So a whole lot of nothing has happened since my last post. The podcast I used to do started back up and promptly died not long after; I actually got something “Playable” working in XNA (Sort of); and I spent two weeks doing nothing but playing Persona 4 Golden. Which I have NO REGRETS ABOUT WHAT SO EVER.

Other than that, a friend of mine is building a website using ASP.NET, and seeing as I’m interested in getting the fuck off WordPress, I’m started looking into it as well. Albeit, he’s doing in pure code, I’m more likely to go down the Web Forms route which has more of a GUI when it come to customization. If you’ve used WPF in Visual Studio, basically that. Just to minimize the amount of programming work and to build something usable quickly.

Not that I have anything against WordPress, but the lack of customization for things like fonts or backgrounds really drives me nuts. Unless I wanted to change it in the CSS file for the template I’m using, but I would rather just build something from scratch and add whatever I needed when I need it, and have a much deeper level of customizability. Not to mention I have to go around WordPress to host my own files because they have a upload limit, despite the fact that I’m the one hosting them on a server that I am paying for.

And guess what, remember that game I was supposed to be working on with a few people I know? Well it got cancelled, but you can see the work I did for it here. I really hope this doesn’t become a habit, because I really want something to my name other than failed ideas and broken down projects.

Later.

-Adam

So about 2 years ago I helped do a few episodes of a podcast known as “Union Report”, and then everything went to Hell and we never did another one. Now the podcast is reborn under the name MGCast.

MGCast – 03/03/2013: Fridge ain’t here, man!

Feel free to subscribe to it and such. I’ve added an RSS feed to it on the right side of every page anyway, so I won’t be posting about it again.

It does feel great to do a podcast after this long though, hopefully we can keep to the schedule this time.

-Adam

I bought one. I said I was going to and I did. All things aside, this is a really slick device. It feels much better in my hands than the PSP ever did. The inclusion of dual-analogue sticks is a serious improvement also. Persona 4 Golden feels fantastic on the system because of it (Although it being an awesome game in it’s own right helps).

What I got when I first got the system.

So starting the system up in the first place didn’t take too much time in comparison to something like the PSP or even the PS3, Probably took about 10 minutes at most for the initial setup. General stuff; setting the time, connecting to the Wi-Fi, so on. Then there was an update I had to install that took 20 minutes, but actually installed as it downloaded, so already an improvement over the PS3 in terms of that.

Thereafter, I finally get to the main screen, and it’s your typical “Lets cover the whole thing with shortcut symbols to apps” that every mobile device does these days (Thank you Apple, you’ve ruined UI design forever), albeit there are some shortcuts faster ways of navigating if you want it. Pressing the PS button to bring up the multi-paned interface showing all open windows is an example. Reminded me of the Xbox Blade interface that was on the X360 when it first came out.

After a few weeks with it, I think I have finally perfected the interface for my uses. I essentially have it so that games are at the top along with the PSM Dev, PS Store, Friends, etc. On the second level is all the communication apps, Skype and such; and then on the last level is all the apps that came pre-built on the system or stuff I never use; Near, Maps, E-Mail, etc. This layout system to work fine for me. I only ever use the top layer when I use the thing outside, mostly to launch Persona 3 Portable.

Some time and a bit of tweaking later…

Speaking of features, there’s a significant step-up from what the PSP offered, but that’s expected seeing as the market is considerably different in scope and user demand. But the general idea of it being primarily for games is still there, but the other media options continue their presence and are perfectly welcome. I’m partially fond of the new camera and video capture options, albeit the camera does not have a resolution that’s even remotely on par with most phones, but some condescensions had to be made after all. For £215, it’s a seriously low price when you consider most phones are £400-£600 when all is said and done (Referring to contracts).

Social aspects certainly play a more prominent role here. Every time I boot a game or look at my friends list, I can scroll down and see their current activity throughout their games; trophy lists, whether or not it’s their first time playing, and much more. It reminds me of Steam’s community hub that one might see when clicking on that item in the window, and how it displays a similar (but slightly more in-depth) feed page.

Multi-application support is a significant step up from what the PSP had.

 But back to multi-tasking for a second, because it is one of the more impressive features when compared to the PSP and PS3. I can press the PS Button to practically pause any game, bring up the web browser and start YouTube videos, and then go back to the game and continue from where I left off; AND THAT’S AWESOME!

OK, I realise any smartphone has been able to do that for a few years now. But it does impress me nonetheless. The fact that the multi-tab idea of the PC interface is starting to become more and more a part of nearly every device is certainly an improvement; and in regards to the Vita, this can used for some awesome stuff.

Take for example Persona 4 Golden, you’re going to want to use a wiki for a good chunk of that game. And the ability to pause, check the Internet, and jump right back in; all within minutes, maybe even seconds, is crazy awesome and useful.

Speaking of games, I gotta disagree with some ideas that there is a serious lack of content. After one look in the store, I saw plenty of games. The problem is that a good chunk of them were part of PlayStation Mobile, so very people know where to look. And they don’t look bad at all, some seemed very impress, and I can’t wait to get better at programming in C# so I can get a chance to have a crack at that stuff

The screenshot feature is a nice touch. Here’s some Persona 4 Golden for you.

Also, I have Persona 4 Golden, a 100 hour JRPG, I’m pretty much set for the rest of the year with that alone. But you add on top that most of the PSP games on the store can be played on the Vita, that’s a ton of content! And they are more comfortable on the Vita than the original PSP, partly due to the improved form-factor and shape.

Overall, I’m a lot more impressed with this device that I initially theorised. It’s a solid machine, I really hope Sony support it and market appropriately, so there can be a larger install base, which will lead to even more content. Furthermore, I am really interested in PSM now that XNA has been killed off.

That’s all. Sorry for the month long delay, I kinda forgot about this place… And real-life for that matter. Persona 4 is a a Hell of a game.

-Adam

This is going to be a short one. The site is going to get a new coat of paint in the coming months; I’m going to modify the themes and put in more graphical elements into the pages. Second thing, remember that text-adventure? Well I’ve literally just finished it and I’ll upload it soon to it’s project page.

In terms of other stuff, I’m going to be taking all of my finished design documents and putting them into a presentable document. Some of these projects are still in-progress, so you may not get to see them for a while.

And finally, in terms of general stuff; I might not have mentioned this last time, but I now have an Android Tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 – 7.0. And the first thing that pops into my mind is how bad user interfaces have become. Going more for flashy graphics, rather than practically, speed, or ease of use. I’ll do a more detailed overview next time.

Thanks to Giant Bomb’s Persona 4 Endurance Run, I’m now extremely interested in buying a PlayStation Vita. Not just for Persona 4 Golden, mind; but also to utilize PlayStation Mobile which I only recently remembered was actually a thing.

Anyway, sorry for being brief and very general about things; but I just wanted to post a couple of things and then go to sleep. Later.

-Adam

Sorry about the lack of posts during the Xmas break, I had work to do and games to play.

Speaking of which, lets talk some game design. I generally tend to go for more mechanically heavy games, it gives variation to my approach to the problem and generally gets rid of the possibility of repetition within the game. Thing is, games like this take time to make and can be generally be buggy as Hell because it’s damn near impossible to test every possible combination of mechanics for every single problem. But you probably know this.

I’ve been thinking about this and the best solution I can think of is to break up everything even more than it is, and put in place the systems that would allow them to react naturally to each other. I’ll step back for a second and explain. When I was looking at the design document for a future game, I noticed I had planned a lot of systems and ideas that would have to react to each other. Essentially, there would be a whole bunch of weapons than have different abilities and purposes, along with a bunch of elemental effects that would cause special attacks. Enemies would also react to the different weapons and certain elemental attacks. It’s a confusing system.

How I’m thinking of breaking it up is defining all the elements as their own objects, and they affect everything else, then define how everything else acts depending on each element. Sort of like “When this weapon is given this element it works like this” or “This enemy is weak to this” and so on. Then all I have to worry about is the collision and the ridiculous multi-tier animation structure.

So remember that game I said I was working on with 4 others? Well one of the guys bailed and ended up talking the main programmer into putting the project on hold till later in the year. So it won’t happen until further notice and we still need an artist. Great… This is the exact same shit I have dealt with over and over again. People constantly undermining themselves to the point of turning away from a project, and generally screwing everyone else they were working with. As soon as I can get my head around the basis of programming and move on to XNA and such, I’ll probably end up making it myself. It’s not the same game I was talking about earlier in the post by the way, it’s a mobile project, much smaller in scope.

So yeah, that’s what has been kicking around in my brain the past few weeks. There’s quite I few games I wish to play in the next couple of weeks, so don’t be surprised if I don’t post for a while. Later.

-Adam

So the last post was about a month ago? How the time flies.

I haven’t been doing too much. I’m back in the game of “Finding a person to work with on a project for the sake of having something to do”, and this it should actually get somewhere. Albeit, it’s actually four people I’m working with now. My original idea I proposed got “Put on hold” till January or February, instead we’re taking on of the mechanics and using that to make a much smaller game. I still have to do another design doc for it though.

Since I last did one of these, I’ve done a fair amount of coursework, one of which got marked up today. There’s also been a huge amount of tests, which is really worrying me. To think that exams still exist for computing courses, blows my mind. Coursework proves as a more accurate judge of these things; both in the amount of work, and the conditions that people work in. You’re never going to be in an exam-style condition at any point in your life, except an exam! Why continue to do thing like this? Make it similar to a BTEC course, it would be more interesting and informative, and far more effective at pushing independent learning.

Anyway, on the game’s front, a Steam sale came and went, I got a ton of stuff out of it. The only two games I actually played from that were “Spec Ops: The Line” and “FTL: Faster Than Light” (The latter was a gift). Then I bought “Far Cry 3″, and I’m currently on “Assassin’s Creed III”. I would talk about them more in detail, but I’m afraid you’re just going to have to wait for the MGCast… Whenever we actually get around to doing one of those.

That’s it for now.

-Adam

Back when I had a blog on GameTrailers.com (All of which is now gone), I used to post stuff about games I was playing and odd gameplay design ideas. You know, stuff. I’m thinking about bringing it back for the sake of it.

Anyway, I finished the first episode of The Walking Dead game from Telltale. It’s pretty good, it does everything I thought Mass Effect should have been doing, with characters actually remembering your actions and the things you say. The gameplay isn’t anything mind-blowing, but it doesn’t have to be; the story pushes the player forward while minimizing the amount of crap one have to do in other games. Not to say it doesn’t have it’s fair share of QTEs (Which I hate. Might tell the full story of that sometime) and some control issues. Luckily it’s rather forgiving so it doesn’t bother me too much. Still, I got plenty more to see of this game.

Alright, so I got Visual Studio C# Express and XNA Studio 4.0 on this rig now. This means I should be good to go on future pieces of work and other projects. Speaking of which, the Text-Based Adventure game is still being worked on. I have a story in mind and I’m gonna make it up as I go along. That being said, the way I’m currently getting it to work right now is by using a shit-load of “if” statements; I’m trying to figure out a simpler way of doing this, but I have no idea what I should use.

Anyway, that’s about it. I’m gonna try and do at one post every week or so, and a massive post at least once every month. I think I’ll keep the latter for gaming/game design related items, maybe some news stories that are worthwhile. Later.

-Adam

Right, so where do I begin with this?

Well I should note that I did not do much programming during the event. My team-mates were much better than me at understanding and using the software. I did help put up the assets and make sure that the gameplay stayed close to our ideas.

At 11am on Saturday, I turned up to the lab and set my stuff down and waited for my team-mates. Watched some of the Double-Fine Kickstarter Documentary while I waited. When they got there some time later, we set up Visual Studio and set up XNA, also writing up the pseudo-code. You can see pictures of our work station in the previous blog.

At around 11.30am, we got a lecture that officially started the event. From here on out, I’ll instead post the time spent in hours instead of the actual time. It was a long night, it’s hard for me to remember these things.

At about an hour-and-a-half later, Rob Miles gave a lecture on developing in XNA, especially in regards to Windows Phone development, and pointed out specific pieces of code that we should use to get certain ideas to work. He also uploaded the code for the teams to use. The thing was, the solutions he put up did not actually load properly into Visual Studio, so we had to base it on a previous piece of code he had given out. This was probably a bad idea, man.

So at around 4 hours into it, we lost our code after trying to save the solution. Luckily, 10 minutes later we managed to recover it. We wouldn’t have lost much, the characters and items were not implemented yet and the code would not even compile properly.

At the 7 hour mark, our code was incredibly butchered in comparison to rob Miles’ original code, and our character was still not moving. We realised that what Rob originally wrote wasn’t going to work for us; our game operated in a completely different way, we did not understand many of the coding practices that he was using. It was very confusing at this point in time.

At around 9 hours, we got pizza. A lot of pizza. Like, 45 boxes worth of pizza. 30 minutes later, we got the main character (The Spider) animated, as well as the “Power Bar”. the two were actually interlocked, so when the Power Bar animated so did the Spider. Which was really cool to look out, until you realised that the Spider couldn’t actually move. Of course, that was fixed around the 10 hours mark. It wasn’t a particularly good-looking movement path, but it worked. Essentially just translated the Power Bar progress to move the Spider across the screen a given amount, and then drop down and hopefully hit the coin pick-up. Still better than nothing I guess.

At around 12 hours and 30 minutes, the “Dragons” were added into the game. This was much easier to implement, they flew across the screen  and would gradually speed up as the player progressed in level. There was a odd glitch where the sprite was put in such a way that is was flying backwards and upside-down. We made a joke in reference to one of Skyrim’s patches that caused a similar bug.

At around 13-and-a-half hours, the game was finally playable. At this point we were making necessary adjustments to the gameplay, and were thinking about multiple levels. That ultimately never happened due to time limitations.

At 20 hours we started trying to put in the sounds. Unfortunately, Dr. Miles did not explain the code for inputting the sound files. It took us another hour before one of my team-mates came back from his break and fixed the issue in a few minutes.

At the 22 hour mark, we made the final alterations to some of the graphical elements, made a proper “Game Over” and “Welcome” screens, and finally “Finished” the game. Technically speaking, we realised we ran out of time and knew that we couldn’t implement all of what we wanted, so we made it as “Playable” as possible, despite the fact that the overall gameplay was not all that engaging.

Well, we did not win, but that doesn’t matter. Even though making the game was frustrating in parts, the general vibe of the event was great. People having Nerf fights, the free pizza, the annoying assholes behind us using the Kinect to make their game with horrific and extremely irritating music. Awesome. Totally doing it next year, but I’ll probably learn XNA more before then, and get some serious templates made so that we don’t get caught off like that again.

That’s all that I remember or at least all that I can really comment about. Later.

-Adam

An odd set of words, but yes, that’s what I got for my selection during the Three thing Game Auction. Actually, I already have a few ideas of what I would like to do to it. Currently I’m floating on an idea to do a turn-based strategy game, with platforming/combat elements when the player lands on something. It might be a bit too mechanically complicated to build in a 24-hour time period; luckily I have other, simpler ideas.

I’ll be posting design documents and some coding stuff for that after the event, maybe on Sunday or Monday. Even if we do have to use one of my other ideas, the concept of a turn-based multiplayer game with actual gameplay sections that are engaging and fun to play; seems like an interesting idea. Might use it for something. Our team name is “Team HAL 9000″ by the way. Both as an homage to Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (Yes, I know it was originally a book), and because our names are Hal, Adam, and Lukas.

As for my text-based adventure game, it’s coming along. And by that I mean the first “Question” has been set with the multiple pathways to the other questions. That being said, I’ve learnt a bit more code since I wrote that part, and might need to re-do it at some point. I should at least finish it some point after this weekend.

I will also be adding projects to my “Current” page soon too, and a picture of my ugly mug to my “About” page.

Later.

-Adam