Game Competitions
There are a couple game competitions that I know of right now, and I wanted to share with everyone.
Jonathan Harbour RTS game contest for beginners
(Due 12/25/2011) Jonathan Harbour has a contest for beginners to develop their own real time strategy(RTS) game, and has some prizes as well.
It would be a good excuse to work on a new game, and you don’t even have to have scrolling– just one screen. Don’t let that fool you though, any game project still requires work and determination 
1st Place Prize: App Game Kit (AGK) — Retail value: $112!
http://www.appgamekit.com/
2nd Place Prize: $30 voucher for the TGC Store!
http://www.thegamecreators.com
http://jharbour.com/forum/index.php?topic=1804.0
Intel Level Up 2011
(Due 3/19/2012) Also, the “Intel Level Up 2011″ game competition is finally up. It’s almost 2012, but the prizes are pretty nice, though the competition is not just beginners, but also includes students and Indie companies.
My RTS WIP
I’m currently working on the RTS one, and you can see my latest demo here(although fill in graphics, and lots of bugs still — but a week to finish ):
http://chrismweb.com/projects/rts_game_12_2011/V4/index.html
How to start creating android games using the LibGDX game development framework
Why Android?
I’ve been creating games using flash/actionscript for a while now, but have really wanted to get started with android game development, since it’s an open source platform, the sky is the limit to how much you can learn about it.
The devices are usually fairly non-restrictive, being able to load custom roms, install any available software — even not directly through the market, being more practical (using internal storage as storage, not needing to install bloatware to connect to a computer), as well as having many more choices in hardware, since there is such a wide diversity of available mobile phones.
All in all, Android is very non-restrictive and flexible to it’s users, as well as it’s developers, and the market is supposed to be much easier to upload your app on, without getting turned down without a reason. It also caters more towards free apps (with ads), which is what I had wanted to offer, to allow everyone to be able to play my games.
Why LibGDX?
I have read a few android programming books, and most go into quite a bit of detail about application programming, but very little about OpenGL, not to mention I hadn’t done much programming using multiple separate threads in the past.
LibGDX takes care off pretty much all of the low-level stuff for you, so you can focus on game programming, or basic engine programming, and not about techniques for loading different image and music types, creating and handling multiple threads, or creating OpenGL surfaces to render 2d bitmaps on to.
Using it also does not take away any of the control you have, if you wanted to or needed to program lower level stuff, such as creating surfaces and 3d objects using OpenGL. Thus, it provides an excellent platform to get started with without having to worry about creating everything from scratch yourself, but also allows you to create things later on when you need them.
And for super-icing on the cake, it is specifically made for creating games, and it also allows you to compile and test using native Java on your computer before deploying to your android device, which makes debugging and compile time so much faster! No needing to deal with the android emulator for most of your design, unless you wish to, no needing to compile the apk, move it to the SD card, install, open, and finally debug– you can do it all on your computer before deploying to your android device!
So in summary:
- Handles a lot of the stuff that you would normally need to program from scratch, saves you time, as well as allows you to expand it if needed
- Specifically created for games!
- Debug, test and try out your android app without having to rely on having a device/ emulator running almost all the time!
- Open source and free, as well as great forums for support
So Now that you know why it is a great framework to use to develop android games, lets get up and running.
(more…)
Review of Cryengine 3 Cookbook
I picked up this book because I wanted to get some hands on experience using the CryEngine with a reference book, but had not used the CryEngine before.
I feel this book is more aimed towards beginners, and allows someone new to the CryEngine to be able to easily jump in, and have a reference for doing a ton of stuff that might not be very straight forward, as well as a lot of detail on using the interface.
Overall, just reading through the first chapters, I was able to get comfortable with the interface, and able to create and setup my own basic level. Further on, the book goes into a more general “cookbook” style, with recipes for doing a variety of different things you might need in your level.
The book is well written, easy to read and a beginner can pick it up without a problem. There are lots of recipes for most things you would want to do, such as: creating terrain, changing level layout, placing items, changing lighting, putting down enemies, creating assets to import into the CryEngine, creating vehicles, some game logic, creating cut scenes, and much more.
The one problem I did have with using the book with the CryEngine are that the assets have changed since the book was published, so some of the items, or textures it tells you to look for at the beginning aren’t there. You can use alternatives instead, but it would be nice if the downloadable files included them, or you could know which version of the CryEngine Sandbox was used in the book.
Overall a great book for learning how to use the CryEngine Sandbox, with lots of helpful recipes that will have you creating cool levels.
It was also very interesting frm a game developers standpoint to see the CryEngine Sandbox tool, how it was made, and what kind of things were taken into account for creating levels. It gives me better insight into how I should layout my own tools, for simpler game development projects
You can see the book here:
http://www.packtpub.com/cryengine-3-cookbook/book
Ackmi Dress Up for Android on the Market!!
Sorry about the lack of updates and additional tutorials lately. I have been busy trying to finish my first android game with my fiance.
I have been learning how to program using the libgdx game framework, and it makes the whole process of programming an openGL based game much smoother.
It’s a game used to create your own avatar, somewhat like a virtual barbie dress up game, so aimed more at girls. It is really more of a “toy” than a game as of right now, but we do have plans for adding goals, rewards and feedback to convert the customization system into a game with many hours of re-playability.
I will be posting tutorials on how to use it to create your own android games in the next few posts.
In the mean time, check out the android app, let me know what you think and provide feedback!
Our company website:
http://www.ackmi.com
The link on the app store:
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ackmi.amazing_dress_up&feature=search_result
Using Box2d to Create a Side Scrolling Game — Part 2: Adding Keyboard Input and An Enemy
This article will show you how to add user input to control the “hero” object created in the previous article.
Additionally, we will add an enemy that will wander back and forth, stop and reverse direction at the ends of the screen, and will bounce up the hero when jumped onto.
Review of Flash Game Development by Example (Author: Emanuele Feronato)
When I found out the author of the largest Flash game development blog had written a book, I was very eager to pick it up and try it out.
(his announcement on his blog HERE)
Emanuele’s blog has been around for many years, and he has great information from starting out in actionscript and beginning game programming, all the way up to developing complete games, using 3d and physics engines.
Using Box2d to Create a Side Scrolling Game — Part 1: Intro and Setting Up Box2d
The purpose of these articles will be to make a basic side scrolling type game using Box2d to handle collision detection.
This article will show you how to set up a project with box2d, and start creating objects to be used in a side scrolling type game (such as Super Mario Brothers).
Asus EP121 Tablet Review (Cintiq Alternative)
What is the Asus EP121?
The Asus EEE EP121 tablet/slate is a great multi-purpose device.
For artists, it has a 12″ wacom screen that has 256 levels of pressure sensitivity.
For people looking for a tablet or new laptop, it is a lightweight, relatively high resolution full windows device, with bluetooth hardware keyboard, that accepts up to 10 finger multitouch. Use it as a tablet, use it as a laptop, the power to do both!
For hardware buffs, it has a 1280x800 touch(capacitive) and pen sensitive (electromagnetic) input screen, with potentially a 64GB SSD (solid state hard drive), 4GB DDR3 ram, 802.11n/g/b wireless, 4.5hr battery, stereo sound, 2x usb 2.0, 1 mini HDMI port, and a 2MP camera.
An in depth review of my experience using it as an art tablet and a laptop+ conventional tablet follows.
Creating an Asteroids Flash Game Using the Display List Part 5: Lives, Scores, Restarting, Pausing, Creating Levels, and a Basic GUI
In the last section, we created a way to detect collisions, created particle explosions, and broke the asteroids up into smaller pieces when hit.
In this section, we’ll keep track of the lives, score, make levels, and create a GUI for starting, restarting, and pausing the game.
Creating an Asteroids Flash Game Using the Display List Part 4: Detecting Collisions and Creating Particle Explosions
In the last section, we created an asteroids class to easily create a variety of asteroids, as well as move them around on screen.
In this section, we’ll create a way to detect collisions between the asteroids and the ship or bullets, and create particle explosions when the collisions happen, as well as break apart asteroids upon collision.
