.^[2] His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek.^[3]^[4]^[5] In some cults, he arrives from the east, as an Asiatic foreigner; and in others, from Ethiopia in the South. He is a god of epiphany, "the god that comes", and his "foreignness" as an arriving outsider-god may be inherent and essential to his cults. He is a major, popular figure of Greek mythology and religion, and is included in some lists of the twelve Olympians. His festivals were the driving force behind the development of Greek theater.

I like the idea of a god that made wine and was crazy. I also appreciated that no one knows where the heck Dionysus came from and thus my main character, with no back story or origins, is given what I perceive to be the modern version of the God's name: Dion.

Behold, the name of platformer will be "Dion's Escape from The Skein." I don't intend for it to be TOO original, but I'd like it to be at least interesting.

Reboot

2011-09-05T15:30:00.000-04:00

I have decided to "reboot" this blog towards something I'm finding I have a great interest, Video Game Creation.

I, of course, use the term "video game creation" fairly loosely. My current engine that I'm using to bridge the gap between my knowledge of programming and what I need to know to create a game is Construct 2. Construct 2 allows me to use a drag and drop format along with "humanized" terms to program behavior in a game. Although it has a LARGE variety of ready to go commands, there is still a lot of thinking that goes into it. Instead of say, programming by typing out if and when statements using whatever code I know, I can instead make references.

Translation:

If the right arrow key on the keyboard is pressed but the S key on the keyboard is not pressed:

Set Dion's animation to Run Right and simulate the controls for him to move his character/object right

If the S key IS pressed during this event (currently nothing happens)

If the left Arrow key on the keyboard is pressed but the S key on the keyboard is not pressed:

Set Dion's animation to Run Left and simulate the controls for him to move his character/object left.

The outcome of the above is the character, "Dion" moves to the right or the left on the screen as long as the S key is not pushed as well.

The above is a snippet from some controls for my character "Dion". Essentially, the program allows me to create events. I give the event conditions and actions based on those conditions. If you look closely, you can see that I have also designated "sub-events" for one of my events in which only in the case of the prior even occurring is the next event considered. Although this is CLOSE to what real programming is like, it takes the need for knowledge of syntax and form. You still need to think like a programmer, but you do not need the training of a programmer.