some good news around the street corner…

I will only post this picture those pictures right now and you will figure it out. Later I will explain more and lay down my plans for the next months…

To Banshee, Newbie_X11 and Thanatos: Yeah..im giving in! Its about fucking time! Let the texture mapping begin.

To everyone else: both experiments are still VERY early and currently unusable. The texture mapping is mostly a very insecure code (handling video memory directly) and very inneficient. Im tweaking as much as I can. Im still trying to figure out how to do floor and ceiling textures fast.

The multiplayer code already be obtained @ SVN,but is very unfriendly and not very useful. Right now, all it does it sync both players on the map, but doesnt handle game logic at all.

I sincerely dont know how long will it take to finish this, as now Im working (as a intern) at Nano Games (hoohay! gone pro!) and we’re developing some really cool games (after all, I would only join a company if I really like their games).

There is a third experiment that I might post here around the weekend…who knows?

Angstron 2 released!

Among changes are bug fixes and major revamp and the levels and graphics. Please check it out @ http://batterypoweredgames.blogspot.com/2009/07/angstron-2-droid-hunter-release.html

BTW, I entered the GPC 08 indie game competition with Angstron 2 on mobile games category. Let the best win.

Angstron 2 – finishing touches

UPDATE: wanna try this? so follow this link - http://batterypoweredgames.blogspot.com/2009/05/angstron-2-droid-hunter-beta-test-2.html

Finishing the last debugging, improving speed (for the first time, Im quite satisfied with most of the game speed. but level 3 is still my concern) and – to my shock – solving some plataform specific issues:

- Sound in maemo. I dont know whats wrong, but the sounds is not working with the 770. I will look over the old angstron1 code @ garage to see whats wrong…

- Memory footprint in EZX. The A1200i handle the first two levels graciously, but the game dies when loading the third, after a lot of time loading.

- Also on EZX: The chapter screens need some serious re-work .Ok, they need some re-work on all plataforms, but on EZX  its far worse.

- And finally, on EZX, I dont seem to get the icons working on the menu again. I had it working in the past. I dont know whats wrong now.

For desktop PC and EeePC  everything is fairly done.

And now, some teasers!

My plans is to have the game finished and released for the Rio Game Show 2009

Angstron 2: Droid Hunter finished-almost

UPDATE: ITS FINISHED!!! http://corporatedrones.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/angstron-2-released/

Hello folks.

I guess I’ve finished all the ingame  assets for Angstron 2: droid hunter. Sure the render is not ready for prime time (but it does perform decently in most cases), but this is a matter of time.  In any case, I’ve got a OpenGL version of it fully working and a OpenGL ES version is on the way.

My previous decision of scrapping level 2 was aborted (hence you will see the horde of morcegos in all its glory), but almost all the levels need some better POV-BSP-prunning during rendering before shipping. There are several points with some minor visible artifacts , some culling errors here and there and a few slowdown spots. While for a freeware game where there’s no compromise, I cant simply allow this to be released.

The game play remained unchanged from the previous beta releases, with some adjustiments still to be made.

The 2D artwork is seriously faulty and in need to be re-drawn. This is going to be a looong paper-and-pencil-than-flatbed-scanner-then-inkscape process. Dont hold your breath.

The game was somewhat delayed due to my lack of luck with UNIX this last weekend (http://corporatedrones.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/solaris-ubuntu-xandros-eeepc-problemas-meu-dia-de-azar-com-unix/)

The release will reach both Maemo 2.2 and the upcoming Maemo 5 (“fremantle”, powered by hardware acelerated OpenGL ES!), EZX , EeePC (this time, with a better packaging system, from the official SDK!)  and desktop linux.

Solaris + Ubuntu = Xandros – EeePC = problemas (meu dia de azar com UNIX)

Não instalem OpenSolaris com Ubuntu Linux. Os dois não se dão bem.

Tive sérios problemas durante essa pascoa por causa disso.

O OpenSolaris não apenas não tinha o driver da minha placa de rede, como também ignorou a presença do Ubuntu. Tentei de restaurar de forma gentil de tudo quanto é forma. Por fim desisti e instalei outra versão do ubuntu por cima. E o problema sumiu…para aparecer outro…

Cerca de duas horas depois, meu EeePC começou a se desligar sozinho assim  que o X iniciava. Tentei formatar – nada. Tentei retirar a bateria e re-colocar – nada. Por fim, tirei a bateria e deixei apenas na tomada e ele funcionou. Devia ser algum sensor com problemas. Assim como meu cerebro nesse meio tempo. Explico:

Durante as diversas tentativas de resolução de problema, peguei o CD de recuperação que veio com o note e botei no drive (isso porque, me lembro de ter lido em algum lugar que colocando esse CD no drive, ele gravava o sistema nalgum dispositivo flash que depois poderia bootar e regravar a imagem squashFS do sistema básico do Xandros) , mas este começou a gravar o Xandros em meu HD! Até eu notar que a luz do pendrive na USB não estava piscando, ja tinha feito todo o estrago. Nem o PartED deu jeito… Nisso , eu perdi:

- A ultima versão da BZK (sorte que tinha uma versão de 3 dias antes no mesmo pendrive)

- A ultima versão do MonoBED: essa eu perdi mesmo

- “fatsource” – é como apelidei a versão original de onde eu fiz o fork pra “leansource” da BZK na qual estou usando com base no momento. Com backups bem antigos, mas creio que com backups no SVN

- Originais dos assets do Riddler e do Angstron2: droid hunter.

- It came from the cave mobile (um demo simples)

E muito mais coisas. Repito: façam backups o tempo todo!

Não preciso nem dizer que o lançamento de Riddler esta agora ainda mais atrasado e que eu estou tentando agilizar Angstron2 pra evitar perder mais.

riddler video footage

this video shows Riddler running on a Maemo device, N770:

you will have to wait a while before I do the final adjustments before I release a Maemo version of the game.

wanna try? http://rapidshare.com/files/156567784/testmaemo_riddler.zip.html

(put the “storage” directory on /media/mmc1)

be careful with your things when experimenting

After another distrastrous EZX+SDL SDK attempt, I corrupted badly my Ubuntu system and right now Im re-installing it. Be careful with this ( http://forum.motofan.ru/index.php?act=ST&f=158&t=145454&st=0#entry1108914 ). I will try it and let all my (“0″) readers know more on how to use it on a ubuntu stock system. (“complete idiot’s to SDL development for EZX”)

I just discovered that I lost also my most recent version of BZK code, so Im re-working my last two days of work. I really screwed, as I didnt updated the SVN for a while. Lucky me I had the code on the EeePC (a great machine for control-sampling debugging). This time, I will fix everything in the SVN and you will be able to retrieve all sources from Riddler and Angstron.

I learned my lesson doubly: Im going to keep the SVN source updated at least weekly and Im going to use my old DSL-remastering tutorials (http://corporatedrones.wordpress.com/2007/01/11/remasterizando-damn-small-linux-parte-1/ , PT-BR ) to create a special linux for my personal use, just to develop for EZX. (Maemo is well behaved enough to be on my main system). Virtualization is bliss

Angstron Post-mortem

Introduction:

Angstron started as a project one night, as I saw a post from Thoughtfix, requesting a Armagetron-Advanced port for Maemo. Until then, all I had with BZK was a bunch of demos , but no game at all.

The idea of a TRON game was not new for me: I did one once, in Pascal, during a boring day at college, using CRT unit. The game was coded in a afternoon and had no artificial inteligence at all. Since then, I lost this code and had no intentions of doing it again.

The BZK_Vacuum2 game engine was meant for an RPG and never crossed my mind doing an arcade game. And even then, its render was not 100% functional. But still, enough for this project.

What went wrong:

The 770 was not meant for gaming. But still lots of game got ported and a few were (at least partly) developed. And those were 2D games, not 3D. The nearest we had from it was Doom , from INdT, but we already have Doom on our microwave ovens and so on. There was a clear lack of 3D gaming on the tablet and partly becouse both the tablets cant handle it and becouse its buttons layout makes it awkward.

My first plans to mimic ArmA were clearly disastrous. I had to discard lots of levels becouse I couldnt achieve a good framerate. Many of my great ideas were also foiled by the BZK render, that wasnt mature enough nor fast enough.

Even after the final levels were designed and “approved”, I still had to do some redesign and adjustments and this kind of destroyed the charm of some of it.

What went right:

The game mechanics was very simple to design, as I had already started with my failed LOGO implementation atempt. In a few hours from reading Thoughtfix’s post, I had a prototype running on the device. I was so happy with it that I designed some simple intro screens and 3D models for the game.

After I had to scrap the first prototype levels, I developed a new concept for the game – more like TRON meets Mortal Kombat – less frenzy and more strategy. (after all, its a slow target device anyway), with a ladder , one-on-one duels and diferent, smaller, arenas. Perfect! And a good step for a permanent-”in development hell” game developer like me: A project I could finish!

A great surprise I got with Angstron was from trip to Toronto. I bought myself a Asus EeePC (2g surf – lush green!) and I instantly started coding a new menu system on it. I was very happy to see how good the game ran on it. It was like it was meant for it. (And in fact, it is, as BZK was not created solely for Maemo, but this “class” of devices, and the Eee was not diferent, as it didnt ran all the GL games I threw at it).

One last great point was that I had to juice BZK a lot so I could create a game out of it. It allowed me to see where BZK was weak.

Lessons learned:

My hardest points was on asset management, menu design (I had at least 3 false-starts) and optimizing the 3D levels for limited-power-devices. But Im sure I’ve improved my design skills on those areas – so much that I had a lot less headaches with The Riddler.

One thing Im still learning is marketing. It took me too long to write this document and to create a new web page for my games.

Conclusion:

Angstron was my first end-to-end finished game, and while it is not “good”, its “passable”. Its a good game to keep on your tablet , to play on a bank queue. Good thing the lessons learned with Angstron were quickly used in my two games in production, The Riddler, that just reached Public Beta 2, and Angstron 2: Droid Hunter, still in alpha.

The Riddler – public beta 4 – Release Candidate 1

A few friends had the chance to try it out, but now its time to a public release. The game is mostly done. There are only a few rough edges. And I also want to lit the game little bit more.

Please, test it and let me know of the results.

UPDATE: This revision RUNS on EeePC 2G Surf running Xandros AND in Ubuntu .

news from this release:

- since I lost the code from the newest version, I had to re-work everything from a snapshot on the EeePC’s SSD that was a little outdated. As a bonus, we got back the EeePC compatibility.

This is the final beta release. If this works out, I will remove some last debugging messages and package it properly.

some minor improvements in speed and now it runs on fullscreen.

the matches have all been lit!

update:

http://batterypoweredgames.blogspot.com/2009/07/riddler-final-release.html

Only Linux builds for now…Eee and Maemo builds will come later…

Installing the Maemo Gregale SDK – an updated guide

Im writing this as of august/2008.

FYI, Im not responsible of the consequences of this tutorial or anything related to it. If your N770 turn into a zombie TabletPC and start a zombie-run looking for fresh penguin blood, its not my fault.

Lots of things happened to the Maemo community and its fair that they moved on (they’re pushing the edges of penguin mobile computing to the edge, and the EeePC , in my point of view, is a direct consequence of it). The documentation on the installation of the SDK is a bit outdated, so Im going to deliver a more updated view on it.

My system is a Ubuntu 8 x86 32bit box.

My reference: http://maemo.org/development/documentation/tutorials/maemo_2_2_tutorial.html

as you finishing extracting all the scratchbox packages, please run /scratchbox/run_me_first.sh

I dont know why they omited this, as it was part of the docs before.

then proceed the installation as indicated until you have to login into scratchbox for the first time.

then , you will probably face some weird error messages:

You have to add these two lines into  /etc/sysctl.conf :

vm.vdso_enabled = 0
vm.mmap_min_addr = 4096

After this, reboot your system.

Then, as you proceed, you have to copy the rootstraps to /scratchbox/packages. Make sure you change the file permissions to allow everybody to read them.

Also, as you login, the guide will instruct you to run sbox-config. This tool was replaced with sb-menu. So you have to configure it in a new way. When you have to select the rootstrap file, there is another catch: You have to place the cursor above it ,PRESS THE SPACEBAR AND THEN ,ENTER.

And finally, when it is asked to you where to install the stuff, select all the options. It will complain about /usr/include/asm, but you can safely ignore it (I guess so).

I just tried it with a test build of The Riddler running fullscreen on the 770. Works fast! Even with the lightning on!