:: yaroze blog ::

:: 21.7.03 ::

Got an animated googlie running randomly across the screen to fire at now. All I need now is a collision detectino routine and I've got the beginnings of a game! Wow!
:: Steve Parnell 7:39 AM [+] ::
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Over the past couple of days, I've taken some sprites from Ari Feldmen's excellent site (www.arifeldman.com) who not only does it for a living, but also has some fro hobbyist game makers. Much better than I could do.
Anyway, I've got a ship moving across the bottom of the screen, with acceleration and deceleration etc. Nice and smooth. Then I got some missiles firing, with sfx and all! Haven't really done sound in the tutorials, but just did someone's "Sound For Dummies" enough to convert some old samples I had lying around.
Now to get a beastie wandering over the screen to shoot at and that's a first simple game!
:: Steve Parnell 11:51 AM [+] ::
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Created a couple of sprites of my own - a simple 8-bit 16x16 ship and 8-bit 8x16 missile. I found the easiest way was to outline simply in a grid of 16x16 in Paint Shop Pro, and then resize to 256x256 for some bigger brush 16m colour painting. Nothing too accurate. Then resizing again back down to 16x16 and making 256 colours makes some decent looking sprites without being too precious about it! It's a real skill making 16x16 sprites pixel by pixel - something I can't do anyway!
Got the ship moving left & right at the bottom of the screen with the missile planted firmly in the middle of the screen.
Job of today is to get the missile "firing" and then design an alien and its bomb to shoot at at the top of the screen.
:: Steve Parnell 8:52 AM [+] ::
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Started "reviewing" Yarozer's games with Ben James and Philip-Andre Lorin under the microscope yesterday. I'll maybe do a couple a day, just to see what's possible and how I can learn from the masters.
:: Steve Parnell 8:33 AM [+] ::
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Grabbed some graphics from Ben James' Alien Looter using the dsave command from siocons. Just for the purposes of using something for testing - you understand - I will of course create my own if I ever do any game!
I'd like to go through all members' games and do some kind of simple review with a screenshot of each, just for posterity, and possibly look into the source of those I like in order to learn for myself. I'm such an obsessive-compulsive disordered man!
:: Steve Parnell 8:07 AM [+] ::
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Nothing really to report yesterday - having some fun looking at other Yarozer's games. I'm particularly impressed with Ben James. I think he must have done a game from all the 2D genres. "Alien Looter" - a space invaders clone - is a lot of fun and his latest - "katapila" - is close to an idea I had of a boucing thing and is terrific fun. Very simple, perhaps a bit too hard, plenty of room for expansion though. I think I'll continue running through a load of samples, and looking at source code, for a while. Puts off having to commit to anything!
:: Steve Parnell 8:19 AM [+] ::
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Managed to write up info on writing to screen and tiled backgrounds yesterday, which pretty much completes the section on 2D graphics. I'll write a bit about TimTool too now, but really I should devise some game and use that as a test-run. Some ideas spinning around, but more on this in due course...

Nothing really seems difficult on the Yaroze. I know I haven't got into game programming yet, but I'm so surprised as to why I didn't give it a proper go before. It's all so straightforward! I know I'll be made to eat my words sooner or later. But there is so much help and docs about now. I guess that's the role of the YUG - to compile it all into one place as the definitive article.

As you can see, I've managed to get the new blogger working again and will try keeping it up to date. It didn't work at first for publishing, but I replaced the address with the IP and bingo! Would be nice to update my web page too and integrate the blog into it properly with archives and stuff.
Would be nice to introduce myself on the newsgroups too. Bit scary really, seeing as I haven't done anything real and knowing my record probabyl won't. So I'll leave it until I've got something to shout about. The freetalk.english is still going on. Couldn't connect up to the ng's with my laptop for some reason, and so I thought they'd finished, but tried with the desktop yesterday and there are still a few faithful going strong.
:: Steve Parnell 7:35 AM [+] ::
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Over 5 months since the last entry, but not surprising really, considering all I've been doing.
Finally completed the PgDip in Architecture and passed! YESSSS!!!!
Free now.
Also, sold the house, and bought a new one in Hillsborough - we're waiting for exchange & completion dates now.
Then more freedom - mortgage free :) But then I'lve got to get an architect's job and qualify. But I'll forget about that for now...
That leaves me with time to Yaroze around a bit, which is what I've been getting back to the past few days.
I'm doing 2D and getting comprehensively up to date with it, going through all the tutorials and samples I can find. Started with an explanation of the theory - ordering tables, packets, double buffering, video modes and the like and did a couple of samples with boxes and gradated lines, moving around the screen.
Now I'm covering images and sprites in the 4 colour modes (4- and 8-bit CLUT, 15-bit direct and 24-bit direct).
Will try and get this done today, including changing the texture page for animation.
Then fonts and background stuff tomorrow should complete 2D and I'll have to think up some sort of game.

Also, I'm re-looking at xnview in order to write a TIM file writer plugin. Looks a bit over my head though.

More later in the week....
:: Steve Parnell 12:56 PM [+] ::
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