Holy!

Well!

It's been a while since I've posted anything up here... Not that I really have any readers yet.

Just a bit of news for now:

Notice the brand new title! We finally have a theme for the game and a bit of a backstory to go with it. Art will be coming soon, as we finally have an artist. For now, we're still stuck with my MS paint abilities.

Introducing... Edgar!

The game is finally starting to come together. Just about all of the features are implemented and ready to go in it's single player form. Online networked support is just about caught up to single player.

It's all getting closer and closer!

I've also built up a personal profile on Indie Freaks which can be seen HERE. Check it out for most of our future screenshots and videos.

Back to gaming!

I'm going to start this off with the funny fact that I have never owned an XBox 360 before I borrowed my bosses (I suppose I still don't, har har). Yet I'm building a game for XBox Live Indie Games.

The real point to that fact is that I suck with this controller and I am terrible at my own game...

I'm a PC gamer at heart. These analog sticks, buttons and triggers are no match for WSAD,12345,Ctrl,Shift and a mouse.... But alas! I'm afraid to even bother with creating PC games for the simple fact of piracy. Why make a game when the minute it becomes popular, it shows up in torrent sites.

Anyways, back to the points. I would love to know if other devs ever run in to the problem of being terrible at their own games.

Also, here's some video! I would recommend clicking the youTube logo and watching it there. Waaay better quality.

Oh Torque X... You silly bugger

Well... I've always seen people complain about Garage Games, or Torque by IA as it is now. They've always said how fickle they are and how they do a half-assed job.

Now, I half agree and I half don't agree with this.

I use Torque X, which anyone reading this who uses it will know TX did not get the love it needed or deserved. I'd say Torque built an awesome engine, which they did, but they failed to make it work... I've only used it for a year and a half but I've seen a ton of hopeful tid-bits from the staff that things will be better, they're going to fix it properly, they're going to do this and that. In the end they end-of-lifed it and moved on.

They decided to scrap their XNA 3.1 platform entirely to switch to an XNA 4.0 platform and totally focus on the new Windows Phone 7 (which is overhyped and a bit late in the game, iPhone and Android beat them to it). I can understand their intentions seeing as how Microsoft is putting a TON of money in to advertising to try to hype it as much as possible. I hope it works out, I'll be porting some of my games to Windows Phone 7 if it turns out to be reliable. In the mean time, Microsoft pushed XBox 360 to the backburner and Torque followed suit.

Now, we're left with some amazing forum community members who have taken it upon themselves to totally port Torque X 3.1 to the new 4.0 framework. Which is awesome! I can't thank these guys enough for taking one for the team and doing what Torque should have done (I think I forgot to mention that Torque will be charging for the new version of TX most likely, leaving us with a broken product). I'm gladly beta-testing and hopefully making a difference.

Cheers out to Pino and AlexR!


There's my two cents at least.

Enjoy the little things.

Ran through the first real test run today.

This is the first time any game I've made has been played by anyone other than myself. A nice little milestone.

My girlfriend and I had a 2 player match deployed on the XBox. Now, she's not a gamer in the least and she was laughing like a maniac so something must be right. I had no enemy cap and watching her flail around trying to get her orbs was priceless.

The point though, is that it was actually pretty fun to play. Now it's time to throw in some powerups, enemy attacks and, hopefully soon, some new art.

The most interesting thing I'm waiting for is to have my design team test play the game with full control over certain variables, enemy spawn time, damages, hit points and the like. Should make for good times. Hell, I enjoy playing with the little things.

And it's all coming together.

This is a beutifull time in game development...

When it all starts to actually feel like a game instead of just some primary features.

I've found this feeling at different points in my previous work-in-progress games. With Cosmic Lacrosse I got that feeling as soon as the bright flashing goal image came up and the players instantly teleport back to face-off positions.

Well wait. I suppose it's all the same because I have this feeling now with Cosmic Harvest when I can get all my points, get to my gate and then press a restart button.

I guess what it comes down to, for me at least, is the constant play feeling.

Prior to this update I've had to simply close the game, restart and begin anew. Now I simply press the replay button!


Replaying is definately a prime factor in this feeling of coming together that I have. Auto-spawning enemies definately helps as well. This is way more fun when I don't have to press B to spawn an enemy.


Anyways, here's some footage! I'm definately pumped to see all of these videos in reverse once the game is done.

Progress!

At last! Progress!

Of my indie game dev experience to date, the biggest setback to progress is the day job. But alas, bills need to be paid.

Enough whining though, on to some news. After a decent ammount of time spend today some difficulty is actually being worked out in the game. We now have enemies! (As harmless as they may seem) Not only that but attacks no longer fire through walls! Huzzah!

As a treat, here's some video of the latest build.

Twitter

Well... I finally caved and got a twitter account. Good for game publicity I suppose.

Mah first twitter

Design

I just have a quick thought to get down.

I just have to say, testing enemy creation is awesome. There's nothing like being able to spawn 100 guys at the touch of a button, make them all walk to one place and kill them all at once. Or make them all stationary and have to kill my way through them to get the points.

I'll put up a screenshot when I get home tonight.

Good times.

Hobby programming

I was on my way home from out of town today and I was thinking how strange it is to be a hobby coder.

Most of my coding takes place in 20-30 minute intervals when I have a bit of spare time. Depending on work I sometimes only get a change to sit down for 10 minutes a couple times throughout the day to put down a line of code or two for a function I've been working on.

It seems like a really wierd way to go but at the same time it's pretty productive. There's nothing like only having time for a few lines to make those few lines count.

It almost seems stranger yet to be able to put a good 6-8 hours straight coding or programming in general (planning, debugging and whatnot). Once in awhile I'll get around to devoting 3-4 hours of straight work and I find those always end up being the times when I spend  an hour and a half running through call stacks and engine source codes only to learn that I really just mucked up a variable. Always the optimist, however; I always find when I'm knee deep in engine source I always learn something neat that changes the way I look at my design.

As an indie developer without a budget, I've got that white hot image in my mind of when I get enough games under my belt to stick it out at home full time, 3-6 hours a few days a week and make ends meet.

But for now, I'm loving what I've got.

Cheers.

Network support on the way!

I have to say, the one thing I love about coding is that there is never, ever, a time when I will run out of things to learn. I can start most coding sessions wondering how in the hell I'm going to manage to pull off this new feature. Though, there's nothing like hours of research, forum hopping, reference reading and debugging to make a final product feel worth it.

At the same time, it's nice to have some code under my belt. It's great to start a new project, lay out my implementation design and think, "Well, I've done that before and can copy this from that project with little modification and that from this project with no modification..." etc.

Onward!

I'm finally getting a grasp on networking now. I've got my XBox and PC talking to eachother, sharing fantastic things like pickup positions, player positions and board layout. Awesome.

I can't wait to start getting some videos on here. Not yet though, we need real art.

This has definately been an interesting experience though. Sharing one monitor between two systems is interesting; especially while debugging. Tomorrow, however; I get that fancy 15-inch. Oh how life will be easier.

One day, my dream setup will be complete with Laptop, XBox, dual monitors and a PC to run the heavy stuff.

Networking!

Never before have I used any kind of networking in a game, so I'm taking this as no small victory!

However, it is kinda small. After an hour or so of mucking around through resource docs and lots of trial and error I've finally got my computer talking to my xbox over a networked gaming session.

It's nothing more than "Hello, what's your name?" but it's a step in the right direction. I think my biggest setback for now is that I have to unplug my computer from my monitor to plug in the vga from the xbox. It's definately an interesting setup but a new monitor is on the way! Lucky a friend of a friend has a 15 inch that was given to him and he's going to give to me!

Oh, living as a starving artist (can you call a programmer an artist?... I think so.).

That's all for now. It's time to get this game talking to itself.

Writing is hard!

Man!

Having never written a blog before, this is tough to find things to talk about without discussing code. Afterall that is my speciality.

Anyways, the creation of games has struck me as funny. Looking back at some of my previous games, at the progress from day 1 with my MS Paint placeholder art to the most recent releases with proper art and some real functionality blows me away. It also makes me wonder where this game will lead me.

I've already learned some new ideas and I'm only on day two. AI is my newest hurdle I've hit with my games. Pathfinding is where I stand now. I have a decent a* build from Arabian Knights. I thought it would be easy to port to this game but BEHOLD! It turns out grid based movement with "walls" has to be thought of backwards.

Check this screenshot (I love MS Paint.. or rather Paint.net):

The grid base I made doesn't actually have walls. (You can see the cell sizes from some wierd tile bleeding, still working on it.)

Every tile has a wall on one side, and the tile beside it has to match that wall with it's own wall.

So, I've got corners, hallways, ends (walls on 3 sides) and just straight walls. With these tiles, I've built this.

As far as pathfinding goes, instead of looking to the next tile and checking whether it is walkable or not, it has to look at the first tile, check which direction it's going and then decide (based off of which tile it is) whether it can go in that direction.

Took me two or three hours or so to re-vamp my basic a* but she's up and running.

I was tempted to scrap the whole thing today. I just about made the cells half the size and paint in walls in to full cells, thus being able to use my regular a* but I figured since I was almost done, there's nothing like adding more styles in to your code base.

Well that's a wrap.

Day 1...ish.

Tyler here. I'm the sole programmer and will be doing most of the posting here.

This will be the first time I've put any work in to the game. I figured I'd try getting this ball rolling first.

We started hashing this game out a long time ago, we had ideas and features and all that jazz. But alas, things went stale with a lack of programmer (myself being busy at the time). Now though, I've got some time!

We've now gone back to the idea's roots and begun anew. The old ideas have been scrapped (or put on hold, only time will tell) and now we're back at square one. Well, at least square two since I know which direction we're going in so I can actually get started.

Cosmic Harvest will be releasing on XBox Live Indie Games. Hopefully before the end of the year.
We're looking at keeping things classic at Cosmic Logic. Back to old styles, where games were actually fun and not just hacking off heads with lots of blood flying around. We're doing our best to put gameplay first. There's nothing like a little flash thrown in at the end however.

If you like competitive arcade-style games, powerups, distractions running around and punching your friends in the face while you run for the goal, keep tuned in to this blog.

Time to get to work I suppose.

Well, here we go!

Welcome to the first post of this blog.

Honestly, I've never written a blog before, let alone a dev blog.  Here's to new beginnings and hopes of improvement.

Check back here for news and updates to Cosmic Harvest.... Name in progress.