My journal on trying to design and develop games in Singapore; and some of the steps, challenges and ideas I have encountered along the way.
Currently focusing on using Flash as the platform.
It makes the process of getting my bachelor in IT feel like kindergarten.
For example, last week we did reflection (e.g. a mirror) and planar shadows. This week we did a pinball simulation (with multiple balls bouncing on each other). Next week, we will be switching to OpenGL 3.3 and writing our own shaders. Yes, it is extremely fast paced.
Thus, I am taking a hiatus from blogging for a "while"... :D
Other than the fact that is likely the most profitable game on FB now.
As a sandbox game, it has no real objectives other than to earn the ability to decorate your virtual farm with more options.
It has led to numerous clones, including clones made by Zynga themselves like CafeWorld, YoVille, etc. It was also a clone of another similar farming game.
Instead of using Flash, it only uses HTML. Some of its more interesting features include achievements, trading, collecting, frequent new content. It has also inspired a lot of clones which are all very similliar.
One of the better clones of Mafia Wars. It added cooperative play against limited duration enemies which sometimes involved over 200 friend and friends-of-friends.
Four social game developers (from Zynga, Playfish, Playdom and Crowdstar) were interviewed during the Flash Games Summit on March 8, 2010.
Here are some excerpts that I found interesting:
"Moderator: What are four words that are the keys to successful social games?
Playfish: Social - provide a context for meaningful interaction, Relatable, pick themes and mechanics that are understandable and aspirational; Rewarding, emotionally rewarding and socially, reinforcement schedules to keep players engaged, Emergent gameplay, easy to pick up but emergent complexity and depth
Zynga: Mass Market - if it doesn't appeal to enough ppl, it won't be as successful as you want; Invest - ppl need to be excited about investing their time in it, Express - needs to be a game that ppl want to express themselves in; Relationships - allow ppl to create new relationships or nurture existing relationships
Moderator: Why do you think those casual game companies don't experience the same success on FB?
Zynga: Guild of Heroes was a Diablo 2 clone - I joined the company as it was finishing up. The question was how is it social - and it wasn't. The team thinking was that they'd add the social afterward. And it doesn't work. Needs to built from ground up.
Playdom: I agree. So many examples of that. Lots of examples of games on FB that would be big if they weren't on FB. FB games need to be social from the ground up. Also, lots of the users in the social gaming space are REALLY casual, so Bejeweled did it right with short play sessions, accessibility. Notifications have gone away. FB is moving away from one-to-many notifications and toward more deliberate, one-to-one notifications. User to User, App to User.
Crowdstar: I think this is a pretty profound change. Makes it increasingly difficult for other companies to reach the same success we have. Will be very difficult for other companies to get where we have. Changes way you're going to distribute your game. For business people, it's something they need to look at closely to see how they're going to grow their game. You're going to have to spend more money to launch something.
Moderator: Most of you have two currencies, right?
Playdom: We have a couple PHDs helpding to manage our economies.
Crowdstar: I heard one of the Playfish guys saying they deal with a billion pieces of data a day(?).
Zynga: Zynga collects 5TB of data per day and we have a team that turns that into reports we can track.
Playdom: Very different from any other industry I've seen. I came from Google and YouTube and thought those were data driven companies, but this is way beyond that. You can make valuable decisions within minutes because everyone is logged in all the time and the quality of the info is so much higher than worrying about cookies, etc."
Moderator: Aren't these games just sophisticated slot machines?
Zynga: Farmville brings families together. Moms play with their 4 year olds, etc.
As mentioned, the removal of FaceBook Notifications (from apps), which is to reduce spam, will make it a lot harder for new applications to become popular without external advertising.
The Unreal Development Kit (UDK) can be downloaded and used to make games using the Unreal Engine 3. However, there is a licensing fee if you release the games for profit which is supposed to be affordable even for independent developers.
November 5, 2009 - "Epic Games, Inc. announces the launch of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a free edition of Unreal Engine 3 that provides community access to the award-winning toolset like never before. This software release is available to anyone interested in using 3D game engine technology, including game developers, students, hobbyists, researchers, creators of 3D visualizations and simulations, and digital filmmakers. Anyone can start working with the industry-leading Unreal Engine 3 toolset by downloading UDK at www.udk.com, where detailed product features, technical documentation, commercial licensing terms, support resources and more are also available.
An unprecedented milestone in game development, the release of UDK awards free access to the same world-class tools and technology used by many of the world’s best video game developers and publishers. Unreal Engine 3 is a constantly evolving game engine, and UDK contains all the most recently added features and technological enhancements, including many that have yet to be seen in an Unreal Engine game. Furthermore, Epic Games will release ongoing, upgraded builds of UDK for free.
There is no charge for noncommercial or educational use of UDK. Over 100 academic campuses currently use Unreal Technology as part of teaching game development-related courses, and colleges with plans to incorporate UDK into their curricula include the University of Pennsylvania, North Carolina State University, The Art Institute system of schools, Drexel University, Westwood College, DeVry University and Atlantic College, with many others to be announced.
Individuals and companies wishing to develop software for commercial purposes should refer to licensing terms at www.udk.com/licensing. Commercial terms have been structured to make it easy for independent developers, start-up firms and seasoned professionals to use UDK with minimal financial barrier from concept to deployment. UDK is currently for PC use only, although console support is under consideration. Developers approved to make games for Xbox 360® and PLAYSTATION®3 may inquire for more information by emailing udklicensing@epicgames.com."
Going indie means you will need to probably consider setting up a company.
Well, I have no idea. Hopefully I will know more after November 7. *sigh* It's a Saturday.
"
'Doing Business in Singapore' at Tampines Regional Library on 7 November 2009
12 October 2009
Thinking of starting a business? Planning to be an entrepreneur?
Here is an opportunity to know more about being your own boss at an upcoming talk of the popular ACRA@Heartlands series. Jointly organised by the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) and National Library Board (NLB), the talk on ‘Doing Business in Singapore’ will provide you with information and useful tips on starting a business.
"I like games that have depth and strategy to them and as such I try to make intelligent games. As far as possible, my design philosophy is to keep the player engaged all the time and to have a good reason for everything that exists in the game. Every gimmick, every unit, every mechanic is there to encourage a particular play style. When I make games, I think about specific scenarios that I think would be exciting." - Sean
During an interview by GameDev.net, Sean mentions that he initially started making custom maps for Warcraft 3 and then progressed to using Game Maker.
Battleships Forever is a 2D real-time strategy (although it is more tactical, with no resource gathering or diplomacy) where you control multiple spaceships and fight other spaceships. The main feature of it is that each spaceship is built from multiple modules like: turrets with fixed firing arcs, deflector shields, linking structure, etc and each can be individually destroyed. Thus, positioning is very important and you will have to decide between facing your offensive modules or protective modules towards the enemy.
There are currently 17 pre-designed spaceships that you can control and over 50 enemy designs, each with their own weakness and strength. Also, you can create your own custom designs. [Download: wyrdysm.com]
Sean has said that Battleships Forever is inspired by and loosely based on Warning Forever by Hikoza.T.Ohkubo, where the each round had only one boss which evolved based on how you killed it the previous round. [Download: cnet.com]
If you like the concept where spaceships are modularized, then you may wish to also check out another indie game, Captain Forever (US$15) which puts you in control of a single ship that you need to upgrade in battle using part from destroyed enemy spaceships.
A while back I got demoralized when I saw how Papervision3D slowed down when building complex scenes. After taking a look at this racing game, I realized that's any slowness I noticed previously in other games is due to unoptimized/inefficient use of Papervision3D.
The game is a cartoon-ish kart racer where you can fully customize your kart and then race with other friends online. Even race tracks can be customized too. While the game concept is not new, this may be the first time that it has been done using flash.
Our friends at Less Rain have set once again the benchmark for 3D games in Flash, using the powerful combination of Papervision3D and Box2D. Check out their blog for more info.
FYI, they used Box2D for physics as Papervision3D does not include physics.
Another thing worth mentioning is that it is brought to us by Red Bull. This is what I call a good advertisement (and something that I will "watch" repeatedly).
Every wanted to share a short snippet of code online with others and still preserve the native language formatting?
I have. I been annoyed with how all the nice coloring, indentation and italics got lost when I copied a piece of code from my editor to a web "rich text box".
A friend of mine shared a small function using PasteBin a while back; and now I can't imagine sharing code any other way.
When you paste a snippet of code, you select the language you want to format it in and there is a wide selection to chose from including AS3, etc.
I was reading an article of Dirty Coding Tricks that game developers use to meet deadlines or simply cut down work needed. Here's a few I found interesting (some of which were comments posted by readers):
"At university there was a team (not related to me, but these guys are the perfect example :P) that made a FPS flash game...
For some bizarre reason, the programmer instead of checking if you was colliding with the wall and not allow you go there, he made the inverse, he checked if there was a wall, and allowed you to move parallel to it...
This sparked a bizarre bug: In crossings, you could not actually cross, only turn to the passage on your left or right.
The deadline was closing, and they had no idea on how to fix it...
Then the team writer fixed the issue! He told the artist to draw a animation of hands touching the walls, and then he wrote in the story that the protagonist was blind and needed to touch the walls to know where he was going.
-Hélder Gomes Filho
Back on Wing Commander 1 we were getting an exception from our EMM386 memory manager when we exited the game. We'd clear the screen and a single line would print out, something like "EMM386 Memory manager error. Blah blah blah." We had to ship ASAP. So I hex edited the error in the memory manager itself to read "Thank you for playing Wing Commander."
- Ken Demarest
I was fresh out of college, still wet behind the ears, and about to enter the beta phase of my first professional game project -- a late-90s PC title. It had been an exciting rollercoaster ride, as projects often are. All the content was in and the game was looking good. There was one problem though: We were way over our memory budget.
Since most memory was taken up by models and textures, we worked with the artists to reduce the memory footprint of the game as much as possible. We scaled down images, decimated models, and compressed textures. Sometimes we did this with the support of the artists, and sometimes over their dead bodies.
We cut megabyte after megabyte, and after a few days of frantic activity, we reached a point where we felt there was nothing else we could do. Unless we cut some major content, there was no way we could free up any more memory. Exhausted, we evaluated our current memory usage. We were still 1.5 MB over the memory limit!
At this point one of the most experienced programmers in the team, one who had survived many years of development in the "good old days," decided to take matters into his own hands. He called me into his office, and we set out upon what I imagined would be another exhausting session of freeing up memory.
Instead, he brought up a source file and pointed to this line:
static char buffer[1024*1024*2];
"See this?" he said. And then deleted it with a single keystroke. Done!
He probably saw the horror in my eyes, so he explained to me that he had put aside those two megabytes of memory early in the development cycle. He knew from experience that it was always impossible to cut content down to memory budgets, and that many projects had come close to failing because of it. So now, as a regular practice, he always put aside a nice block of memory to free up when it's really needed.
He walked out of the office and announced he had reduced the memory footprint to within budget constraints -- he was toasted as the hero of the project.
As horrified as I was back then about such a "barbaric" practice, I have to admit that I'm warming up to it. I haven't gotten into the frame of mind where I can put it to use yet, but I can see how sometimes, when you're up against the wall, having a bit of memory tucked away for a rainy day can really make a difference. Funny how time and experience changes everything.
From the title of this game (which is almost the only lyrics of the soundtrack), I think you realise what the creator of this game is implying. Games with zombies are the current fad. So yet another zombie game to join the ranks of Left 4 Dead, Plants vs. Zombies, Killing Floor, Burn, Zombie Burn!, etc
And killing wave after wave of zombies really does feel good. This game is the pure essense of it.
FYI, It's going for just 80 points (or about a dollar).
The world of gaming is not only on video games on the PC, consoles and portable devices; it also includes board games, miniatures, card games, Trading Card Games (TCGs), etc.
However, Sony Online Entertainment's Free Realms has come out with a MMO (PC game), a Physical TCG and a Digital TCG, all at the same and linked them in a unique way.
"What Is a Digital TCG Card?
The Free Realms Trading Card Game is built right into the Free Realms virtual world! Click the card fan icon on the menu dock, and you'll be taken into the TCG.
What Is a Physical TCG Card?
The Free Realms Trading Card Game is also a physical trading card game manufactured by Topps™ and is available wherever trading card games are sold!
The ... Starter Pack contains ..., exclusive virtual rewards and your first-month Free Realms Membership!"
As you can see they have tightly coupled these two TCGs to their PC game and vice versa; and that's not all. The have come up with a new and innovative way to link them together: they allow players to use their character in the MMO to print out cards for the TCGs.
Step 1: Dress up your character from the MMO.
Step 2: Your TCG personal card stats are based on your MMO character stats.
Step 3: The finished card is ready for printing or use in the digital game.
Step 4: Trade your personal card with friend!
"Sony Online Entertainment has teamed up with trading card company Topps to let players create their own official personalized cards for the Free Realms collectible card game.
The Duelist on Demand Program allows players to turn their Free Realms character into a personalized card for use in the physical version of the tie-in trading card game. Using Topps' print-on-demand technology, players will be able to create and share themselves with friends in a distinctively family-friendly way."
Unity (or "Unity3D" as it was first known as). It is currently at version 2.5.
It is a multi-platform game development tool, designed from the start to ease creation. A fully integrated professional application, Unity just happens to contain the most powerful engine this side of a million dollars.
Besides publishing standalone games, it has its own web player add-in (the download is about 9 MB) for browsers and IPhone publishing (at an additional charge). Currently in two versions: Unity Indie (US$199) and Unity Pro (US$1499).
"Unity supports three scripting languages: JavaScript, C#, and a dialect of Python called Boo. All three are equally fast and interoperate. All three can use the underlying .NET libraries which support databases, regular expressions, XML, file access and networking.
Scripting is frequently thought of as limited and slow. But in Unity your scripts are compiled to native code and run nearly as fast as C++. You get the fast iteration times and ease of use everyone loves about scripting languages."
That seems very believable after viewing their Tropical Paradise demo.
Also, according to somebloggers, it is apparently easy to convert a game written with Papervision3D (Actionscript) to Unity. Something which they mostly do so as to publish their games to the iPhone.
Something to comeback to once I made something with Flash.
3D graphics in Flash are usually handled by the CPU almost no assistance of any fancy 3D acceleration GPU. Thus, framerate is a very important concern.
"Denormal numbers are floating point numbers that are really small. When such a number occurs the CPU switches into denormal mode and calculations become very slow. Example
In this example the framerate will jump from approximately 40fps to 1fps. The reason are denormal numbers.
private var _denormals: Vector.;
private function init(): void { _denormals = new Vector.( 0xfffff, true );
var n: int = 0xfffff;
while( --n > -1 ) _denormals[ n ] = 1e-256;//very small number!
EnterFrameProvider.connect( enterFrame ); }
private function enterFrame(): void { var n: int = 0xfffff;
while( --n > -1 ) _denormals[ n ] *= 0.5;//do some calculations with very small numbers }
ActionScript Solution
There are a couple of solutions to deal with denormal numbers. Some try to avoid them by adding always a very small value or by adding some white noise. In ActionScript the best and most simple solution is by adding and subtracting an anti-denormal constant. [edit] Solution
Example
This solution is easy to implement in ActionScript and will result in real zero values.
_denormals[ n ] = _denormals[ n ] * 0.5 + 1e-18 - 1e-18;//avoiding denormals
This is the same example with the fix for denormal numbers. The framerate will now stay at approximately 40fps."
So long, and thanks for all the fish
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