Final Ninja

I'm quite pleased with this one and I hope people enjoy it:

Final Ninja

It started out as a sort of cross between the Dirk Valentine and Dangle engines. Then on the way to pick up my usual lunchtime Thai noodles the ninja theme suggested to me that he should be able to turn invisible as well. This is also my first project in AS3. The most tricky part of the transition is that they've completely buggered up animation control in AS3. Having complex nested animations is no longer possible due to gotoAndStop being processed at the end of a frame. I've also not noticed the fabled speed increase everyone is speaking of (and even in Processing I was a total speed whore). It is however refreshing to know when I'm being a bad programmer, and you can trick AS3 into behaving like AS2 when you need to.

Ogre

Well I finally got Ogre to compile. Bugger knows how I'm going to graft Openframeworks libraries into it. I only really need sound and the VideoGrabber, but those are still tall orders.

If you want to play with Ogre on a PC you'll need the following:

Visual Studio 9. Trying to get it to work with Code Blocks is more trouble than it's worth, especially as it breaks Openframeworks when you get the bare minimum working. Plus VS9 is pretty damn good. I'm amazed that Microsoft made it.
The Ogre SDK
DirectX Runtime

Then you'll want to read the following:

Installing the Ogre SDK
Setting up an application. No the Ogre Application Wizard doesn't work on VS9. This means we have to do some twiddling with project settings to get it to work. But despite this being a pain, it teaches you how to set up projects properly and will help you in the long run.
My thread in the Ogre Forum about trying to get VC9 to compile Ogre. I didn't quite read the instructions in the previous link thoroughly, but those instructions also assumed some knowledge I didn't have. Most of the difficulty of getting Ogre to compile is down to correct project settings and correct file placement. So you have to use your initiative a little to figure it out. Now I'm at the following stage:

Ogre Tutorials

I'm going to settle in to this stuff now to put off the nightmare that combining Ogre and Openframeworks will be.

Bruce Sterling on the future of interaction design
Magic Pen
Artificial Stupidity
Fruit Mystery game
Cat with Bow Golf game
Floating Head
The Control Master (a Run Wrake film)
Metal Gear Solid 4 game play demo

C++ optimisation strategies
Processing for Javascript

As a side note I got a new phone recently. So I downloaded the latest Mobile Processing and spent one Sunday writing a new and more clever game of Snake vs the Computer for it. It uses the new A* algorithm I built and shows the Snake's thoughts about which path to take ahead of it.

Snake AI 2

Knuckleheads

Well. This is a weird one. Certainly an experimental system.

Knuckleheads

The trouble with this game is that basically moving was so difficult that it was hard to put any challenges in the game without making it bloody impossible.

Progress with C++ is slow but fruitfull. I've managed to port the basics of my Processing breakout project over and bloody hell is it fast. I'm now trying to get Ogre to work. I looked at OpenSceneGraph but the set up instructions are incomprehensible and the forum is in Chinese. Seeing as I have enough trouble getting a Hello World out of C++ with out spending a few hours picking the brains of a forum on how to do it, I doubt I'm going to get any where with that one.

Snotput

We've made a snot flinging game.

Snot Put

Amazing the things you can do with verlet integration and a chain of springs.

st33d++

Just had my first sucessful tinkering session yesterday with Openframeworks on Dev C++. I'm now going to try to get it working on Code Blocks. I'm also going to be trying to get Ogre to work as well.

It's tough work really because I need to know that I've got 3D model importing and visual analysis up and running before I press on with porting my Processing code. And none of the C++ I've learned will sink in till I'm doing that last part. It's not that I think Processing isn't up to the challenge. I did a polygon test on my laptop yesterday and the chug set in on both platforms past the 10,000 rectangle point using OpenGl. I was quite surprised that there was so little difference, but the issue isn't really drawing, it's reading 3D model files. It's just that Processing isn't set up to import models and render them efficiently. Plus I'm sure I could be doing a more detailed visual analysis in C++. We'll see. Any progress I make will be uploaded to the Experimentation section for now.

Escape Pod - sci fi pod cast
magnetic feedback joystick
snake robot
The Pearce Sisters (Bafta award winning animation)
Universal Automatism article
Robots that ellicit emotion
Burn The Rope (game)Lumines - javascript puzzle game
Sheep Films
Powder - A multi platform rogue-like (DS version too!)

box2d AS3 physics engine
wow as3 3D physics engine
MD5 hash look up (or why you should put numbers in your passwords)
How to cheat and hack flash based games
You Tube of how to hack flash games with cheat engine
Email address encryption for websites
Vector based 3D engine for AS2
Regular Expression generator
Mike Grundvig\'s blog
AS3 physics engine
Quarternions FAQ
Machine game learning

Note that though it seems paradoxical to post links on how to hack the scores on my Flash games, Cheat Engine proved useful in finding a way to make hacking very difficult. The last two games I've made feature a couple of different techniques to put people off. I know some people suggest encrypting the values, but there really is a much simpler solution, I'll leave it to the reader to figure it out for themselves.

Magneboy

It might not be the hardest puzzle game in the world but it certainly was enjoyable to make:

Magneboy

I've knocked up a port of the A* code I used in it into Processing here. Not that the intelligence of the monsters was appreciated or noted, but I guess that's how good design works. If it works well then you don't pick up on it.

I'll be putting up the links I've harvested later - I've got quite a few useful ones regarding programming.

Dirk Valentine

Well it's been a while coming but it's finally here.

Dirk Valentine and the Fortress of Steam

I'm chuffed with this one to say the least (despite how it turned me into more of an evil miserable sod in the process). I've even got some A.I. in the characters but you hardly get the chance to see it what with shooting everyone on sight. Try to spot where I nicked ideas from Portal (companion cube and portals / teleporters).