Sunday, March 24, 2013

Arcade games for Cert III students.

I'm concerned when it comes time for the students to make their own games based on Balloon Pop, Pong, Space Invaders, Path Finder and a Super Epic Man they wont understand how to do it.  Even though I've been teaching them scripting every single week, it takes time to become a game developer, and more importantly a problem solver.

So I've been working on my own versions of games they could make if they try to modify the code.  I've already completed a conversion of Pong to Breakout.  ( about 8 hours over the last 6 weeks ).   I've been doing it during class time while students work from the book, so they can see how I convert the game.  I was surprised to find one student was copying me, and had almost got the point I had in the first week.

That's completed now and shows how to convert Pong using the same graphics into a brick breaking game.

The next one I'm going to work on is Space Invaders but I plan to make a vertical shooter with it in the popular style of "Bullet Heck" or Danmaku which is the evolution of the shooter into a game where the player spends most of their time dodging the patterned spray of bullets from boss enemies.

http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Danmaku

For the AI pathfinding tutorial I'm going to show them an old game called Mikie.  It was also called Bovver Boy, and involves moving a student around classrooms and hallways, trying to avoid the teacher and the janitor.


It's a good one for the students because they can focus on character as present with each student, the teacher and the environment, and it shows a simple but challenging integration of AI path finding in a game other than Pacman.

I was also thinking about using Pengo for a path finding example too, but the complication of sliding blocks and matching combinations of blocks might be too hard for the students.















I've also been looking at some other alternatives and what I would like to do in the future is present these games (Dr Do, Bobble Bubble, Bomber Man and Dig Dug) to students as an exercise every couple of weeks and see if they can map out the functional specification for the each game - i.e. how they would program it.

Multiplayer for UNity


Started at 3:15 PM Sunday 24th March 2013.
(spent 30 mins on this so far)

Spending my Sunday arvo looking into SmartFox for Unity with the hopes to set up a tutorial for the students to set up a simple multiplayer game.  I guess the only issue is going to be the TAFE network blocking the ports.
http://www.smartfoxserver.com/labs/API/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD9RxZaXByo

Will report back later.

Found a couple of other links.
http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/Networked%20Multiplayer.html
http://www.m2h.nl/files/M2H_Networking_Tutorial.pdf

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Info about using FONTs

Here's a link that discusses it.  Basically if it's embedded ie you can't extract it, just look at it, it costs nothing.  However if you ship the font with a product you need to get a license.

http://xboxforums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/11511.aspx

Re: Fonts and bitmap images

 CDarklock:

I went to larabiefonts.com (which I was happy to find is still there), clicked around, downloaded a few of his newer fonts from myfonts.com, and pulled a license file from the newer fonts. It was the same license. So I headed back to his site and pulled the help file, to see if he covered font embedding - and he did (all emphasis mine):
Q: I want to use Larabie Fonts in my software application. What should I do?
A: Determine whether you intend to embed or include the font(s) in your software.
Embedded fonts: the end user only view the fonts on-screen or print text from the screen.
If the embedded fonts are selectable (part of a selection of fonts) you must include the original font name and trademark in your software credits or documentation and on your website, if possible. Never alter the name of our fonts without our permission.
Embedded fonts that are not user selectable don’t need to include the font name or trademark but we would appreciate inclusion of our URL in the software credits or documentation and or on your website, if possible. Never alter the name of our fonts without our permission.
Embedding Larabie Fonts in any format is free of charge and you don’t need our permission for embedding them in your software.


Just a warning -- it looks like the license for these fonts has changed.  The new answer to that question reads:
Q: I want to use Larabie Fonts in my software application. What should I do?
A: A. If you want to distribute Larabie fonts with applications, whether web-based, or shipping as standalone products for PCs, Macs, game consoles or other devices, you need an extended use license. Please contact Ascender Corporation. They take care of Larabie Fonts licensing, including OEM and customized versions.
I'm still grappling with how to handle the font issue -- I don't really like any of the free-to-use XNA fonts, and I'm still reeling from the sticker shock of the $2500 quote I got for embedding a font from another foundry.  I like some of the Larabie font choices, so I'll probably contact Ascender to find out more about their licensing options.



Created video tutorials to assist 3d modelling class.

From Thursday 14th March 8:30 pm - 10:30 pm,  Friday 15th March 7:30 - 9:30 pm, then finally Sunday 17th March 6:30 - 8:30 pm (6 hours total), I research, tested and implemented several techniques for students to convert their 3dsmax characters to work in Unity to help the Diploma Games students in their 3d Modelling class.  It was apparent that in the lecture (not mine) they had trouble getting their characters in to Unity, so in consultation with their lecturer I developed 6 video tutorials and a handful of assets to demonstrate the technique to put the characters in.

Pathfinding, GUI and Combat

Yesterday (20th March 2013) I started working on research for putting pathfinding, GUI and combat into Unity for the students. I worked from 2:30pm to 7:00pm then 7:30pm to 12:00am (10 hours -phew!) researching and developing software to allow the students to move enemy to find the player, GUI technology to show score, ammo and health on their display and then mount a gun and fire projectiles.

Below are some screen shots of the work.

Attached is the resource I developed.

This is part of the code to allow the enemy to find any object the student wants to drop into its properties.

This is more of the code and is called every 3 seconds to relocate the player.

Here is the path finding in action, using a Grid Graph to draw a path to the player.

The student is instructed to attach a gun to the player, then add a nozzle displaced along the barrel  to provide a launch point for the bullets.
With the gun socketed to the player object and the projectile code in place the player can now loose off a few rounds.


Using NGUI the student can easily customise their own UI to meter vital statistics in the game.
Once the student has exported the font they want, they can the assign it to an Atlas map and place UI elements into the game.