Moving outside.

Well. Here we are. Another week by and no progress. To be fair, it is half way through the term and midterm season. As I said last week, I wanted to show you outside my little testing building. 

So here it is. My little test building with a fake second floor and stairs to bring it out to the street.



I started to expand the street, adding buildings and making it look like an actual world.



Some of the buildings are made by me, and some are ripped straight from City 17. I'm sure it's hard to tell which is mine and which isn't. The Source Engine is really good at making linear object, and it's apparent if you stop to look at any building or structure made in the engine. This can of course be used to your advantage.



I even added an alley way with a little nook behind a building, mainly because I can. I have plans to expand on the roads and have it move into a courtyard area similar to that in the main sequence of city 17. I have a small story written out that would make up a small mod. It wouldn't be anything special with custom shaders or improved AI or anything. If anything, I can probably get my hands on some custom models and maybe better textures.. but of course, I need a world to put them in first.

There's something really satisfying about walking around in the world you create. Add some node graphing to have your squad follow you around and you feel like your world is actually becoming something. I plan on my mod being a couple of maps and I'm far from having something to show off for it. Hopefully this next week will be a bit better and I can work on expanding my map, or at least do some Codecademy.

Starting in a building.

This week turned out to be more time consuming and stressful then I thought it would be. Two midterms and lack of time to keep up with homework, but here we are at the end of the week. For my first progress post, I'll show you how I started learning the Source Engine with a basic building interior. Keep in mind, this is just the walls with textures and entities. I haven't put decals or props or anything fancy to decorate the rooms, but that would be a good thing to practice.



It started with a room to spawn in and fill with dev textures, weapons, and ammo. The metrocop is there to test the Gordon Pre-Criminal Ai. This those first few minutes of HL2 where Civil Protection just stands around and whack you if you get too close.



Then it expanded. Several more standard rooms on the right and the left leading towards a large room. This is where I started experimenting with lighting and the different effects they can make. Each room isn't an example or showcase or anything, they are more just seeing what I can do.



Flickering lights, textures that do sorta well together, and working doors.



In the large room I used for different examples of lighting but now it has become a Combine Spawn/Fighting room. The soldiers you see are friendly to the player and I set them to follow said player in a squad-like formation. I've been trying to figure out how to get the squad displayed and command-able, like citizens and rebels, but I'm still working on that.

I don't think I'll forget the moment of joy and satisfaction I got when I first node graphed my building. Without the node graph, my combine squad didn't know how to get to me and I would have to let them see me and then have them follow me around. I set up the node graphs and forgot they were set to follow me. I spawned in the map and heard a door open a few seconds later. Before I knew it, a combine squad was running at me and reporting for duty. I loved that they were smart enough to have a mind of their own and find me on the other side of the building, even opening 3 doors to get to me. Now they can follow me throughout the entire building and outside.

So that's my first actually Source progress post. Like I mentioned, I want to do these weekly as a way to motivate me to keep going, but University takes its toll. Next week I can show off my work outside, or researching other successful mods.

Never enough time.

Oh Boy has it been awhile, but I haven't forgotten about you. As a full time University student who spends his free time doing homework and babysitting, I don't have the time to make too much progress. Here we are in the fourth week of the term and I'm doing my best to keep on top of my work while babysitting, but I think I might have enough free time to get back into this.

I have tons of game ideas I'd love to make a reality. Most of them aren't too original and probably have too large of a scope, but I think it's worth it as long as I start out small. After that pong clone I got to work on a Mario clone (and by clone I mean an exact recreation) but I hit a few roadblocks and couldn't find the time or motive to get back into it. I tried out using GameMaker but it didn't appeal to me. Yes the drag and drop system was easy to use, but I felt like it was always holding me back in a way a script wouldn't. Plus, 2D games don't have that large of an appeal to me.

So where am I now? Well I'm working with the Source Engine. Dated, harder to work with, and a lot more technical, I'm starting to get a hang of the basics. So far I've focused mainly on building a map. I'm choosing to stick with the Source engine because making a mod with nearly all the assets and programming already done is much more preferable then starting from scratch with Unity3D and trying to figure out how to get their free assets to work together to make something decent. Plus, I love Half-Life and it's universe.

So here we are. I'm back again because Raghav from Black Shell Media told me to be more accountable for the projects I start and need to make a habit out of making progress, and that's what this blog is for. So you (random person on the internet) can hold me accountable for my projects. My goal as I state here now: Post on this blog weekly and have something to show for it.

Until next time!

-Dr.N

Pong: My first game.

Here we are with my first completed game, a Pong clone. Through the use of tutorials and online guides, I was able to recreate almost every aspect of Pong, but tutorials can only take you so far. It took some tinkering and figuring out with Unity to get this final product and I was entirely worth it as it is a great learning experience.

Here is a video preview of my game.

It has almost everything the /r/GameDev recommends:

• Two Paddles, one AI controlled and one player.
• In my case, both can be controlled or one AI controlled.
• Collision to keep everything in the field.
• A ball that is able to collide and score appropriately.
• You can win/lose at 10.
• Comes with a menu for your game mode.
• An exit button to get back to the menu.
• Keeps track of the score.
• Restarts the ball after someone scores.
• Plays sounds.

If you feel so inclined as to download the game, I'll leave a link at the bottom. If you'd like to see the tutorials I used, I'll link those down at the bottom as well. The next game /r/GameDev recommends "should be as big as Super Mario Brothers." Having not seriously sitting down and playing these games, I will probably need to get some research done before this production can begin.

Download: Link

Helpful Links: http://unity.grogansoft.com/

http://www.awesomeincu.com/tutorials/unity-pong/

http://noobtuts.com/

My First Game (So far)

After months of debate on what I was going to do, and the lack of motivation, I decided to should make SOMETHING to get started in the world of game development. Looking up where to start, I went to Reddit's /r/gamedev . Their FAQ recommended to start with the simplest game out there, Pong, so that's what I did.

Using noobtuts.com was a great way to start off with Unity. It showed me how to add all the assets, create collision boxes, and get everything working with a few C# files. You may notice that mine looks a little different then on the tutorial, and that's true. The tutorial gives you the basic game, but there is still more to be done to make it a "full game." Here is what I've done so far to improve on it and make it my own.

• I added sound effects so whenever the ball bounces off something, it makes the classic noise.
• Adjusted the camera and sizing of the objects to look more like the original
• Made it so the ball increases speed over time to increase difficulty.

These things may not seem like much, but it is very gratifying to complete a new feature and look at your work. I don't want to make this some flashy/funny version of Pong, I just want to recreate the original the best I can that way I can move on to a new project. But, I have work to do first. I need to...

• Add scoreboard/scoring
• Add a sort of AI mode to play against the computer
• Add a menu to select mode and also lead to some sort of credits.

After all that is complete, I can call it "done" and move onto something a bit more challenging, a Mario clone perhaps.