I've been working furiously on my FPGA video processing app and needed a break. I suggest to my wife Liz, how about we take some time out and enter a game jam.
I was thinking Liz and Louka could do the graphics and I could do the coding and to make things simple, it is going to be some sort of 2D platformer.
UE4 May 2016 game jam was coming up in a couple of days, so I got myself ready with the latest version of UE4. I dumped 4.8 and went straight onto 4.11. The biggest thing was these paper addins in my mind. I have sort of got my head around how UE4 does things and it is quite straightforward, but I have gaps. I really love their blueprints, but being a C++ guy, I tend to go low level (FPGA is pretty low level with trying to close timing - arg (instead of one bullet, one kill, it is one clock cycle, one operation and latency is measured in pico and not milli seconds)). I really think UE4 should take their blue prints to the business world as a 4GL language, it works and they would make a mint.
Anyway, I woke up early and listened to the twitch feed, waiting for the theme to be announced. What Does Down, Must Come Up and it was go. Some dude was going to fall down a mine shaft and have to get back up. Instantly it was going to involve procedural generation and some sort of dumb swarming enemy gameplay. The beautiful thing about swarming is that the AI is dead simple, they head to you and try to kill you - A* search. I'm not sure where the ants came from, I was thinking zombies very similar to that Fortnite game. Anyway through the day, I suggested they should cling to the walls and maybe even cling to each other. The good thing about procedural generation is that level design is consumes no time. Liz's hero guy was meant to be some dude with a tuft of hair, instead it turned out to be unicorn man.
The problem with hexagons is that they are not flat along a straight, so to solve the problem, we decided to add this half hexagon where appropriate and in that way it creates natural platforms for the player to operate on.
Much of the rest of the game is derivative. Pickups, hit points etc.
On twitch and also from Liz, I got some comments on the sheer number of ants. But I'm thinking that that is the point, they are meant to be this annoying relentless foe that plays with your mind. I was really chuffed that AwesomeAddler, CelPlays and jvthewanderer would spend the time to review my entry, just awesome, much respect! On twitch, I was asked about pathing, the answer is A* search (do the free AI EDX course). Hexagon pattern - pro tip: simple look up table, goes back to what us "ancient C programmer" do. Procedural generation, google search term "Perlin noise".
Unfortunately I'm not that great with actually playing the games, but I did manage to get to the top a couple of times and it is fairly relentless.
My Submission can be found here
After this effort, I feel I can actually call myself a genuine "game developer". I love the community and the vibe.
I'm a bit torn now, do I put more effort into FPGA, do some more work on Bombadier or try to develop the this Cave Kingdom more.
If I get 10 likes on my youtube video, I'm going to add in a flamethrower.
I was thinking Liz and Louka could do the graphics and I could do the coding and to make things simple, it is going to be some sort of 2D platformer.
UE4 May 2016 game jam was coming up in a couple of days, so I got myself ready with the latest version of UE4. I dumped 4.8 and went straight onto 4.11. The biggest thing was these paper addins in my mind. I have sort of got my head around how UE4 does things and it is quite straightforward, but I have gaps. I really love their blueprints, but being a C++ guy, I tend to go low level (FPGA is pretty low level with trying to close timing - arg (instead of one bullet, one kill, it is one clock cycle, one operation and latency is measured in pico and not milli seconds)). I really think UE4 should take their blue prints to the business world as a 4GL language, it works and they would make a mint.
Anyway, I woke up early and listened to the twitch feed, waiting for the theme to be announced. What Does Down, Must Come Up and it was go. Some dude was going to fall down a mine shaft and have to get back up. Instantly it was going to involve procedural generation and some sort of dumb swarming enemy gameplay. The beautiful thing about swarming is that the AI is dead simple, they head to you and try to kill you - A* search. I'm not sure where the ants came from, I was thinking zombies very similar to that Fortnite game. Anyway through the day, I suggested they should cling to the walls and maybe even cling to each other. The good thing about procedural generation is that level design is consumes no time. Liz's hero guy was meant to be some dude with a tuft of hair, instead it turned out to be unicorn man.
The problem with hexagons is that they are not flat along a straight, so to solve the problem, we decided to add this half hexagon where appropriate and in that way it creates natural platforms for the player to operate on.
Much of the rest of the game is derivative. Pickups, hit points etc.
On twitch and also from Liz, I got some comments on the sheer number of ants. But I'm thinking that that is the point, they are meant to be this annoying relentless foe that plays with your mind. I was really chuffed that AwesomeAddler, CelPlays and jvthewanderer would spend the time to review my entry, just awesome, much respect! On twitch, I was asked about pathing, the answer is A* search (do the free AI EDX course). Hexagon pattern - pro tip: simple look up table, goes back to what us "ancient C programmer" do. Procedural generation, google search term "Perlin noise".
Unfortunately I'm not that great with actually playing the games, but I did manage to get to the top a couple of times and it is fairly relentless.
My Submission can be found here
After this effort, I feel I can actually call myself a genuine "game developer". I love the community and the vibe.
I'm a bit torn now, do I put more effort into FPGA, do some more work on Bombadier or try to develop the this Cave Kingdom more.
If I get 10 likes on my youtube video, I'm going to add in a flamethrower.