3D Asteroids

This is a project for the game design and development class that I had in June. Students had to implement a 3d version of a classic game, using Gamebryo and Maya. Here me and James chose to do Asteroids. James did all the art, I did all the programming. We had a 3d model of the player’s ship, a model for the asteroids that was scaled according to the size of the asteroids, a big and a small enemy ship, a model for the missiles, and two different kinds of billboards. One for the stars, which gave a 3d feel to the environment, and one for the explosions.

When we got very close to the deadline, the game was playable but it didn’t have any sound or explosions. The explosions were something that we knew we should implement if we wanted a better game, so we were looking for ways to do that. We definitely didn’t have enough time to learn Gamebryo’s particle system, so we decided to use billboards. Basically an explosion is a quad that always faces the camera, and grows big and small very quickly. The quad’s texture has fire drawn on it, so the final effect looks like an explosion.

On the other hand, Gamebryo was supposed to come with Miles Audio System, so we thought that we could use that for sound. Nevertheless, our version of Gamebryo did not have this audio system so we all supposed that we would not implement sound, because the game was due the next day anyway… However, our professor told us to implement sound using FMOD, and everybody panicked because people had still not implemented basic features in their games and now they had to do sound as well. I also heard that a group was writing code for six hours, trying to implement the sound system using Miles Audio, and after these six hours they hit compile… Of course they found out that all this time they spent was lost without reason… I don’t understand how people can write code for hours and then try to compile their projects… I feel that code should be written in small units that can be easily tested, before going for the whole application. Anyway…

I was worried about the sound system too, but it turned out to be fairly straightforward. I think I finished it in 2 hours or something, and it worked pretty well. It’s true that sound really changes the feel of a game. If you are an amateur game programmer DO NOT NEGLECT SOUND! It totally changes things. Now we had missiles firing all over the place, aliens squealing, loud explosions…

While working on this project, I started using some ideas I had more systematically. First of all I started using the singleton pattern. However I only use it for managers. The sound manager, the game manager, etc. We shouldn’t overuse it. Also I understood inheritance better. The game is fully based on inheritance. There is a GameObject, and everything you see in the game inherits from GameObject. That was a very flexible system that is extremely extensible. This way I can add a new feature in the game in very little time – I just need to write an update function, a draw function, and a collision response function and we’re set. And this makes sense… You need to specify what the object is going to do in the game, how is it going to look like and what its behaviour is going to be when it collides with something. That’s the way we did explosions too. We just added a new GameObject and told it to grow and shrink in 2 seconds… Easy.

Coden – Game Engine

After graduating from Penn and getting back home I decided to create my own game engine. The reason for this is that I regularly get new ideas for games that I want to make, and I am excited to start coding the gameplay part of the game, because this is the most fun part to me. But when I start thinking about all the things that I have to implement first, like input, graphics, managers etc I get so bored that I simply drop the idea… One could argue that I could use an existing engine like Ogre 3D or Gamebryo, but the thing is that I need an engine that will contain other systems too except graphics and input… For example AI, Event Managers, Sound, Networking, Scripting etc. And I want to use a SINGLE math library for a change, not 3 or 4 different ones just because the game will consist of 4 different API’s.

Also I want to learn about various things like Scene Graphs. And I believe that the only way to really learn is to start making something on your own. The name that I came up with for the engine is Coden. It comes from CODe studios ENgine.

So far I have implemented a math library that supports quaternions, matrices, vectors, transforms and the like. Also I embedded Lua for my script engine. In addition, I created some AI systems like steering behaviors, some physics integrators like euler or RK4, and a few loaders like a 3ds loader. I am currently working on the scene graph, which is harder than I thought… But it’s getting there.

If you want to look at the code you can visit my Google Code project called coden at http://code.google.com/p/coden/ .

Cheers!

My life as a junior games developer

It’s been a while since my last post, but I guess not many people read it anyway. I’m a very good friend of a few bots lately though! So for the last 3 months I’ve been a Junior Tools Programmer at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. I can safely say that this has been one of the best experiences in my life so far… One thing I noticed is the amount of knowledge one aquires when working, compared to just doing this for a hobby. Even if you don’t feel like doing much, you learn something just by observing others.. I can’t talk about the game I’m working on but I assure you that it’s going to be a hit when it’s released…

The offices are in central London which is a very vibrant place. Lots of people walking in the streets ALL the time and generally the area has a nice feel. Luckily I live next to very good friends of mine and that makes the whole experience more pleasant. The weather sucks though… It’s raining almost every day… So far I’m ok with it but later on it might become a little depressing..

You might be wondering why do I tell you this.. Well I’m a guy who started programming without anybody else giving me tips or advice. I spent all of my years as a student wondering what’s the right way to do things.. And this blog is for all you guys who dream about becoming a game developer some time. I just want to let you know that it is not impossible and all it really takes is hard work and patience. If you are a student there will be times when you just want to quit. If you are working on another part of computer science you might be discouraged to start something new. But once you overcome all the obstacles believe me;  it’s worth it.

There are a thousand web sites giving tips on how to “break into the industry”. How to make a good demo.. Saying how awsome game development is compared to working on databases or other subjects. And I always felt that this creates an impression that this is an elite industry, almost impossible to get into. I always felt discouraged when I was reading these articles… My advice to you, and by you I mean the guy or girl who feels inadequate, untalented and mediocre, is this: feeling the way you do is the greatest motive to become better; to try harder; to expand your horizons. And this is the only thing this industry looks for. People who want to become better just for the sake of it.. People who care enough to read these blogs. And when you see something you don’t understand, or you feel there is no point to just sit  there by yourself doing things that maybe noone will ever see, do not give up. Try to learn the basics about the thing you’re doing and then experiment. Even if no one sees what you ‘ve done, the experience you ‘ll get from solving the problem you’re facing will make you more than ready to join this industry.

Now go write some code you lazy bastards