A general life update seems to be in order. And what better way to do it then with colon separated sections. Python anyone?
Holidays:
LAN party:
Some guy had 8Tb worth of games and movies. Needless to say I have a lot of new games.
Work:
So much work. Lots of money for me though.
#This isn't me, it was the result of Google searching 'dollar dollar bills yo'.
Back at University:
Marks:
I got a B+, 2 B's and a B-. Solid B average student.
This semester:
Using C and C++, also doing http and web servers, so expect something awesome this semester.
Maybe a new website?
Or a multiplayer game?
Project:
One of our projects involves creating motion capture technology etc. That will be awesome.
Games:
#The most important section. Starcraft II:
The ladder is now locked. Waiting on the next season.
I still suck. Bronze league.
Watch this video. If you only ever watch one SC2 video, this should be it.
New game:
Obviously I have left Tanks for too long now.
Going to make a new game with the help of someone who has the interest.
#Foo, if you have an idea and the time let me know, comment.
Looking to maybe do something similar to Fire Emblem, and Final Fantasy Tactics.
Thats about it. Will keep you posted on interesting finding etc. Hopefully I get something useful out of this semester.
tl;dr: That's Ok. This post is more for myself then you guys. Just watch the video, I bet you get it wrong. Silly noobs. Foo, I have used you as my reasoning examples, for lulz. See way below.
Today is the day I am sitting my Human Computer Interaction exam. I'm such a bullshit topic really. Talks about how people interact with a computer. Though it is quite useful for design purposes, most of the thing they teach are ridiculous.
I'm putting these here to show to myself I haven't forgot the random ass acronyms we came up with the remember everything.
Nielson's Heuristics: VMUCERFAHH: These are the things that every website should have, for ease of use.
Visibility of system status
Match between the system and the real world
User control and freedom
Error prevention
Recognition over recall
Flexibility and efficiency
Aesthetics
Help and documentation
(H something that means)Error recovery NOTE: My blog fits all of these requirements :D
Gestalt's Principles of Perception: CAPS 3123: The way humans perceive things.
(Good) Continuity
Closure
Common Fate
Area
Proximity
Pragnanz
Similarity
Symmetry
Surroundedness
Usability Testing: MESELF: What we test when we are testing usability of a website.
Memorability
Efficiency
Subjective satisfaction
Error frequency and severity
Learning
Fit for use
Principles of Aesthetics: PUBE PCI: Three things that relate to aesthetics on a computer.
(P is for principle of aesthetics)
Unity
Balance
Emphasis
-Placement
-Contrast
-Isolation
Principles of Interaction Design: FUSSness and SiMPiVity: Things that we want for good interaction design. FUSSness
Effectiveness/Usefullness
-Flexibility
-Utility
-Safety
-Stability SiMPiVity
Efficiency/Usability
-Simplicity
-Memorability
-Predictability
-Visibility
Other non acronym notes: Colour
-Hue - the colour
-Saturation - the amount of colour in the colour
-Value - brightness
Monochromatic - one colour scale
Analogous - colours next to each other
Complimentary - opposite colours
Dissonant - clashing colours (disgusting)
Triadic - three colours where any two are dissonant (and it looks good some how)
Gulfs and Distances
Gulf of Execution - hard to do what you want to do in a system.
Gulf of Evaulation - hard to see what a system does.
Semantic Distance - distance between what you want to do and what the system actually does.
Articulatory Distance - distance between what you think a system does and what it actually does.
Affordance - expectations from the look of a system - a door with a handle you expect to pull
Analysis Techniques
Brain storm - obvious - quick, easy - can go beyond problem space
Card sort - label cards and group card together - quick, easy, in problem space - your interpretation might be different from anothers
Persona - create a person on paper - easy, fast, give an idea of the users - may not be a good indicator of the systems users
Scenarios - create a scenario of what could happen - fast, shows potential system flaws, allows an ease of use study - may not be a good indicator of what the users are using the system for
Interaction Styles
Command Line - CLI
Menu Based - iPod
Form Fill-in - Sign up sheet
Question and Answer - Windows install wizard
Direct Manipulation - drag and drop
Metaphors - Desktop, trashcan
Web Navigation - web nagivation...
3D Environments - Games, decent games
Zoomable Interface - Google Maps
Natural Language - Car GPS talk to you thingys
Human
Hearing 20Hz - 15kHz
Touch - Haptics - Reaction time depends on stimuli
Fitt's Law - Time taken to click a button - a + b binarylog(D/S + 1)
Memory
-Sensory - moved to short with attention - visual = iconic - aural = echoic - haptic = tactile
-Short Term - moved to long with rehearsal - 7 +-2 chucks of information
-Long Term - little to no decay - overriden by interferance - uses:
Semantic network - a tree
Frame - data structure
Script - walkthrough guide of assuming what happens
Procedural - condition and action
Reasoning
-Deductive - if x then y - Foo wears shorts on Wednesday. It is Wedsnesday therefore Foo is wearing shorts.
-Inductive - hypothesis therefore conclusion (generalisation) - I have only seen pink pigs therefore all pigs are pink.
-Abductive - conclusion therefore hypothesis - Foo drives fast when drunk. I have seen Foo driving fast, therefore, Foo is drunk.
Errors
Slips - Knowing you should always be making probes.
Mistake - Intentionally stopping probe production to mass army
Standards and Patterns
Standards - cost money - ISO - you must follow
Patterns - free - guidelines
END:
Ok that's all I'm doing.
I hope you didn't actually read all of that.
If you are doing an HCI course this might come in handy.
That's right! miTanks is back. After a very very long break I've got motivated to finish it. Or at least get it on the platform it was originally for. Haven't really had much commitment from Foo, which is both our faults really. I'm not the best teacher and he has little / no coding experience. And lobbing him with graphics was not the best move.
Sorry to everyone that doesn't have an Android, but you can still enjoy my struggle with xml and the Android graphics classes... And the PC version will still have the same look and feel as the Android version, with the obvious touch-screen exception.
Can't remember if I've said already or not but this is a fantastic, simple example of how to make a game on Android. The game is open source so I'm basing the majority of figuring out how to do graphics on this. For those of you know don't know software programming is basically: "Learn the basics; google the rest."
I think I have a pretty good idea of what I need to do now. The tanks are going to look something like this:
And the turrets are just going to be a black smooth edged square, pointing at whatever angle they need to. The ground is either going to be a solid colour or each pixel will be 1 of three colours. This will depend on how much time it takes up to search and utilise a very very large 2D colour array.
I'll be using the sky square (not a box, it's 2D) Foo created earlier, because it is awesome. This will be the background of most of the levels. Might end up overlaying some objects like a building or something.
What else? Damage isn't quite right. The tank only takes damage if the very centre is hit. Not a major flaw but not very ascetically pleasing.
I'll get to work on this all tonight and post something on Monday(?) about what I have done.
Links to the other miTanks posts: Part 1, The Plan Part 2, Initial Concept Part 3, Object Oriented Design + Update Part 4, Sound Request + Update Part 5, First Screenshots Part 6, Ground Types Part 7, Weapons + Ground Dynamics Part 8, Initial Release
The last one contains the initial release for PC. Have a look at that if you haven't already. Just renamed all my posts... I had two part 4's AND 2 part 6's. That's just bad...
So I used to play Magic The Gathering when I was around 14. I have since found all out that a couple of my friends (including Foo) play. Sweet. It seems to be the case that each edition has better cards then the last. The newest set came out around 7 years ago... I think. So my cards are pretty average.
My play style: I have no bloody idea. Play shit and hope something awesome happens.
I'm quite good at puzzles and problem solving so strategy games seem to come naturally to me. Back in the day I made an adequate Myr deck. So what better thing to do then continue with the theme.
I'm not spending a lot of money on this. I'm a tight ass. So I found a couple stupid people on TradeMe, New Zealand's equivalent of eBay, that are selling ridiculous amounts of cards at $1 reserve. Managed to pick up 177 mostly white (not racist) cards in newish condition for $7.50. Not a bad deal. And a couple other decent deals.
Made a decent red/artifact deck that relies on the shit load of Myrs I have. Problem is that it takes a bit of mana to get going. Solution? Level-up creatures. I haven't got any of these yet...
Here's my current deck:
Lands 24
20x Mountain
4x Great Furnace (Note artifact)
Artifact Creatures 19
1x Myr Moonvessel Gives mana on death
2x Myr Enforcer Affinity for Artifacts
3x Iron Myr Gives mana on tap
2x Frogmite Affinity for Artifacts
1x Lodestone Myr
2x Cathodion Gives mana on death
2x Arcbound Crusher Modular
3x Myr Retriever
1x Myr Propagator
1x Yotian Soldier
1x Oxidda Golem Affinity for Mountains
Any comments?
Sorry this isn't software again... I'm posting at work again and haven't had time to update the blog at home.
Had a game against my brother yesterday. Found a couple bugs, but it was still playable. The first most obvious bug is that bullets would explode halfway through some walls. This was due to the movement calculations. They were somewhat refined though needed to be more so with the bullets jumping instead of moving through every pixel in their path. Took some thinking but I figured out to solve that.
Also I made the first tank blue and all the others red. A quick fix so I could tell which was the first. Also made it playable for two people. Eventually colours will be selected on start up.
The ground now falls nicely into place if a shot blows up the ground beneath it. Only one line added so this may be a temp fix. Seems to be good for the game needs though. I was too slow with taking the screen shots but the ground falls line by line. Looks ok. Will make it even smoother later on.
Found an issue with falling as well. When you fall it moves you according to gravity. Though you can still move back and forth between the fall movements. If I implement an automatic redraw of the canvas, this shouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately that would ruin how I'm doing my other calculations, so that may have to wait. I'm sure there is another way to resolve this.
Added a laser beam. Fires in a straight line destroying all the ground in it's path. Damn I missed him.
You can kinda see the ground adjustment here. Got a screenshot about halfway through it.
I'm having a meeting with Foo about the game tomorrow. Now that I have alot of the game done, he can get started on creating the game view for Android. Hopefully he has a better idea about how to do this then I do.
By the way, all these screens are from the PC version. Don't worry. I will release it for you all.
As neither me or Foo know how to successfully draw to the screen, we thought we'd make it as easy as we could. Firstly the game will be the size of the screen. This will remove the need for scrolling. The battlefield size will be in relation to some fixed variables, so can be easily changed at will. The game will be completely in landscape view.
Foo agreed to do the visual side of the application. Considering the amount of lower-level coding Foo has actually done, and the combined skills we possess for graphics, this looks like the hardest part. Seemingly working from scratch, the progress on this is slow. So far there is nothing to show.
Done so far:
Did a quick class diagram for the actual game.
Most of the inner workings are completed for in game.
The game physics work, (untested).
Simple flat terrain completed.
Support for differing gravity, wind and landscape.
Support for random terrain generator.
Support for multiple weapons, including weapon movement and collision calculations.
One weapon implemented.
Multiple matches in a game.
Still to do:
Getting input. Once input can be received the usage is already implemented.
Tank movement.
Display. Location calculations implemented. Just need to know how to put an image on the screen.
The game cycle. This will be very easy. Just need to actually do it.
AI calculations, of differing skill levels.
Perfect AI, should be easy to do.
Absolutely useless AI, is even easier.
Realistic AI is somewhat harder. Shouldn't take too long. I'd just fudge some numbers from the perfect AI.
Defensive weaponry support. Shields and such.
Things YOU think I should add: Leave a comment. Tell me what you would like to see.
Something I've missed: Android apps are written in Java plus some xml for view layouts etc.
I have started drawing up a rough class diagram for the game and started to think about how to implement destructible terrain. As we want a clean fall animation for the ground when a piece is broken below, I am currently thinking about having the entire game screen as a 3d boolean array. Animations with this will be incredably easy. Hopefully this won't be too much to process every turn.
Some minor code has been written to help visualise the working of the tank class. As this is early on in the process it is likely to be rearranged quite regularly, due to the nature of eXtreme Programming.
I will try to have the game run on both the Android and a computer. This will help for initial game development as testing on the Android Virtual Device is time consuming. Also when the game is complete I will release a run-able jar file so everyone on here can play the game.
Most likely won't be doing small releases as we go, due to the size of the app. When it is actually playable it will almost be finished. Just bug fixes, extra weapons and smoothing out code after the app works.
So now that I have an Android phone my next plan is to create an app. I could port some of my CLI games across very easily, but that's no fun. I'm going to remake Tanks, with the help of a friend, herein refered to as Foo.
Tanks is a simple turn-based game. Each player has a tank. On your turn you select the angle to shoot and the power, and then fire. Some minor physics determine travel of the shot. Then there is collision and damage calculations. Rince and repeat until there is only one tank left standing.
I'll get Foo to post an about Foo thing here aswell. Foo has an LG p500 (Optimus One), that runs Android 2.2. Slightly better specs than the Galaxy 580 for a similar price. Galaxy 580 runs Android 2.1, so will use that as the minimum version.
