Heya,
i finally managed to create a devpage for myself. It’s password protectet and offers 3 different services:

• WebSVN - WebSVN is an online subversion. I can create my projects on the computer, upload them to the server and download them on another PC. Also, when i finished a milestone, i can just right click and choose “Commit” to upload this new version. If i realize that i’m missing some code i had before and accidently deleted, i can just get the old version back from my server.

• Wiki - Selfexplainable. A wikipedia for myself where i add projects and their stories, features, gameplay, etc.

• Teamportal - a self written PHP site that allows multiple users to login, create milestones and ToDo lists which will be marked green or red, depending if you finished the task in time or not, and an online FTP program.

This site makes developing much easier and safer :D

I just added a new feature - the multiplier!
Yeah sounds evil, doesn’t it?

For example, your ball is flying, hits a brick and destroys it, you get normal points but the multiplier counts up x1. If you then touch another brick without touching the bumpers before, you get a x2 multiplier. This also counts for powerUps! If you first touch a brick and after that a powerup or vise versa, you will get multiplier. If you touch the bumpers, the multiplier will decrease to zero again. You can get up to x5 multiplier.

Just a small image of the visual part of this feature:

Yesterday was my birthday and one of the best present i got are 3 ideas in my head how to solve the last 3 bugs i got in my tBreakout game so far. They were super evil, i couldn’t go on without removing them :/

But now, finally, i succeeded in removing those bugs. Again, as Hiro Nakamura from Heroes would say - “I DID IT \o/”!

This was a great moment for me :D Now i can finally go on with this game and come closer to my release version. The next thing i will do is creating the GUI and more levels.

What’s new:

• Two new types of viruses
• When they touch each other, they fuse to a new virus
• Transition animation when the 2 viruses fuse into the new one
• New kind of movement, they “snip” through the vein now

Currently working on:

• Camera movement
• New player movement

(I hope it’s not AIDS oO)

It’s kinda funny. I started with the idea i didn’t like that much cause the game idea was too simple and boring somehow. But now i like it a lot since i start working on it. I have to take care that it doesn’t end in “featureities” (a sickness of adding too many features 8D) that makes the game too big to finish fast enough.

The game started like this:

You are “something” and have to avoid “something else” by navigate through this “something else” with your mouse. Collect items to get points but as more items you collect as more “somethings elses” will appear!

Yeah, very basic. I decided to use a Virus theme for this kind of game. Okay so i started working on it. I created virus which are floating around, a white blood cell as player and… well, what the hell should a white blood cell “collect” to get points? They usually don’t eat candy or collect money. No problem, i just have to go to www.wikipedia.com and enter the super-duper keyword “leukocytes”!
VERY BIG MISTAKE!

I started reading some sentences and couldn’t stop reading, it was too interesting. After an hour i learned so many new things about the world, leukocytes and amoebas that my whole view of life turned 180° - oh noes!

I got like trilliatisticion™ new ideas for this game that i’m kinda scared to add new features and on the other hand bored to add no new features. Anyway, i changed some basic stuff though. Like - VIRUS MUTATION.
Yeah, exactly. Instead of having one sort of virus, i now have several sorts of viruses. That’s not all, nono, they even can mutate to new kind of virus. They only have to get close enough and BAM, new kind of virus floating around, making your life harder.

It’s really fun to see the viruses grow and grow and become stronger.
I only have one problem right now - what the hell should the player do against all those viruses? Just getting more DNA’s, become stronger and eat them? Kinda boring if you ask me.

Well i’m still trying to find a good gameplay to destroy the viruses. So if anyone has an idea, please let me know *looking at ERROR014*.

It’s still early here and i’m sleepy so if i made too many mistakes in my english text, please leave me a comment so i can correct it - Thanks for reading!

A prototype is an original type, form, or instance of something serving as a typical example, basis, or standard for other things of the same category.

Yeah that’s exactly what i am doing lately - creating prototypes.

I have many gamedesign ideas for 2D (casual) games. Before i go on developing one game, i want to create several prototypes first and check what is great and what is not.  Currently there are 3 prototypes:

• A Black and White game where you have to switch the colors to get different ways
• A small and simple game to proof your reflexes
• A jump n run game, using a Platformer Kit from Phillip O’Shea

I personally like the first and third prototype. The first one is a cool idea i saw in a game called “Shift”.

The jump n run is so much fun to create. I can concentrate on the graphic and some additional features cause the basic stuff is written already.

I’m still going on with the tBreakout, just have some more fun to work on the prototypes. If i finished one of them, i will write notice you people of course.

Side Note: I changed “Daily Report” to “Dev Report”, so don’t wonder.

I’m really glad to see that people do visit my blog and read it.

In the last days weeks i had to learn a lot of stuff for my final exam i wrote last week. Now i have time for developement again.

I added all the power-ups planned for this game, like multi-balls, fire-ball, etc. The next step is the gui and the online highscore system (which is almost done actually).

What i’m missing are some particles and effects for the powerups and i have to fix some bugs. Also i have to check how to release software online via secure links and payment like PayPal, Credit Card, etc. So if you know some tools, please leave me a comment about it.

Probably i won’t be able to keep the pre-defined release date, but hey, a lot of game companies reschedule their release dates ;)

So hopefully i will update this blog more often again.

Heya,
i didn’t post for some time which doesn’t mean i stoped working. The museum projects grows and grows and i’m doing fine with it.

Also i planned to go on with my old Torque Game Builder game “tBreakout”.
It’s a clone of the traditional breakout game almost everyone should know.

Planned Features:
- 5 different themes
- 10 level each theme
- 8 Power Ups
- 2 Sliders (Bottom and Top)
- Two players (each player controlling one Slider)
- Online Highscore
- Content packs to get new levels, powerups and themes

Estimated Release Date: 31th May 2008

The game itself works perfectly, i just have to add the themes and powerups (already finished one of them).

I plan to sell the game for some dollas (like 5 or less) and see if i’m able to sell games like this. If it works fine, i might gonna on doing small casual games to increase the number of finished projects.

See ya next time!

“I did it!” as Hiro Nakamura from Heroes would say.

I finally managed to create the import GUI with the help of Thomas Bang
Before i had many ideas how to display the current folder and browse through it. It also worked very well but there were always some bugs that couldn’t be change without the use of another DLL function. So i wanted to ask Thomas Bang to write a new function, but in the same moment, he sent me a link to an interesting article about API Save and Open Dialogs for Torque Game Builder (the 2D Engine). Fortunately, it also works with TGE and TGEA.

So now the user can click “Import texture” and browse through all of his folders, choose a file and click “Open”. It delivers a string with the full path to the file.
Then i can manipulate the string a bit to use Thomas Bang’s SaveFileTo function to copy the new file to the folder where the frame is located, rename the file and list it in the texture gui.

As mentioned before, i had a problem displaying imported file cause the engines Resource Manager must refresh before you see the file. There is a small trick to do this:

setModPath(getModPath());

This will re-check the folders of the current game and implement new file.

So the texturing Part is done now. I’m really happy about it and can now go on with manipulating the frame model ingame (make it bigger, smaller, change the ration, etc).

See ya next time, and don’t forget - Save the Cheerleader, save the world!

Well somehow i kinda feel stressed out lately.

I will end my 3 years job training (called “Ausbildung” in german, which is a 3 years course mixed with work and school) in 2 month.
I don’t know what to do after it. If i have luck, i can go on working here on a real 75% job for half a year. The only problem is that i still have to do 9 month of social work (in germany you must decide between military and social work). So i hope they won’t say i have to do the social work first.

It’s actually a lot of time till i really have to find a real job or a place to study, but i’m already worried what to do next. My wish is to go into gamedesign, so maybe to study would be the best way to go. In germany there are no good places to study gamedesign (wether it’s too expensive or my school qualificaton isn’t good enough). So i probably will try to move out to canada or maybe switzerland. A friend of mine lives in switzerland and is doing a gamedesign course. My school qualification is good enough for this one so maybe that’s my chance. I’m already starting to save up money.

I don’t know how it works in canada but i love this country and would prefer to move there. First i have to get more infos to make a decision (which isn’t that easy).

So yeah, let’s see where i will land.