Writing Games with Processing: Getting Started

15. December, 2013

Ever wanted to write your own game? Can’t be too hard, right?

Most games sold today are ego shooters. But the genre is sucked pretty dry. The most innovative games in the last years were simple, surprising and cheap. Examples are Braid, Fez, Thomas Was Alone. Those games didn’t thrive from multi-million development budgets, they throve from simple ideas. They were great not despite but because of their limitations.

In this series of blog posts, I’ll show you how to develop a very simple game using Processing.

Processing is a simple environment to create amazing computer generated images using a simplified version of Java like the one on the right (code).

Komplexe Methoden – M.1 Zufall und Rauschen – M.1.6 Agenten im Raum – M_1_6_01_TOOL

Komplexe Methoden – M.1 Zufall und Rauschen – M.1.6 Agenten im Raum – M_1_6_01_TOOL

While you download the software, we need an idea.

In my case, the idea came from a brainstorming session organized by Zurich Game Developers at the MechArtLab. Everyone had to buy a Kinder Surprise egg (illegal in the USA, btw.) and create a game with the content. The eggs in my group contained a platypus, a crocodile and a frog.

After a quick brainstorming session we came up with this game idea: “Kribbit, the frog, runs a zoo. A small zoo. A very small zoo. Only a single compound. He has two animals: A poor, lonely platypus and a couple of crocodiles. The crocodiles promised to be nice to the platypus and not to eat him. But every time Kribbit looks the other way, the crocodiles try to eat poor Platty.”

That’s it. Game idea? Check.

What? Too simple for you? Well, complex game = low chance of success.

Next post: Setup and a simple player character.

9 Comments | Game, Software | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by digulla

Selling Used Games? No Way!

4. January, 2013

Sony found a new way to harass customers: They filed a patent for a technology that prevents playing second-hand games.

In a nutshell, the “game playing system” checks whether someone else already played the game on a different system and if so, it refuses to start the game.

Great, isn’t it?

With ideas like that, Sony will surely overcome it’s financial issues, soon – by going bankrupt even faster.

Need more reasons not to buy Sony?

Related articles:

Leave a Comment » | Justice | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by digulla

Dealing With Cheating

13. July, 2012

All online games attract cheaters. Most of them try to ban players who cheat but Rockstar Games came up with a better approach: They herd them.

Makes me wonder what took them so long. It would be great if there was a special server for cheaters and people using modded clients. Just imagine how many people will start working on AI problems (identify threats, take cover, shooting at targets, move around in a complex maze).

Leave a Comment » | Game | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by digulla

Create a Better World, One Game at a Time

10. July, 2012

Can you make the world better by playing games?

Sure: Fold enzymes on fold.it. Scientists tried for 15 years to fold a H.I.V related enzyme, fold.it solved it in 15 days.

You know better than the government? Look at social impact bonds.

Want to improve ethical behavior of large corporations? Donate to a convent.

Under the condition that they use it to buy enough shares to submit resolutions at shareholder meetings. And if that doesn’t work, the church has centuries of experience with public shaming. As Sister Nora Nash of the Sisters of St. Francis put it: “We’re not here to put corporations down. We’re here to improve their sense of responsibility.”

Related:

4 Comments | Philosophy | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by digulla

One Day Left To Buy Darwinia

5. December, 2011

There is a little strategic gem to buy at Humble Introversion Bundle: Darwinia. Hurry up, there are only 24 hours left … until you have to buy the game elsewhere … where you can’t set the price.

The goal of the game is to help little 2D people (the Darwinians) recapture their artificial world after a nasty virus infection. It’s not too easy and not too hard, the graphics is simple, the controls are easy to master.

I also tried Uplink (same producer) but the game is a little bit too text-heavy to blast off some steam after work.

Leave a Comment » | Game | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by digulla

Too Much Time on Your Hands? Try Minecraft

28. March, 2011

I’m addicted to a new game: Minecraft.

It’s a bit like Lego: Everything is a brick, simple rules, no documentation. Unlike Lego, you got lots of bricks. Lots. The levels are huge.

I actually managed to get lost once. Fortunately, I built my house on the highest mountain that I could find (even above the cloud layer). Right now, I’m turning the mountain into a Swiss cheese 🙂

Besides carving your dreams out of a huge pile of rock, you can create stuff in a “crafting area” in your inventory. So far, I managed to craft shovels, hoes, picks, axes, stone, a bucket and a mine shaft trolley.

What can I do with leather?

Nah, don’t tell me, I’ll figure it out myself.

Leave a Comment » | Fun, Game | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by digulla

Finished single player SC2

24. October, 2010

I just finished the single player missions of Starcraft 2SC2 Trailer – Wings of Liberty. Except for the video sequences and the end scroller (which both stuttered badly – a coder on the C=64 would have been shamed to death), it was a very nice game and story.

Since I’m not the typical PvP guy, I’ll now wait eagerly for the second part. Until then, I’ll collect my points for the other two modes of each level.

Leave a Comment » | Game | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by digulla

SC2 Tips: Liberation Day

24. August, 2010

Send your troops to the red cross

I’ll post some tips to help you beat the levels in StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty here from time to time. Let’s start with the very first level “Liberation Day”. During that level, you’ll learn how to move your troops.

There is little to say about this. If you advance, use “A(ttack)” and click somewhere you can see. This way, your troops will open fire as soon as they spot an enemy. Keep your troops centered on the street to avoid having one member “cut off” (i.e. out of range to shoot the opposition). This way, all your soldiers will be able to fire at once.

If you can, right-click on single enemy soldiers to kill them more quickly. That will help to reduce damage but comes at a cost: There will be a small pause before your soldiers will start shooting the next target. So be ready to right-click the next target as soon as the previous one goes down.

The most important part is the cut scene in the middle where new troops are deployed from orbit. This is not a video, it’s in game! So as soon as you see the enemy soldiers take cover in the central area, press “A(ttack)” and get your mouse into position. As soon as the pods land, click to get your troops moving.

Timing is important here. You want to arrive there as soon as your fresh troops open fire to catch the opposition in a crossfire. If you arrive too early/late, you will take unnecessary damage.

It helps to advance your troops as far as possible without triggering the attack. See the image for a good spot. Otherwise it will take too long for them to arrive.

Another tip: If the street is too narrow, send your soldiers a little farther than necessary to open fire and then attack. This way, everyone in your army will be in range to shoot at the cost of a bit of additional damage in the first moments of battle.

Related Articles:

Mission 1 – Liberation Day (gamesradar.com)

1 Comment | Game | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by digulla

StarCraft 2 on openSUSE 11.3: Update to 1.0.3 fails [update]

18. August, 2010

Found a solution! See this blog post.

When I tried to start the game today, it told me that 1.0.3 is available and that it needs an upgrade. After 49% of the download, the BlizzardDownloader.exe crashed. So I started it again. And again. And again.

The problem is always the same:

wine: Unhandled page fault on read access to 0x00000000 at address 0x245b44c (thread 0019), starting debugger...

I’ve opened a support ticket on codeweavers.

According to some comments in Wine’s AppDB by MrNice, restarting the installer eventually solves the problem.

[Update] It seems to help to delete the sc2-* files in the program directory and the file sc2-22660-22801-x86-Win-enGB-bnet-bin in the Updates folder. When I restart the game, I get the error dialog. Sometimes, a bit of the file has already been downloaded, sometimes, not even the changelog has been loaded. After closing the error dialog, the download resumes and hangs again at 49% with 3.8MB left.

[Update 2] Some people say that you just need to try often enough. That didn’t work for me. But I found a couple of *.torrent files in the installation folder which I showed to Vuze. After a couple of minutes, Vuze really started to download them … well, 4 of 5 of them. So I can’t play because no one has the 92666 byte file “sc2-16223-16291-x86-Win-deDE-locale”. Tragic.

5 Comments | Game | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by digulla

Are they out of their mind?

19. February, 2010

I while ago, I downloaded the demo for X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It’s a PS3 game and I like Wolverine, so I was really excited. Whoa, they really spent some time on the levels … lush forests … tree roots, plants … okay, I can’t leave the paths (in games, heroes can’t climb or crawl … see my post on Batman Arkham Asylum *sheesh*).

Anyway. I played a while. Hack’n’slay (you have to chop people to bits with Wolverine’s claws … so he has no brain, either … oh well). Then, there was that helicopter scene. You’re on a rope bridge or an edge or something, I forget. There is this helicopter with the machine guns, making your life (or rather the game character’s life) miserable. So you jump on it, slice the window, pull the pilot out and … chop his head to bits with the main rotor of the ‘copter …

What did you feel in that moment? Please comment below.

I felt: WTF?

In an instant, I found the game revolting. All my impressions about the nice graphics, all the artistic work was washed down with a wave of disgust. To my shame, I continued to play until he end and took out the last boss. Okay, there are special moves and such … but for some reason, I didn’t buy the game and I deleted the demo without hesitation. Later, I saw a game review in TV where they showed a lot of special moves, how to use spikes and your environment to impale your enemies and gore them in various ways. For some reason, they ran it in the afternoon, around 1500.

Frankly, are you out of your mind? I’m not a softy or against so called “killer games” but some time last year, a border was crossed for me. Wolverine. Wet. Bayonetta. Brain-dead games, meant for simple button mashing, asking for the reflexes of a 15-year old but with the graphics of a motion picture.

I’m not sure who pays the money to produce such games. I’m not sure who works on such games. I’m not sure which person at Sony gave their OK for the production or distribution of such games. I don’t care. I don’t care if you think it’s OK. I don’t care if any court think it’s OK.

I’m proud to say that I feel this is WRONG.

Maybe you should read up a bit on how the human brain works. For everyone else, just don’t buy such games. They are a waste of time and money. And while there is no proof that they are bad for your soul, they aren’t any good either. As I said: A waste.

Leave a Comment » | Game, Philosophy, Software | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by digulla

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »