OT: I have started making a few games...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I'm currently working on the beginning of a RTS(Definitly not a rush RTS), can build buildings, a random map generator(Currently reworking to include interface) and a multiplayer FPS, which I started on Last week.

It's the Last one I want comments on, it's over Here. (http://www3.telus.net/funnybnz/MyMultiplayerFPS.html)

[Colonel]

It looks good but the gun itself looks curvey unless you are going for a futureistic look

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Futuristic and more along the lines of 'grown' than 'manufactured'. Nano-tech, probably. The texture is bad because I havn't had much practice with textures.

Actually, they are curvy because wings doesn't do sharp edges well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif But the in-game reason works. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif 'It's not a bug, it's a feature'! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Next screenshot should feature a rocket...Not sure when, in seven minutes my brother gets the comp.

[Hugh Manatee]

awesome dood, JOOC what are you using?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

http://darkbasicpro.thegamecreators.com/

A compiled basic programming language. For something neat, check out the Room War game in the showcase. Brother wants to watch tv, so I get at least another half-hour.

[Atrocities]

We want Screen shot, SCREEN SHOTS!

[narf poit chez BOOM]

When the rocket is done! But for now, I go bye-bye.

[deccan]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
http://darkbasicpro.thegamecreators.com/




Very cool. Did you buy the whole package? How do you find it?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Yes(uh, whole packege? I bought DBC and DBP after it came out) and can't remember. If you do use it, either use one of the fan-created editor's or always check with wordpad to make sure your program was actually saved. The guy who made the official editor hasn't been seen for two years - and two years ago, DBPro was buggy.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Rocket picture's up. Nothing flashy yet, it doesn't even accelerate. Most of the work I did to get that up is invisible, programming different types of ammunition in.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Added a lot to the blurb.

[Ed Kolis]

Wings doens't do sharp edges well? Try going to edge mode and select Edge Hardness | Hard on the right-click menu http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Thanks. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I think I like this look, though.

[Combat Wombat]

If you need any help with images or something like that I stand by to asist with Paintshop and Photoshop.

[Suicide Junkie]

Here's a nifty armor routine you can use.

Multiple layers, emissive, ablation and piercing effects.

[ZeroAdunn]

You know, I really miss the days when I could plop a few hundred down on cool software packages. I really wish I could order this stuff, and it isn't too expensive, but unfortunately life manages to get ahold of ya, and before long a few bad decisions find you trying to just keep up with the bills.. sigh, I need a new job.

[deccan]

Anyone know of any similar packages?

[Hugh Manatee]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
If you do use it, either use one of the fan-created editor's or always check with wordpad to make sure your program was actually saved. The guy who made the official editor hasn't been seen for two years - and two years ago, DBPro was buggy.



Where might I find these fan created editors? And can you eleborate on that Last part?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I've heard of blitzbasic, even tested it a little bit, but decided to stick with the one I already knew.

[Suicide Junkie]

I've got an ancient qbasic compiler from the early 80's.
Back then you only had a fistfull of Mhz and 640k RAM if you were lucky, so its quite efficient and blazing fast, especially with ASCII graphics http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

[Hugh Manatee]

deccan said:
Anyone know of any similar packages?



Programming IDE/compilers or stuff specificly geared for games? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

I know there is a great 3D game cretion suite called A6, it's expensive, and I know of several 2D "Game Makers", most free which have their own built in IDEs and scripting Languages. I know of MANY free straight programming IDEs, Compilers, libraries for graphics and more, utilities, most free and some open sorce.

... now if I could just figure out how to use them..... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif/threads/images/Graemlins/Envy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Alsothis Robo Code thing looks awesome:
Robocode (http://robocode.net/) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Hugh Manatee]

Suicide Junkie said:
I've got an ancient qbasic compiler from the early 80's.
Back then you only had a fistfull of Mhz and 640k RAM if you were lucky, so its quite efficient and blazing fast, especially with ASCII graphics http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.



Yeah, those used to come with Dos and Windows I got lots of DOS discs with them lying around, and I think they used to give them away free, they still might on their website somewhere. I know they have comand line compiler only Versions of Visual Basic.net(or VB6.0 I forget)

[deccan]

Hugh Manatee said:

deccan said:
Anyone know of any similar packages?



Programming IDE/compilers or stuff specificly geared for games? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif




I mean stuff specifically geared for games.

Robocode looks cool. I used to mess around with Core Wars.

I just tried to buy DarkBasic but they won't take an Amex card.

[Hugh Manatee]

You can get it off of amazon.com , I got it for $8 on sale(non pro Version), the pro Version is comparable to buying off their site too.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Don't buy DBC. Although it has a few things that didn't make it over, by and large DBP is much better.

Unless, you know, it's $8 bucks. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[deccan]

Hugh Manatee said:
You can get it off of amazon.com , I got it for $8 on sale(non pro Version), the pro Version is comparable to buying off their site too.



http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Amazon will only ship software to within US.

[Hugh Manatee]

deccan
Captain


Reged: 05/13/03
Posts: 800
Loc: Solomon Islands



DOH! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/stupid.gif

Well.... I know for sure that DBC is distributed through many outlets, it was released commercially (I see it in stores all the time), so there's bound to be a store that'll ship it to you. DB Pro is likely out there. Perhaps an Ebay Seller will ship it to you? Just be careful and read their rankings.

In the mean time maybe try playing around with Python ( Python (http://python.org)) or Java. Python is like the "new" basic, it was made specifically for teaching(even forces clean readable code). It has a library called Pygame that is supposedly simple to learn(it came VERY highly recomened from another programming board), and I think there are Python SDL libraies out there(SDL is like a more simple, open source, multiplatform Direct X)

[Gandalf Parker]

There are a ton of "new basic" basics out there. I played with over a dozen free ones before I finally decided on one. What I ended up with wouldnt suit you. The give and take for my choice was based on scripting (text handling, command line calls, worked for windows dos and linux, compiled) which took away much from graphics, sound, user interface, ongoing major support and add-on libraries. But I remember going thru alot of variants which were very GUI and excellent environments for writing your own game. Here is a good starting point for checking them all out....
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Languages/BASIC/

If you are really serious about using Python for games then you might check this out...
http://www.pygame.org/

Most of the "python" games shifted to Delphi for major releases. (dont I remember early SE along those lines?)
I could probaby find something for games and Delphi if you like.

[Fyron]

Gandalf Parker said:
Most of the "python" games shifted to Delphi for major releases. (dont I remember early SE along those lines?)


SE started out with Visual Basic before moving on to Delphi.

[Gandalf Parker]

Imperator Fyron said:

Gandalf Parker said:
Most of the "python" games shifted to Delphi for major releases. (dont I remember early SE along those lines?)


SE started out with Visual Basic before moving on to Delphi.

Ahhh an excellent line of progression. It also goes far toward explaining why SEIV ended up being the kindof game it is and the popularity it has.

[Aiken]

Python is a very good choice for making game draft, because you can write quite complex code very fast. But you'll end up with a very slow game, because Python is a scripting language (it's not compiled to bytecode). So you'll want to rewrite code which is critical for perfomance in C/C++/Delphi (definetely not Java http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif) to produce fast bytecode.
Python is a great choice for built-in scripting language. Civ IV will use it, and it seems it'll kick se4's (and probably se5's) *** in terms of modability.
So use it for small lightweight projects, not big and resource-consuming ones. Use it to write game draft or to embed it for scripting purposes.

[deccan]

Gandalf Parker said:
If you are really serious about using Python for games then you might check this out...
http://www.pygame.org/




Thanks, that looks really interesting. I'll check it out.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Buildings should feature in the next screenshot, provided the bugs are worked out.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

And it's up. I didn't say it would be a particularly interesting building. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Will]

I did RoboCode for the end of the Intro to CS class here. It's fun to mess around with to figure out some basic robotics and AI concepts, but it's limited to the robot arena game, so it's not really the best for "making games". Would be an excellent thing for Aaron to look at for SEV scripting though. *hint* Kind of ambitious for one person to do something like that, but I think he's going for an extremely simplified Version of something like it for SEV. At least that's what I've gotten from the chat sessions.

I've heard some good things about Python for several areas of development, especially with the very fast production cycle. But then again, it's not for resource-intensive stuff, which games tend to be. Would be good to prototype in, then transfer to your compiled language of choice.

I have a chess game I made in Java a while back, I come back to it for a few days every once in a while and polish it up. What used to be extremely ugly kludge code (formatted nicely, but the logic was insane) is now only partially extremely ugly kludge code http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I'm probably going back to it over winter break and finishing off the nasty parts, then either start dusting off the rudimentary AI module, or convert it to a C++/GLUT or C++/DirectX program. I absolutely abhor the Java Look&Feel, so I'm leaning that way and waiting for my AI course so I can do that part the right way http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

The game looks cool narf. Amazing sometimes how things can be abstracted so much that a (I think?) relative novice can code the basic framework of a FPS in a week... Keep it up, should be interesting!

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Novice? Sort of. I've been programming since we used a vic 20, which I can barely remember. However, I doubt I've finished more real programs(as opposed to things like guess-a-number games) than I have fingers. As to how many I've started...lot's.

I'm only now starting to figure out what I should be doing, too. Never had any courses or anything. An uncle of mine helped me write a short fantasy game, but I was to young to understand the concepts and quickly forgot any I might have learned.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

New update: New screenshot and scrolling terrain partially implemented. Partially because 'players' and buildings have not been updated to deal with the changes. Unsure what scrolling terrain is? Click on the link.

And bringing the link up Here. (http://www3.telus.net/funnybnz/MyMultiplayerFPS.html)

And my webpage here. (http://www3.telus.net/funnybnz/main.html)

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Anyone know where I can find good examples of vehicle code? (No, I don't expect to get them in their right now or even soon. Just want to get a head start on figuring it out.)

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Added a small program that you may find usefull.

Have I asked about a site counter yet? Anyway, can someone point me at one?