As I one day want to become a games programmer I’ve decided to take it upon myself to create some short little games to learn the basics of games mechanics before I step up to programming something worth while.
The first of these games is Pong, a classic and the best way I thought, to start learning games programming techniques. It’s taken me a few days (thanks to work) to finish it and a playable (no sound due to a processing export screw up) version is up and running in my newly made portfolio folder. I had originally had some awesome sound effects along with the game but for some reason I couldn’t export it with the minim intergration (you can download the folder here if you want)
The game is the classic Pong with 3 difficulty modes, the colours pulse from black to white (for fun more than any game play reasons) I have noticed a 1 bug, but its nothing major (when choosing hard it takes the ball one bounce to come upto the correct speed). If you do come across a bug please leave it in the comments.
The source is fully commented if you wish to learn from it. I’ll be uploading the audio file that was supposed to be accompanying the game
Only a quick update that adds the group URL fix (see last post) and adds a nifty little box on the admin page to help with the hex values, expect a follow up release which will add a popup from which you can choose colours from (this is currently being delayed by CSS issues)
When you type in your hex code into the text box in the admin page and click off the text box it will update the colour next to the text box. As I said just now, this is a temporary measure until I can sort out the CSS
I’m loving the new 3.00 firmware for my PS3 but one thing I can’t get my head around is the iPlayer, for some reason the BBC have managed to take 2 great technologies and make something with no usability.
When you first start it up you can see it’s redirecting to a PS3 only section of the BBC’s website but when the iPlayer actually loads the screen is really small (though this is on a 1080p 23 inch tv). The navigation is the same as the PS3’s built in browser which is great though the d-pad only circles through HTML links so the flash based iPlayer doesn’t get included, making the fullscreen button a huge pain in the arse to find.
I found navigating the iPlayer’s program guide interface a bit of a pain, most of the time when searching through the tv programs the thumbnails and information hadn’t loaded so I was left with the good old red cross in a white box wondering what the hell everything was.
I think the problem lies in the fact that the BBC are just porting the existing pc based website over to the PS3, The iPlayer needs to be redesigned for the PS3 so that it supports the 4 video modes (so that the navigation will always look fullscreen on any PS3), this could be done using a function to get screen size, that way it wouldn’t seem so small on higher resolutions. They should also look into a way of adding the Flash based navigation into the navigation circle that the d-pad uses. The user shouldn’t be expected to use the analogue sticks (which can be a bit clumsy, I ended up skipping to the end of a program when trying to change the volume) to navigate that is the whole point of the d-pad.
I was searching round the net last night trying to find a 3D model loader that would work under Leopard (apart from the OBJ loader I have) and I stumbled across this video.
Can I just say Wow! I’m now trying to get this working (and failing miserably might I add) on my Mac, I’ve only just managed to get the samples provided and haven’t yet got round to trying to write some patches yet. I’ve also made a pact with myself that I’m going to read all the ’self-help’ books I’ve bought over the years that have just been skimmed through and left to rot on my book shelf. Starting of course with the book I bought on C
I’ve been trying for a while now to get these videos done but due to ‘camera shyness’ and the fact that my dad goes to sleep at 9pm I haven’t been able to record until today. I’m just editing the first one which goes through installing ARToolKit on your Mac and how to set up the VRML enhancement, I plan to record a few more detailing how to change the VRML models to ones of your own and also looking at OSGART if I ever get it to work again
Processing is awesome, I was just pissing about with it and made an app that when a keyboard button is pressed it drags the image by one pixel so you can get some pretty weird shapes using it. I added a save function to it so that the user can get a picture from it, only problem with it is that I can’t work out how sequentially save files, which is lame but I’m really happy with it otherwise.
you can download it by clicking here
just for show here are some images I made using it.
hope you have as much fun as I did
I have my Mac Pro now it’s so awesome it hurts!!
But on a more focused note, it’s CGA again today and I’ve just shown Andy my first try at my animatic View It Here he seemed to like it saying it was good but need titles and music, so need to sort that out but my main problem is that so far it’s only 45 secs long, it needs to be much longer though titles may help with that.
Mind you the titles would give me a nice excuse to use my new Videocopilot stuff I bought…..
it’s so awesome it hurts!! 
though titles may help with that.