Alright, so some nice things (and some not-so-nice things) have happened recently. Firstly, I’ve left KBFail for the umpteenth time, and I have no intention of going back. I’ve also switched (again) to using my iMac, and I’m hoping to stick with it this time around – it runs WoW decently enough, and I’ve found myself playing few games recently (Before it hits your mind, though I’m likely too late as it is, it is not because of WoW. I haven’t been playing that much, either), instead opting to do research, mentally prepare for my transition, trying to be a slightly more cheerful person, and working on development.

On the note of development, I’m still in a rut. I’ve come to the conclusion that I have to firmly put my mind to some tasks and force myself to push through and to apply myself to my goals – which is definitely an improvement. I’m starting to work out again, trying to get my body into better shape (again in preparation for my transition), eating healthier, and drinking less soda on the health side of things, while I’m trying to push through my distaste for my awful programmer art and trying to at least create semi-decent placeholders to allow myself to work on projects that I’ve been wanting to work on, such as LCAR.

And that brings me to the next topic: LCAR. The project is still very much in planning, and I’m considering taking it to another level. I’m currently considering the implications of investing in an iPad for development purposes – not only would it give me a better platform on which I could create programmer art (I may suck with a pen/paper, but I’m still better with it than with a mouse), but I have a new platform to target. I’m still working it out to try to determine whether or not I think it would be a worthwhile investment, and I’ll keep you posted on that. If I do get it, I intend to get the Torque engines targetting iOS (currently only iTGB, though iTGE is being worked on), and I intend to distribute LCAR on the iPad as well as my already-determined Mac and Windows releases. I think it’ll be pretty interesting, and we’ll have to see where it goes.

And for my last topic, I am going to be attending Casual Connect in Seattle, WA next year, mostly because I really want to meet the TorquePowered team. This is gonig to be my first time going out in public as.. well, me. I got some great encouragement from Mich Perry on the Torque team, and I’m confident that I, at the very least, am not going to have rotten fruit thrown at me for being what I am. At least, not from the Torque team – I can’t vouch for the rest of Seattle (:P). If anybody else is coming, or has suggestions for places to stay, I’m all ears. Looks like, on top of my development goals, I have a lot of work to do if I’m to be comfortable going out in public, and if I want to pass.

Wish me luck!

My goals for tonight:
1. Get T3D to build with PhysX in MSVC 2010
2. Implement an SQLite3 Database system (based on the resources available on the TorquePowered website)
3. Re-implement onMouseMove, onMouseDragged, and onRightMouseDragged within the second beta of Torque 3D 1.1
4. Re-implement the isometric camera system for Torque 3D 1.1 Beta 2 (If you can’t tell, I haven’t moved anything between betas, and I plan on completely re-starting the project, as far as the Torque engine is concerned, because I was.. messy with B1)
5. Begin implementing a basic Ranged combat system (in other words, I want to shoot things. n.n)

And I hope to do a lot of work with the following over the weekend and next week:
1. Try to get, at the very least, the beginning pieces of a toon shader implemented
2. Start learning to do basic 3D modelling/animaiton with 3D Studio Max and SoftImage, both with relation to the Torque engines and OGRE 3D.

Bye-ni~

This first piece will be my initial design plans for my Lights, Camera, Action/RPG project (or rather, projects) – discussing some thoughts, some initial ideas on gameplay and development, etc. Readers will notice that my development style is very iterative – I don’t like to plan things out too detailed ahead of time, because it screws me up in the end, when I find a more efficient way of implementing a system. I prefer to focus on certain portions at a time, building on and optimizing what was present before.

Here is the first part of my build process – determining my initial plans.

As far as the design of the game goes, I intend to make the prototype an isometric, third-person 3D Action/RPG, much in the style of Titan Quest, Diablo, Torchlight, and similar games. I plan to use a cel-shaded graphics style, and will be using bright, stylish colors for characters, items, monsters, and spells along with dark, murky environments and static geometry to give a slightly contrasted mood in the game.

Character Classes
I’m planning on implementing three classes, each with a specific role in the game. These are Wizard, a ranged caster class that focuses on controlling/restricting enemy movement and area-of-effect damage spells, Warrior, a melee fighter that brings large blades to bear against hordes of enemies, and the Scout, whose focus on stealth and fast attacks allows him to quickly eliminate targets.

Multiplayer
I am planning on implementing a cooperative, multiplayer game mode. It will be a party-based gameplay system, played with two to four players over either remote internet connections or a local LAN. The Torque 3D version of the prototype will utilise the internal networking library, while the in-house engine will likely use the RakNet Multiplayer Game Network Engine.

Sample use of the Virtual D-Pad Component

Just finished working on a pretty basic virtual d-pad for the Zune HD/XNA Framework 3.1. It’s really rough around the edges, and certainly isn’t optimized, but it works.

Download
Source
DPadHD.dll (Managed Library)

Description
A simple, kind of messy virtual d-pad for your ZuneHD games. You can feel free to add it to your games, with or without crediting me, just don’t distribute the D-Pad or modifications of it without at least giving word that it came from me. It’ll need a fair bit of optimization and editing before it’s ready for any game that you wish to distribute, however.

Features
Position can be configured
Works similarly to the default XNA input systems
Built as an XNA DrawableGameComponent

Usage Sample

			dPadManager = new Segfault.DPadHD.DPadManager(this);
			dPadManager.Landscape = true;
			this.Components.Add(dPadManager);

Creating the system is easy. First, you create it as you would any other component. You can set whether or not you want to use it in Landscape mode (which merely rotates the inputs counter-clockwise – I assume a “back-button-to-the-right” landscape view) by setting a simple boolean value, and then you add the D-Pad Manager to the components list. It will update automatically, just as the XNA input managers do by default.

Its position can be set on screen with the following code:

dPadManager.Position = new Vector2(50.0f, 12.0f);

And finally, the state of the D-Pad’s four cardinal direction buttons can be checked by retrieving the current game state:

if (this.dPadManager.GetState().IsButtonDown(Segfault.DPadHD.DPadButton.Up))
				pos.X += (gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.Milliseconds);

			if (this.dPadManager.GetState().IsButtonDown(Segfault.DPadHD.DPadButton.Down))
				pos.X -= (gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.Milliseconds);

			if(this.dPadManager.GetState().IsButtonDown(Segfault.DPadHD.DPadButton.Left))
				pos.Y -= (gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.Milliseconds);

			if (this.dPadManager.GetState().IsButtonDown(Segfault.DPadHD.DPadButton.Right))
				pos.Y += (gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.Milliseconds);

Enjoy. :D

I’ve started working again on an IRC client – now under the name alienIRC (formerly SevenIRC, which was being planned solely for Windows). I’ve also decided to make it completely open-source, and intend to license it under LGPLv3, something it shares with the Qt framework that is going to power it. I’m going to be setting up a Git repository on Gitorious for the project, and will be setting up some development pages on this blog – including issue tracking, a wiki, and some other tools. Right now, my plan is to closely emulate the mIRC interface – mostly because mIRC is my favorite IRC client – and will be working to make sure it feels native on all supported platforms. I will personally be maintaining builds on Windows (32- and 64-bit), OpenSUSE 11, and Mac OS X Snow Leopard. I will primarily be using the IDE that comes with Qt, though I will work to ensure that it compiles in X-Code 3 and Visual Studio 2008/2010.

As far as alienIRC itself goes, I’m looking at the possibility of using WebKit for the chat windows’ messages. This would make it incredibly easy to add formatting, because I could easily change messages from the mIRC color character into HTML tags before adding the text to the message box. It all depends on how it runs compared to a custom text box. I also plan to implement a number of features that are popular with mIRC, such as scripting (Lua, specifically), “address books,” nick highlighting, file sharing, et cetera. I’m currently working on some UI concept work – since it will have to be different from SevenIRC’s WPF plans and the previous OS X-only alienIRC UI concept that relied on some UI elements only found on Mac (such as Drawers).

If anybody is interested in contributing to this project, send me some messages – I’d be happy to hear your input, especially on features that you feel would be good to implement. Make sure you sign up for an account on Gitorious – and that you upload your SSH keys and such. If you’ve never used Git, and you’re a Windows developer, this is a very useful link for seting it up on Windows: Git for Windows Developers: Part 1

It seems that I do actually have somebody paying attention to the Direct3D Pong tutorial series I’ve been writing. I kind of shrugged off doing much more work on the project because I didn’t think anybody was bothering to read it, but a recent tweet shows me that there is at least one person reading it. That, for me, is plenty – so @Ogreman, you can look forward to the next tutorial in the series to come along (hopefully) by the end of this weekend.

I’ve been going through some.. personal issues. Anybody familiar with my past will probably know what I’m talking about, so I’ll just kinda leave the details at that. Suffice to say that life is a pain in the ass, but I’m (uncharacteristically) looking toward the brighter side of things and moving forward with life. On the lighter side of things, my plans to visit Erin in Phoenix are going through, so I’ll be blissfully free of work and hanging out with a friend. I’ve been acting very out-of-character for me, recently. I mean, social activity? Something seriously has to be wrong with me. I think I broke my head. D:

Recently renewed my subscription to Safari Books Online – I pay for the $40-ish unlimited subscription, but they’ve got a $20-ish (monthly) ten-books-per-month plan. Very useful, and I highly recommend it for anybody who deals with technology on a hobby basis. Large collection of full books on there, ready for you to read on your computer at home, or even in mobile-optimized forms on your iPhone or (if you’re one of the cool kids, like me) Android or other smartphone. Anyway, I’ve been reading up and studying for the CCNA certifications, which I’m hoping I will be able to take on-base without first going through the “NCO” courses. In the worst case scenario, I’ll just find somewhere closeby off-base, probably in Los Angeles, to take it on my own. They’ve got a full collection of Cisco networking books, programming (including game programming) books for a large selection of languages (Obj-C, C, C++, C#, Ruby, Java, HTML/XHTML, PHP, ASP.NET.. you name it, it’s there). For those who can afford it and will use it, it’s much cheaper than buying each of the books separately, and much more legal (and less of a pain in the ass for searching) than downloading the books on your favorite torrent client.

Anyway, a lot of drama going on with the management of Simple Machines Forums, which is a shame because it’s such a great piece of software. You can read about it here. I won’t be surprised when things just go to hell and the people who want to stick with SMF’s original values end up creating a new branch of SMF that does follow their visions. But I guess this is a good enough reason to start looking at other bulletin board systems. Seems to be a lot of this type of drama going on in the internet world these days – once-strong communities that lose favor of their long-standing members and being taken over by a single entity that was once thought to be a valuable member of the community. Here’s looking at you, ZFGC – you know who I’m talking about.

Still have a lot to do recently, between picking up the work on SevenIRC (which hasn’t progressed at all since the last post, to be honest), upping the work on PkGame (I’ve been doing a lot of design work here), and now the port for Waxy’s Sushi Party. Anybody who wants to see the game can go here and check it out. I’m currently building the Mac OS X port for the game, and doing some prototyping and working with HiVE to come up with design considerations for the XBOX 360 port (planned to be published through XBOX Live! Indie Games, so keep your eyes peeled if you’re interested). Unfortunately, I only have a Windows computer, so anybody with a Mac computer that is willing to do some beta testing at a later date, don’t hesitate to get hold of me. The engine I’m using (Torque Game Builder) for the Mac prot is cross-platform, so there may (pending discussions with HiVE) possibly be a new Windows build, as well.

Still doing some planning for several game development tutorials, hopefully I’ll get around to starting them soon. Played the demo for Brutal Legend, and I’m sold. I’m buying it next weekend, after I get paid, along with Mass Effect 2 PC.