Kylegar’s Blog

Dunno what I’m gonna write here, so, I’ll just ramble a bit

Watched the entire season of Firefly. Really sad that it only lasted like 14 episodes. It was a VERY good show, and makes me want to watch Serenity again. My favorite line is when they discover that River Tam can read minds, and Wash is like “Mind Reading? That’s like, Science Fiction or something” and Zoe responds “Wash, You’re on a space ship”. I laughed pretty hard at that.

In other news, I did quite a bit of work on Empires, adding custom tracers, Lightning tanks, and watching Ark make laser rifles. Also, Resist scripts are fully in, and I’m getting alot of good feedback from it, working through bugs and little naggles, and finally getting it in. It’s really good to set up things this explicit, with specific resists for each weapon type. It gives us far more room to balance Cannons vs Missiles, as well as creates some interesting tactics to watch out for.

Also, The Rattle did an interview of the Empires team…That should show up in a few days. Lots of good questions, and some even better answers from the development team. Look forward to it.

I’m also working on a psuedo-AI/pathfinding/brainmagic algorithm for a quad-rotor robot. It’s a flying robot that’s supposed to find it’s way around a room, and find a picture. I’m doing the planning and navigation part, and I have to make it completely automated (no interaction from humans). It’s gonna be AWESOME.

~Kylegar

Kylegar C++, Development, Empires, Games

Got my Asus Eee PC the other day.  Must say, I’m in love with it.  It’s small, light, fast, and it runs Eeebuntu. It’s pretty awesome.

Yea, it’s pretty cool.

Uni is going well.  Learning java and stuffs.  Pretty simple classes, but, it’s fun.

Saw Curious Case of Benjamin Button the other week.  Pretty good movie, I like how much it made me think about what life would be like if I was growing younger instead of older.  I got choked up on the part where he had to leave his family.  It was pretty sad.

Did some coding on my Eee.  I’m getting tired of typing std::cout every time I want to print something, so, I moved what I was working on to a 2d rendering window.  I think this is actually going to become my 2d engine more than what the other set of code I was working on is.  This is a simple world with a dynamic size, and a camera object to look at it.  I also wrote a base static tile and a base moveable tile object, that I’m going to derive everything off of.  For drawing, I just have a 64×64 sprite, but, it should start taking shape the next few days.  I have all the source code on my Eee, since I think I’m going to try the beta of Windows 7 on my desktop.  I have heard nothing but good, and I have the iso burned to a disc…I just need to install it now.

Yea, thats about it.  I have a ton of classwork to do, but I think I’m going to go eat first.

Kylegar C++, Class, Development, Empires, Engine, Games, Life, Uncategorized

So, We released Empires today.  All I can say is that it was as graceful as a ton of bricks falling through the sky.

There’s small things about the source engine that you just seem to miss.  Like, Theres over 500 files that you need to make sure exist.  When releasing a file bigger than 100mb, it’s generally a good idea to get as many mirrors as possible.  And, when you forget a file, don’t freak out like the world is ending (Read: Empires Community).

All went well though.  As the night wore on, and people mirrored the file, things got smoother.  I guess the initial fuckup with me missing the infantry.cfg wan’t that much of an issue, so, we managed to damage control it pretty easally.

So, some tips to make sure a release goes as smooth as possible:

1. Don’t forget files.  Thats bad!
2. Get atleast 4 mirrors for release day.  One is not enough
3. If something is forgotten, don’t say anything until a decision is made on how to proceed.
4. If it’s major, ignore rule 3.
5. Be nice to your server admins, they really control the game.

All in all, 2.2 is going well.  Of course there is bitching, and it always happens, but, keep pressing forward, and don’t stagnate.

~K

Kylegar Development, Empires, Games, Uncategorized Development, Empires, hl2

This post has been coming for a while.  A rant on DRM, but, I’m going to sweeten it a bit with a rant on DLC as well.

I’ll start off with a simple explanation what DRM is… It stands for Digital Rights Management, and it’s pretty much a little piece of code or a program that makes sure that You, the consumer, have purchased and are using Their product in the way that they see fit.  Most of the time, this comes in the form of putting in a CD key when you install a program or game, but, now it is turning into a whole bloated mess.  EA/Maxis’s Spore has a notorious “3 Install Limit”, meaning, you can only install Spore, Uninstalled or not, 3 times before you need to buy another copy.  Or, there is Farcry 2’s 5 Install limit, but wait, if you uninstall it, you get an install back!

Wait…What?

That’s right…the company you purchased this product from tells you how you can use it.  Now, I generally am not one for pirating, but, I downloaded the cracked RELOADED version of Spore, then went out and bought a copy from Fred Meyers.  I used the CD key in the actual purchased copy to install the cracked, DRM free version of Spore.  I wasn’t the only one to do that either.  In hindsight though, EA is getting slapped with some class action lawsuits over their DRM policies, so, I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear a bit more about DRM in the future.

Of course, with all this money grabbing in the Gaming Industry, Microsoft is trying to take a piece of the pie away from Steam in Digital Distribution.  Guess what part they are taking… Downloadable Content that you have to pay for. Yeppers, Buy a game, and pay for any additional content they decide to give you.  I’ll take Valve’s method of patching TF2 every 3-4 months with some new toys and achievements, or CCP’s Expansion Pack, for free, every 6 or so months.

Really though, I can understand why you want to charge people for DLC.  You spent time and effort creating that Content, and you want a return for it.  The problem is, In the case with Spore, who is going to pay $20 for extra creature parts? Who do you alienate if you, lets say, release a multipayer map that people have to pay for?  And, are you going to go so far as to Charge users to download other user’s custom content?  How far do you go to make money?

I guess what I’m getting at is, It should be fun to make games for other people to play, but, the big industry is trying to lap up as much money as they can.  It makes me sad to see something so great be swallowed up by money grabbers.  I mean, Come on…there is going to be a 50 Cent game.  He isn’t even a good rapper…

Also, played Fallout 3 and loved it.  The Liberty bot at the end screaming democracy catch-phrases was a great touch.  I loved hearing “DEMOCRACY IS NON NEGOTIABLE” and “COMMUNISM IS A LIE” from a 75 foot tall walking, laser firing robot that looked like it came out of a 1950’s comic book.  Made my day.

Kylegar Development, Games, Life

Smashball playtest yesterday.  It’s a great game, with Spider-man like swinging and trying to score.   Theres quite a few bugs, and its still in alpha, but its hella fun.  l’avair sucks, but thats because hes a scoring machine, but I shut him down.

Also, went to OSU and got my books yesterday.   I got 2 out of four, since one of them wasn’t in yet, and I’m still waitlisted for the second.  The book for Computer Science sucks.  It’s a how to write Python book, and, well Python sucks.  It’s slow, it has no power (unless you give it power), and the Garbage Collector sucks.   And, it’s section on C was horribly wrong.  Oh Well

I’m going shopping again today to pick up the rest of the little things I need for school.

4 days left.

EDIT: I have officially named the engine I’m working on.  It is the Kloptrop Engine.  Wewt.

admin Development, Engine, Kloptrop, Life, Smashball Gaming, Kloptrop, Life

Well, haven’t done much since I reinstalled wordpress on mah website.  Meh, not much happened.

But thats all about to change!

6 Days from now I’m gonna move into my dorm at OSU (Go Beavs!).  Thats gonna be fun.

Also, I have started working on a Game Engine…Right now, the memory management part is done, and I’m going to start building the kernal with some task managing and profiling.  Thats gonna be fun.  I haven’t decided weather or not to do a 3D or a 2D engine.  Right now, I can go either way, and I think I’m gonna leave it like that.  Perhaps set up a 2D scenegraph component, and then a 3D world component.  If you want to make a 2D game, then just load the 2D portion.  If you want to make a 3D game, load the 3D part and use the 2D part for the GUI. If I do 3D though, I’m going to go with DirectX, mostly because OpenGL makes me mad, because they didn’t do what the promised.

Also, Empires is chugging along.  I also was invited to the Alpha test of Smashball.  Thats alot of fun.  Basicly, the goal is to grab the ball, and score it in the other team’s goal.  Of course, players are much much faster than normal, and can grapplehook and swing around.  Its pretty fast paced, and alot of fun. Much Thanks to Krenzo (Whom I love and care deeply for ) for inviting me.

Oh, and I’m thinking about using Kordo as my nickname in some games/wobsites.  Cause the name Kordo is cool.

admin Blog, Development, Empires, Engine, Games, Life, Smashball Blog, DirectX, Engine, Gaming, Life