Over A Month

As I should have expected, It's been more than a month, and I haven't really met my deadline. Remember my Second Post? I should probably have said what I was thinking, which is 3 months. Which from now should mean one more month, but now I'm thinking March is a special month for me, I may not get much done. If I had perhaps more funding and didn't have to hussle so much to get cash together I could focus more on the work and actually get it done anytime soon. I guess we'll just see.

like the pic? I was thinking about making it a permanent part of the site
thoughts?

Tech part 2

Complaint Department
Tablets, I love tablets, yet I hate these so called "tablets" they're touting these days. A good wacom tablet you can use a pen and draw things, great for photoshop and all kinds of things. One problem with some such related tablets is back to the Absolute vs Relative post in which it doesn't matter what you do the position on the pad is relative to the location on screen and so you have to adapt. I would much rather have the option to make it a higher sensitivity in movement and make it relative to the mouse, so this way I could drag down low and have the mouse move down, then go up top and keep dragging down from where the pointer just was instead of having it jump to the top of the screen.

Now the other tablets that everybody are going wild for are these essentially mini computers with touchscreens. I can't hook them up to the computer and use any of their features, which would be very nice. I would love to hook it up and display my screen on the tablet, zoom in and draw a bit using my hand or other tool like the digital drawing pens I already have. I'd also like to be able to use other items available on these tablets such as the video / camera, mic, and in some cases call features. I'm a bit of a fan of the tablet that works perfectly with the cell phone and has an attachable keyboard, just a nifty little bugger. I am aware that with enough work some if not most of this is possible, and it could be argued that I could just use the tablet for these things themselves and bypass my actual computer but I like to do things my way. For example I wouldn't mind using them as input devices for recording in my favorite programs instead of using built in recording features and apps and then trying to work with the file afterward. Back to effort though I'd rather not have to work too hard to do this, I'd like things a bit simpler because logically I'd like to do it more than once if it works out to my satisfaction.

Side note 

the tight corridors and inside houses etc in silent hill used absolute camera positions, you could tell the camera never moved or only moved slightly by somewhat targeting the player.

Wishful Thinking
I know it may sound a little silly, but it would be nice to have an engine made for kids, early designers, just something to make very basic games with and get children into the idea. They could draw an object, or a circle for example and then manipulate it from a properties standpoint. Define it as an object, a player, a NPC, an enemy, a zone or target, or a list of other things. Give it emitters under conditions, mark it as a spawn location, other similar things. You could argue the halo forge is just that, but it's a little too simple and doesn't allow for new content just excellent manipulation of existing content.

Game Update
So somewhere in the last update I appear to have altered something a little wrong. I'm having an issue with the auto allocation system, stats aren't updating with the new allocated units until you're in the pause menu where you would normally allocate. So once I track that down I'll have a new build but it looks like it might take a bit more than a day to do that and implement the other updates / tweaks so I handed them an older build and told them to find new things until I get this next build up.

It's the Final Countdown

I can't stop thinking of that song when I look at pics of the LHC ( large hadron collider )
Though I have absolutely no fear of it ending the world, somehow it just fits
that aside it's by not means the actual final countdown to anything, but I am hoping to be into early alpha / beta play by the end of this year on my main title
Hopefully in 6 months, but again christmas is my actual expectancy
While I do occasionally switch my volunteer testers from the mini game to the main game it's always for a very specific test and so far while technically working it's astounding how much work has to be done, and what I do have done is pretty much only local network, actual network hasn't even been tested yet so again lots and lots of work

The reason I'm telling you this is I'm taking applications for more testers. While I'm not putting up a formal application process here yet I may in the future. In the mean time I'm interesting in finding out if any of you would be interested in assisting me in this endeavor. The position pays nothing in terms of money, I may include you on the list of testers in the credits if you want to be included, and you'll have to be good at explaining what's wrong when something comes up which means a good vocabulary is a must. Technical knowledge and programming skills are a bonus.

So with that in mind, tell me why you deserve to be a tester, why you want to be a tester, and why I should pick you over the others. Granted there are many testers that will be needed yet I still like to hear the answers. List any relevant information or skills that will make you useful to have on the team, and what you love most about the idea of the game based on what you've read thus far.

Problems are Fun!

I love it when I find a glitch or error, something definitively wrong in some way. I'm not being sarcastic or funny, I actually get a sense of personal satisfaction from solving problems. The bigger the headache you're getting from something the more it excites me to take on the challenge. Which is why I always say that problems are fun.

That in mind what I'm currently dealing with isn't quite a traditional problem, just a lack of forethought. One tester found an almost game ruining strategical oversight. Apparently because my system for releasing bosses is based on the items (souls?) you've collected, and if you chill in one area and get a ton of kills in advance, while you may not get extra keys you do still get these pick ups. You can then proceed into the next level and unlock all the bosses at once, use an overpowered spell to kill them all, and move right along, rinse and repeat.

Right now I'm playing with several solutions, for starters instead of letting you choose when to release a boss it's now immediate with no choice which honestly I'd planned from the start but received some complaints and after talking with them about what specifically they didn't like about it we've now managed a solution I think they'll find quite satisfactory. The second is to have a tracker for each floor of how many you killed on that floor so the doors don't automatically unlock based on that, the number was previously incremental and now it's more of a slightly fixed number altered by the floor number variable (non-multiplicative) and they're happy about the idea of seeing how well they did on each floor though I'll have actual results tomorrow of how much they like it. I've also added a behind the scenes timer tracker that shows after you game over how long you took on each floor. I'm also dumping that info to see how the game progresses from floor to floor to make sure the variables are balanced right, because if everyone consistently dies on the same floor then obviously I've done something wrong.

I also added a little spice by picking bosses at random, there were previously 12 bosses alternating a set to each floor, now it just picks one for each cage with fixed master boss levels every 10 floors in which you encounter 4 of the same boss and a 5th super powered version of that boss, though to my knowledge none of the players have made it to the 120th floor yet without that slight cheat or whatever you'd call it.

I'm doing other minor tweaks to make it easier for them to get that far and thinking about making an actual final level. The final level however will be beyond nintendo hard, I'll make it level 1,000 and have it include every single mega boss, and enemy you've killed that far along with a final gatekeeper with an ungodly health bar, just so you'll have hope that I can crush.

Though not to be in direct defiance of occams razor as it pertains to entertainment (a bit of a stretch I know) I'm also thinking about overstepping the apparent simplicity of my current auto-allocation system available to the player and implementing a more sophisticated system of balancing regen rates, accelerated regen rate, mana tank max storage per rank and overall, along with spell power and related in a more calibrated methodology. Essentially the idea is that you can invest points (again thinking I might just call them souls) into categories and each category will have a graphed curve you can view to see how powerful the spell is, how long it takes to charge / cast (for power spells not streams) and mana cost, and any other variables and based on how you invest determines how the curve changes to reflect these stats. For example you might want a simple power spell to charge really quickly so you'd invest in its early stage mostly, but if you charge it into its second or third stages it means you really want more power so you'd invest in that area for that stage, and perhaps you instead want to cast a standard power spell really cheaply so you'd invest there, and while if you invest enough all the stats can improve you'll likely suffer in other areas for it.

This principal also applies to your actual mana regen, the max mana per tank by rank in which you effectively have 3 mana tanks and each of their regens are based on the investments in them, and you can invest in how potent the magic in them is because they all basically boil down to a value of the first tank after all the math is processed. Right now they're set up so that a single point of mana from the second tank is worth several mana points, which when you use mana from that tank your spells by default charge quicker, are more powerful, etc.

 I can tell you right now I will not be letting you cast different spell types together, and even lasting spells like the lava do not interact with other spells and I won't be programming them to either. That is just beyond my current skill and wouldn't really make a huge difference in players. I'm still considering screens for you, I'm just still playing with the HUD, if any of you are familiar with UDK and unrealscript just let me know and we'll collab a bit so you can help me get it displaying right. Right now I'm working on getting the "crosshair" or otherwise known as reticle to be based on a variable which is the current range of the spell whether you're doing an area effect spell, a target cone, or a straight stream/beam. I can manage it slightly by state but nowhere near where I want it at.

I should save some more for another post.... Say something about all this in the comments so I know you exist please.

Tweaks

First I'd like to mention I finally got a clue and turned off captcha, if it doesn't work please say so because I went into old interface to make sure it was off

Now for the meat of this short story, I've not done a single thing of particular interest in the last couple days, I've merely been tweaking and balancing and polishing in general, finally got my lava stream spell to stick and survive for a little while in addition to making it look smoother more lava like and use less processing power allowing you to use it more with more enemies on screen before any drop in frames

right now I've maxed my system to about 20,000 enemies before things start to slow down
in order to do that though I of course had to essentially turn on god mode by disabling death for touching enemies and erecting a barrier around the player that keeps enemies away so they don't just horde you in a way you can't kill them
For your comments because I can't find an easy poll option I'd like to know if you'd like to have a god mode option in the final release or if you think it's too tempting to use that you'll give in and the game will be destroyed for you
of course if I were to include it I would disable leaderboard tracking that I haven't even implemented yet, though I do have a personal best high score table

What stats would you want tracked anyway? I for one was never a fan of accuracy because I've heard of a thing called cover fire, in addition to the fact it's always based on hit and miss not where they were hit or how close they were to being hit etc
keep in mind I'm only discussing stat tracking for the mini game right now, the main game I have a system setup already and it was a big enough pain I'm not likely to change it, I'll tell you more about it in my next post
anyway for now I was thinking of tracking the deepest floor you've made it to which I've already implemented, and was going to add bosses killed, because # of other enemies killed even by type would be a ridiculous number after one or two hours of play, and it wouldn't be hard to add a real scoring system to the game in which I could add tracking to though right now I don't have that
and perhaps a favorite spell type
essentially there's the fire based spells, nature / earth based spells, and manipulation spells which help you or hinder your enemies or both such as slow or poison, though I'm thinking of adding one more to really round things out but I can't make up my mind which is focused on other things to begin with
basically water and air wouldn't make much sense and wouldn't be very versatile so I'm open to suggestions

Crack Your Neck

Crack your neck like a badass (BA) and put on some red hot chili peppers cause you've got more testosterone than Clint Eastwood and Duke Nukem put together and you're about to open a platoon of marines sized can of whoopass on these little dots all over your screen.

That was the comment I gave to my testers today for the mini game I've been working at. Not to be confused with my main game this is a fairly simple top down shooter style game. To overly simplify the more you kill the more that spawn, everything you kill drops an item, that item you can use to make you more powerful in respect to a couple of categories and sub types, your ability to shoot is based on a kind of energy / mana bar / regen rate, there are bosses, bosses drop keys to the next level, the next level is like this level only harder, there's an unlimited number of levels, and an unlimited number of enemies, you kill X# of enemies to gain a boos door key to unlock the boss, upon killing the boss he simply respawns and you do it all over again, by the time you get all the keys (one from each boss) you'll probably have killed each boss several times.

The number of enemies spawned at first and growth rate are determined by level as are the number of things they drop / more accurately the power of the one thing they drop. You have multiple methods of dealing with them that I'll save until the game is actually ready for public tests which I will likely share with you. So go about your day like a BA for today and see where it gets you, be alpha and you won't regret it.

Go Big or Go Home.

While not necessarily my favorite saying I've always had an attraction to it. The primary concept is that nothing is worth doing only have way you should go all out every time and since you're going that far why not try to go even bigger and better than you'd planned. While you might think 640 player combat sounds insane now I'd like to remind you that it's more than likely that it will be possible in the next 10 years. This could likely mean that either a ps4 which hopefully won't be for at least another 3 to 4 years, or a ps5 (assuming they stick with the name scheme) would likely support such a network. This is primarily because of our estimated rate of expansion in networking tech and availability. Rendering all this would likely be very very easy by the time the networks can handle it assuming it's not already easy to render something like that considering what I've seen in some tech demos. In support of my claim I would like to point to a certain company however I'm not entirely sure their networking system actually supports all the players I'm thinking of in close proximity though I do believe it does I haven't had the opportunity to actually test it therefore I'll refrain from such evidence for now. Instead I'll think about some of the other minor "BIG" things.

For example I'll talk more about persistent world. While I originally set out to make a dynamically fracturing script system for all objects in the game world I found it to computationally strenuous and had to abandon the idea until tech could handle it or I find a more efficient method. I hadn't heard of voxel systems at this point or some of the interesting tech companies propelling it or I might have seriously considered it as an alternative. At this point I'd moved on to instancing which is the process of essentially reusing an object and simply changing it's locational and rotation values which saves tremendous amounts of resources if you can reuse an object enough. The instance generally uses the same info already processed by the system and therefore very little needs to be computed to reuse it. Taking advantage of this I found a method to successfully recycle objects particularly fractured objects that would all be destructible separate from each other so that destroying the original didn't destroy instances of it and vice versa. This is one reason why I can afford a 100% destructible world without worry of frames per second. The real secret to it however is all in the physics system which has been by far the most entertaining and frustrating part of the process. You'll find in a lot of initial systems that things don't like to fall because they have no reason to in a computer world. I've managed to implement a system that will make a building fall if it's not structurally sound anymore. I've also managed to incorporate this with other physics in the game to get a more accurate picture of how this building would collapse and how it's effected by gun fire and explosives. Separate from architectural physics I have an entirely different sub system for gun physics to determine velocity, bullet drop, wind and humidity variables, etc. The primary system used to determine damage dealt to a player is based on bullet velocity in a generally scalar form while most sniper rifles use a vector based system for more accuracy at range, and by that I mean realistic accuracy not processing accuracy. For more information I suggest a wiki page on the subject to understand it more thoroughly. To give you a vague outline you have a given bullet with a given mass that is accelerated to a given point which then begins to decrease over time until it hits an object in which it then is reduced by an amount determined by the impact angle and material accounting for penetration if the speed is not reduced to zero. With a player damage is determined by the force of the impact where as with buildings and environmental objects a special calculation method is required to accurately allow the bullet to pass through a surface if it passes through at all and may adjust the angle of the bullet and its speed though not necessarily if for example you're shooting through a paper door. If not for my system, shooting a paper door would stop the bullet instead of allowing it to pass through. Upon receiving an impact the object is then fractured based on various variables to determine how much of the object chips off or is destroyed. All objects have a given set of fractures already in predetermined shapes and sizes so this is a matter really of figuring out which "chunk" is removed.

The reason things do not reset is the server is kept running as is even if no players are connected and they're simply joining a game in session that only ends when I reset the server. So you'll again start with a clean map and just keep destroying it brick by brick until nothing remains, and among all that rubble you'll fine a lot of great combat and sniping holes and hiding spots in general which will be played almost entirely differently than when you were still able to go in and around buildings and subway systems. Though again until I can really support a large scale number of players this might be isolated to sections with only mid sized groups of players at a time. Even still it will be quite an epic battle every time. Going back to what I mentioned about squads it's time I break down the specific system. Squad 1 is the objective squad responsible for actually doing things. Squad 2 is the support squad which keeps Squad 1 alive and helps them get to the objectives. Squad 3 is the specialist squad including the only sniper on your team, your medic in the first two ranks or a different class I won't yet reveal in the latter two ranks, your heavy vehicle which is a tank in the first rank and a kind of mech in the latter ranks which gets progressively bigger by rank, in rank 4 it's literally the size of a skyscrapper and still controlled by one player, and last but not least you have your artillery man. The artillery generally doesn't see actual combat but is instead kept busy bombing everything as ordered by the leader of Squad 1 or 2 which share a very similar list of commands. Squad 4 is your vehicle squad consisting of an APC driver and gunner, and an aerial vehicle of some kind and its gunner. In the first rank there's either a hind or apache attack helicopter which carries squad 2 around and they man a machine gun or can repel down and provide additional ground support. In the latter ranks squad 2 tends to parachute down from the artillery controlled ac-130 type plane while the normal pilots are now cruising around in fighter jets defending the ac-130 against enemy jets, attacking the enemy ac-130 or providing bombing runs and other aerial support. If the artillery gun ship is destroyed Squad 2 has an alternative spawn which I also won't disclose just yet. The decision to remove the sniper rifle from the average player was for a great and many reasons but it really came down to a matter of scale. This game is so big I can't afford to ever let it turn into a sniping match and therefore each team only gets one sniper which may choose to chill with artillery in the first couple ranks and be a long range support or be a combat sniper providing support in closer range combat which still might be considered long range or at a distance but is much closer than chilling with artillery on the edge of the map.

I'm open to answering some questions if you have any. In the next post I'll describe leader powers and their ability to reward and punish the squad for listening or not to their orders and the squads ability to punish a bad leader.

Lack of progress

So my plans for today were to update you on what I've done relevant to development of an actual game. I even planned on putting up a pic or two. However this recent week has been quite possibly the most busy week of my life, and not in a good way. I've been to several funerals, been shot at multiple times, which the police refuse to do anything about, and generally dealing with cash flow problems unrelated to all of this. So instead today I'll simply say I'm thankful to be alive, and advise you to tell people how much or little you love them.

You can view my other blog for a slight expansion on this which will be built upon in the week/s to come. At some point it will also include the philosophy of game development and potential perspectives which I'll likely include copies of here as well.

Groundwork

So yesterday I was tweaking projectile properties and trying to get a better flamethrower going in game. I also spent a lot of time working on a logo and fleshing out other ideas for subsequent games. Interviewed a couple story writers but I'm still looking for more / better. I'm starting to get a budget together to be able to pay for some things, probably by project basis / commission.

The real question though is once I'm done with the first game should I follow up with another mini game / arcade game or go for a full game which would still likely be short but have some substance to it all the same. Does story matter? If I just came out with the most insane plot that at least stuck together but was otherwise seemingly random, would you still play it?