zRatchet.tk

Game Industry News

2005-05-19T21:13:00.000-05:00

http://gameindustrynews.blogspot.com/

A blog I just heard about on the IGDA forums, and we're crosslinking with them!

New Developments

2005-05-19T18:58:00.000-05:00

Snowball Surprise, the game I'm working on, is now going to be
a hardware demo. We're also starting a new project to work on
drivers for the hardware.

http://tinyurl.com/79uo2 - News at Snowball Surprise

http://tinyurl.com/9466f - 3D Input Driver Project

A Virtual Visit to E3

2005-05-19T18:36:00.000-05:00

Posted by zratchet:

The coverage of the Electronic Entertainment Expo is very good this year!

There are too many things to count that I have seen, both online and on G4TV.

Good sites:

http://www.e3insider.com - E3 Insider

http://ign.com - IGN

http://gamespot.com - GameSpot

http://gametrailers.com - GTTV

http://gamasutra.com - Gamasutra

http://tinyurl.com/7jqnt - List on AGD

Have fun!

Ratchet

generating wrapper code with tolua++

2005-05-09T08:16:00.000-05:00

Posted by Luo Hei:

One of the biggest problems when you start scripting your game with Lua is creating all required code to access your host application variables from scripts and vice versa. Several utilities have been created to help dealing with such tasks. I haven't tested all them extensively, but I found that tolua and especially tolua++ fit my needs. The second is more oriented to C++ and they both work by using a package file with the data and functions you want to make available to scripts and generating a .h/.c file with the required C/C++ code. You only have to link the tolua lib and include a header file to have the extra functions required to push your variables or classes to the Lua stack.
A major drawback I find in tolua is that the documentation doesn´t cover clearly the C API.
The demo I include here maybe is a bit complex, but illustrates the integration of a C++ class with some scripts.
Have fun and suggestions/improvements are welcome.

TXGF Continued

2005-04-28T15:23:00.000-05:00

posted by zratchet:

The last 2 days of the TXGF were fun and interesting.

A few game developers talked and showed their games, including me...
games such as Snowball Surprise ( http://snowballz.literati.org )

Some Stratagus ( http://stratagus.sf.net ) developers were there,
as was an Armagetron developer ( http://armagetron.sf.net ).

We played Pikmin 2, Zap ( http://zapthegame.com ) and AoK...

Fun, and my first lan party! :)

Texas Gaming Conference (April 2005) Day 1

2005-04-23T00:43:00.000-05:00

Posted by zratchet:

I've been at the TXGF one day now. (besides setting up yesterday)

Lots of robotics today!
Lego Robotics and Robosapiens, both of which were very very neat
and fun to play with.

I created a Lego Mindstorms Robot which spun in circles reversing every
10 seconds...

and played with the Robosapiens, which they'll have wrestling matches with later on...

Some interesting links (some from the flyer at the Robotics panel):

http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu/robolabatceeo - RoboLab software

http://www.techno-stuff.com - Lego Robot sensors

http://www.io.com/~rueger/lego/texaslugaustin/ - Austin TX Lego User Group

http://www.firstlegoleague.org - Lego Competitions

http://mindstorms.lego.com - Lego Mindstorms Robotics

http://www.robocup.org - Robot Soccer Championships

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pstone/robosoccer.html - UT Robot Soccer

http://www.lugnet.com/robotics/ - Lego Robot Hacks

http://www.ldraw.org - Lego CAD

http://www.sourceforge.net - Search here for "lego" for interesting tools

http://www.robosapien.com - RoboSapien robots

Well, that's all for now...

more later, and pictures too :)

Austin Texas Independent Game Developers Conferences

2005-03-22T15:49:00.000-06:00

Posted by zratchet:

The IGDA Indie SIG and TXGF will be having a Conference and LAN Party in Austin, TX April 22-24, where people will be able to discuss Independent Game Development Issues, see the latest Independent Games, play games, and more. Another conference will also occur, in November 2005.

Physics and Business

2005-03-17T15:00:00.000-06:00

Posted by zratchet

Ageia has developed the first PPU (Physics Processing Unit) for computer games and game consoles... will it be open source though? More news on this hopefully soon.

Biz@home is a website for people doing business from home to discuss and trade marketing tips and more.

want networking?

2005-03-11T18:37:00.000-06:00

Posted by Luo Hei of dsgp.blogspot.com (spanish)

After some work, I adapted an sdl_net example. I removed exotic dependences to SDL_gui and transformed the demo from a chat to a simple click transfer program. I still don't know very well how it works, but I think it can illustrate the use of sdl_net in a game much better. As soon as I feel in the mood (and I know a bit more about sdl_net) I will rewrite it to an UDP based client-server system. UDP is good for your bandwidth, if you don't care about some lost packets. Also I plan to use some simple multithreading. Feel free to post suggestions/improvements.
Get source here. Run server, run client and click in some place in the window, and the server will receive the click coordinates.

Planeshift mini-review

2005-03-11T11:06:00.000-06:00

Posted by Luo Hei of dsgp.blogspot.com (spanish)

There are lots of articles on the Internet explaining why you should not try to make a MMORPG. Well, seems these guys didn't get the message. Or maybe they started long before the articles were published.
I found Planeshift in 2000 I think, but the project predates 1992. I was a newbie Linux user looking for games to relax with after the long research sessions usual in the first days with a new operating system. It was not playable and useless to me, as I just had a few hours of internet access from a friend's office, a couple of days per week. It has been a long wait until finally a really playable version was released, and in the meantime we have just tasted a tech preview where you can connect, create a character with a buggy client and do nothing, a Molecular Blue Release where you can connect, create character and do nothing with a buggy client now based on the Crystal Space engine and at last, Crystal Blue, the current Open Beta release.
In Crystal Blue you can create up to 4 characters in a totally different and new form, the currency have been changed from previous IMHO annoying method of harvesting randomly spawned crystals to a more logical based on trias, the world currency. You can fight mobs, use a couple of weapons, cast spells, mine gold or iron, level up skills, trade with players or NPCs, loot the corpses of your kills, duel, play in teams and join guilds. You will miss armor (there isn't armor available) and shields are merely a decoration on your arm. Also the quest system could be difficult, as you have to find the right phrases to answer questions. That takes a lot of typing, don't expect a window with all possible dialog options. In the future it will be possible to craft weapons, ride animals and do many other fun things.
But it is possible that when you read this review and try the game you will find something completely different. This is not a definitive release (it is more an incremental release), as it is under continuous evolution in the form of content and client updates. A nice detail of the updater system is that it supports proxies (updating a game such as Anarchy Online requires a major hacking of my firewall and proxy settings, although that issue seems to have been resolved). It is a painless process once you know a few tricks. There are usually an average of 60 users, but the total registered userbase is about 45000. I haven't noticed much lag and game goes smooth with my usual 1400 ms ping time. The server now is set to admit 200-300 concurrent users, but the code is able to handle thousands of players.
The client provides the 3 usual camera modes and runs pretty stable and with good framerates on my crappy Intel 865 video card. The memory requirements are a bit high: 512 Mb, but I think it is usual to find that amount in hardcore gamers PC's.
The game interface isn't as complete as it should be, but you can customize a quick command bar to avoid typing. The chat system is distributed in a few channels: system, tells, guilds, auctions, so that you can easily view or monitor activity; until now, the best chat system I have seen in online games. You can customize the widgets position, show or hide them.
The chat system provides an special channel: Help. This Help channel is attended by advisors, more experienced players that can answer newbie questions. Any player can become advisor by using the /advisor command. This avoids problems with newbies being annoying with shouts in the wrong channels and the usual derived discussions.
Even when some bugs and problems arise while you play or after updates, and the development process has been painfully slow, you can actually have fun with Planeshift. More important, this game (and Eternal Lands) prove that no matter how hard it is, you can create a MMORPG with commercial quality if you have the motivation and enough patience. This gives the game a special sense of value, at least for me. I strongly recommend that you take some time to try it if you like online RPGs.

Interview with Ingo Ruhnke

2005-02-17T19:39:00.000-06:00

Interview with: Ingo Ruhnke (grumbel) by zratchet

Ingo Ruhnke is a major force in Open Source Game
Development. Some of his most major works include Pingus and the
Game of the Month at Happypenguin.com. His personal website is
at http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/

--- start of interview ---

Mikey Lubker (zratchet): Do you work at a game development
company?
Ingo Ruhnke (grumbel): Nope, I am currently studying computer
science.
ML: Where?
IR: Bielefeld, my home town, in Germany
ML: What is your definition of Indie (as related to Game
Development)? You can include mods, open source, etc...
IR: Being independent means to me: not being forced to work on
stuff that I don't like, not being bound by a release schedule,
and in general being able to explore areas which I like to
explore, independent of what current commercial games currently
do. In general I am coming from the Free Software 'viewpoint',
so being independent is just one side of the story. I also work
exclusively with free (as in Open Source) tools.
ML: Would you ever want to work for a large game developer? or
start a game company? If starting a game company, would you use
an Open Source/Free Software method?
IR: The trouble with starting at a game company is that it would
basically mean an instant halt to everything I do independently.
Working on games both at work and at home in your spare time
would just be extremely tiring, and I have already seen quite a
lot of people that went into the games business and basically
disappeared from the Free Software world, so I guess it wouldn't
be much different with me.
About starting my own company, I don't really know. Sure, it
would be cool to make money with what I love, on the other side
I am not sure if there is enough money to make. The commercial
game market is already full of games and the money involved to
create commercial games is getting insanely large.
ML: What do you think about companies like Sunspire Studios or
Garage Games?
IR: I don't really know much about Garage Games, except that
they sell Torque engine licenses for around $100. I haven't
played any of the games created with Torque and haven't much
knowledge what is happening around them.
ML: Are you interested in the Torque engine?
IR: It's a closed source engine and it costs money, so no, I am
not really interested in it, there are already a whole bunch of
open source engines available that might serve as an
alternative. If they are of similar quality is of course
questionable, but if you want to produce open source software,
you can't rely on non-free dependencies, but have to use what
you can get as free software.
About Sunspire Studios, I really havn't heard anything about
them after TuxRacer. I'm not even sure if they are still alive
or if it's only their webpage that is still around.
I don't like TuxRacer much, Sure it's one of the better looking
open source games we have, but from a gameplay point of view it
gets boring pretty quickly. It doesn't provide enough control,
there aren't enough bonuses, and it is always just downhill.
That said, I have never played the commercial version, only the
GPLed (open source) one.
ML: Could you give me a little bio (i.e. experience in game
development/industry and/or in a field you feel prepares you for
that)?
IR: About my experience, I started with programming back in the
days of the Commodore 64. I never did go into assembler
programming, just toyed around with basic a lot. Later I moved
to the Amiga and again mainly toyed around with its basic, while
ignoring the rest of it pretty much completely. Only later on on
the PC, on which I of course also spent quite a while with
basic, I started to explore other programming languages, like C,
C++ and such.
The number one reason why I stuck with basic for so long was
simply that it always came with the computer and I have always
been a person that just uses whatever he gets first, without
spending too much time about thinking about alternatives that
are available. I never read any book on basic either, except
that stuff that came with the computer, learned most stuff by
trial & error and the examples that came with the basic
implementation (qbasic's gorilla game and such)
ML: What PC OS did you start on?
IR: DOS6.0 and Win3.1 I think. I continued that way until around
1997 when I got 'introduced' to linux and after that slowly
switched over to it. I started with SuSE 5 (only easily
available one back then), then later moved to Debian 2.1
(slink). I also used Windows 95 and 98 for quite a few years. I
still have Windows XP that I dual boot for gaming. And I've had
an hour or two on OS/2 once.
ML: Any other programming languages besides basic, C, C++ ?
IR: I have had a look at many languages, really I am only fluent
in C, C++ and Scheme, I also program in Ruby, know a bunch of
Python, have used XML and XSLT quite a bit, have programmed a
bit in Perl, Pascal, Haskell, Java, LUA. Haskell
( http://www.haskell.org ) is a functional programming language,
and has some very interesting concepts in it. I also have read
books on objective-C, Lisp, and CLOS (object oriented plugin for
LISP).
ML: Do you manage any projects, if so how many and what
projects?
IR: I manage everything on
http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/projects.html
In addition I am heavily involved in the current Game
of the Month (tuxkart) and a bit involved in supertux.
Also http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/flexlay/ which is my only
non-game project, which is of course closly related to games.
(a map editor)
Of my projects, Feuerkraft, Windstille, Construo and Advent are
completely done by myself.
ML: Is Pingus your biggest project currently?
IR: For Pingus there have been numerous smaller and bigger
contributions by others. Pingus is the biggest and oldest
project.
ML: Do any have a "permanent" team? And if so, do you have any
hierarchy (i.e. managers of certain sections)?
IR: None of Pingus and Co. ever had a permanent team. There
aren't any leader or manager positions in my projects. Supertux
and Tuxkart (Game of the Month projects) however do have
permanent teams. Everybody can join and leave those projects as
they want to, however.
ML: Isn't allowing team members to come and go pretty much
normal for open projects?
IR: More or less normal for open source, yes.
ML: In Supertux, there are maintainers... aren't they kind of
managers?
IR: Not really. It just happens that somebody needs to create
the Sourceforge project and those are then 'maintainers'. Who
actually still works on a project a year later is however a
different story. And sometimes, there are release managers
(after the original release)
ML: What experience do you have in game development? Just
programming or do you do art, music, design, support/quality
assurance, website, etc? All of the above?
IR: I can do everything beside music, at least more or less.
ML: Which do you consider your best talents?
IR: None, I am neither a very good programmer, nor a very good
artist, know enough of both to get my games moving.
ML: What game engines do/have you used? (if any)
IR: None, I have always written the engines for my games, which
is pretty common for 2d games.
ML: Don't you use Clanlib a bit for Flexlay? Or is it not really
an engine?
IR: Clanlib isn't an engine, just a library like SDL that gives
you access to graphics and sound.
ML: What about compilers? free/open ones right? ever any others?
MingW ever?
IR: Just GCC in all its flavours, which includes MingW and
Cygwin. I mainly use it only on Linux however.
ML: I guess pretty much the other languages you mentioned either
don't need compilation or come with their own compiler.
IR: (no comment)
ML: How old are you?
IR: 25
ML: why do you use grumbel for a handle?
IR: Mainly because I invented these little comic characters back
on the Amiga.
http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/gfx/amiga/images/grumbels_heim.png
and then just 'recycled' that name. No idea how I came to that name
in the first place however. I also use an image like this on the
Happypenguin forums:
http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/gfx/amiga/images/super_grumbel.png
ML: Where do you see open source game development (and game
development as a whole) going in the future?
IR: How open source gaming will perform in the future is hard to
tell, for sure we won't see any commercial quality open source
games anytime soon. Open source games always seem to lag 10-15
years behind commercial games, and I don't see them getting closer,
there simply is pretty much stuff that you can't easily do at home.
For example SuperTux ( http://super-tux.sf.net ) may be pretty good
compared to 1984 SuperMarioBros maybe, but even then I would say
that SuperMarioBros had better level design and more features.
However I in general don't care too much about being behind, major
improvements in computer games have pretty much only been on the
graphics side, gameplay hasn't changed all that much. So being 10
years behind doesn't mean that the games suck, some of the best
games ever were created back then. It just means that graphics and
sound will be more weak.
ML: Examples of old good games being like SimAnt, M.U.L.E., etc. It
also seems like some open source games are pretty good graphics-
wise :) (TuxRacer, War3D, etc)
IR: TuxRacer is commercial, the latest GPLed version uses graphics
developed for the commercial version.
ML: Have you ever used game consoles, Macs, PDA's, or cellphone
games or done development on those platforms?
IR: Never developed for them, but since I use mostly portable
libraries most of my stuff should be compilable on Mac. I have a
PlayStation2 and a gamecube, a bunch of gameboys, snes, nes, but I
use them for gaming only. I'm not interested in ps2-linux, because
it seems to be extremely cut down, no direct access to the hardware
and such.
ML: What control method do you think is best for games (I know,
really depends on genre)? Gamepad, keys/mouse, camera (like
Toysight/Eyetoy), voice?
IR: I prefer a gamepad. For first person shooters and strategy
games a mouse might be more precise, but I really don't like to
abuse the keyboard as a gaming device.
ML: Do you think that camera/voice/dancemat control will be put to
good use in future games? (i.e. camera seems like it would be good
for martial arts and sports games)
IR: Cameras and dance-mats (even the NES had one) will always have
their place in the gaming world. However they are more party-tools
than usable for real gaming. Real gaming means a game with story
and such, not just hopping in the right rhythm. About voice use,
what would be needed is a way to have speech detection and speech
synthesising, so people could talk normal, but would speak with the
voice of the character they are playing, not their own.
ML: What is your favorite game genre?
IR: I don't really have any, I play everything that is fun. I
prefer games with a good storyline however.

--- end of interview ---

Some screenshots of games Ingo Ruhnke has worked on:

Construo:
http://www.nongnu.org/construo/images/screenshot_0.2.0-2.png

Feuerkraft:
http://www.nongnu.org/feuerkraft/images/screenshot-13.jpg

Windstille:
http://www.nongnu.org/windstille/images/screenshot8.jpg

SuperTux:
http://super-tux.sourceforge.net/images/game3-010.jpg