The Sea Cow Games Blog

Look at the ice cream shop in the Favela level…

and then look at this picture, courtesy of Carvel Ice Cream …

Look familiar?  Man…Activision can’t be satisfied with trillions of dollars, but they have to steal artwork too.  Shame on them!!

2 months ago, I submitted a game pitch, and lost.  I was curious to see who made it to the final 8, and was disappointed that 5 of the 8 just sucked.  3 are original, but one stands out above them all…check it out.

This game, if made, would have just the right amount of easy to learn, difficult to master, and I am not at all disappointed that I lost to him or his pitch.  What the contest taught me was it’s better to persevere then give up.  And it is even better to succeed after seeing how clueless some of the judges were.  I know these were not the grunts behind the screens rating and scoring all the submissions, but instead were the talking heads for the contest, so I am glad they don’t have the final say in what game gets made, we do.   So vote daily for Harm’s Way!

Hello,

How did we get here?  It is almost a new year, and in a few months we will have a demo to show the world.  After many years of developing games on my own, I decided to form a team.  But how, and why?  First, I entered a contest to design a game for Doritos, with the Unlock XBox Challenge.  The contest was to submit a two minute pitch video describing the ultimate game.  After batting around a few ideas, we put together a pitch, got 800 views on the site (compared to many videos that received less then 10 views), and didn’t win.

So I said, screw doing this game creation alone, it is time to start working with others.  The last time I tried this, under the tutelage of Vince Desi, he said to keep everyone local.  But I live in Tucson!  Tucson has nothing going for it, even it’s sand tries to leave in the shape of dust storms.  There is nothing here.  I needed to go global, and am happy I did!

After putting up a post on Microsoft’s XNA Game forum, I was slow to get any bites.  I was looking to create a team more importantly then a game, and not having any type of demo, I was probably lost in a sea of posts looking for the same thing.

Then Arik Rinberg , from Israel, contacted me.  He is new to the game, but so far has proven to be very adept at working on problems without hesitation!  Next, Calum Vaughan, a young musician from England signed up.  He is enthusiastic, and as the youngest team member, is a driving force to shaping the game.  I was originally looking for 2 developers, two artists, but felt with these two learning the ropes from me, we could start thinking of ideas.

Out of nowhere, luck strikes again!  A German developer contacts me; not only has he written two games recently, but he is also tired of going at it alone.  Kai Stammerjohann further impressed me when we spoke via AIM, he is up on the latest trends, and is extremely easy going.  I realized immediately Kai would be the person to give direction to the game we make.

Now, we are set.  I figured we won’t get artists until we have a demo, but no sooner do I break this bad news to the team then Lee Vanwallene from Austin, Texas sends an email.  He is a talented artist, and willing to contribute to the game.  He signed on to a project that was not even fully formed!

Finally, I get another email from yet another senior developer in C# who has written games in his free time.  I could not believe this luck! Rob Webb aka Webby, lives in England with his young family and brings a lot of experience to the table, along with a really good sense of humor.

There is room for one more artist, but we are already moving forward on a tank game.  Come back soon for some bios of the game makers, concept art by Lee, and possibly some tunes from Calum.  Right now, we are working on a prototype and design doc.  Already, we have version control, a file repository for game docs and assets, and really, really well flowing dialog going amongst the team!  We have also set up a forum that will have a message board open for the public, currently though we need to be in the lab kicking around ideas.

Wish us luck!

Download latest device drivers. Words that should be lived by if you don’t want to go through the headaches I just did. After a month of wrestling with the skydome, I changed tact. I wanted to see how far along XNA (the development environment that Microsoft made for PC and XBox 360 games) has come.

Suffice it to say, they have embraced 3D! So, I am going down the XNA C# path. I haven’t learned a new programming language since college some 16 years ago. Back then, I knew about 13. Since working professionally, there has not been a nail rusty enough to be pummeled by the trusty, powerful, and ever faithful C++.

C++ can do anything to the PC. If you want to create a new OS, do it in C++. Fly a rocket to Mars? C++. C++ Is the industry standard for good reason. It’s adaptable, forgiving, and fast. Kinda like a military chaplain in battle, you will find few programmers in foxholes who are not clinging to their C++. It’s not perfect, however. You can create memory leaks, multithread deadlocks, and write spaghetti code without discipline. And let’s face it, technology waits for no one, so out in the field, it’s easy to fall into bad habits during crunch time. As far as spaghetti code, once you are adept enough in C++ and can read it, you are probably not inclined to fix something that ain’t broke.

Microsoft knew this going into mainstream “opensource” SDK kits for the next gen console. It takes years to become fluent in C++. But a hobbyist might not have the time, patience, and dedication necessary to create a game with such a formidable language. C#, Microsoft’s answer to Java (Sun’s answer to the next C++) handles just that. No pointers, no need for garbage collection. Just create a class, link to a dll, and you are done.

Almost. After installing the latest XNA 3.0 kit, I was QUICKLY….QUICKLY, disappointed. The kit came with no demos, and support was only available online. What were they thinking??! Demos were downloaded. Fine, a bump in the road. A perk was they had complete games in multiple genres called Starter Kits. Good for them! It’s about time they gave you more to work with then just a quickie sample that won’t work in the real world.

So for the past week I have been in sample hell and glory. The demos worked, the starter kits would crash. I found C# to be real easy to read and debug, I would be hard pressed to create an app from scratch. But I don’t think I’ve done that yet in the 20 years of programming, when cutting and pasting an existing app is so easy. The starter kit I was interested in was called RacingGame. Original.

Racing game didn’t work out of the box for me. Which is why I got the latest device drivers and fixed the problem.  I was hoping someone on the XNA forum would answer the questions I had. Initially, I thought the forum would be great. My first post was quickly responded to, and numerous times there after. This past week, though, I have not heard too much. So it’s back to the good old days of solving problems on my own.

On the plus side, I think I will have a Glitchy prototype up and running in no time! Stay tuned.

I have spent weeks going over the engine, acclimating myself to the code, trying to hunt down this bug that only happens in full screen mode:

I am working on PIX currently.  There needs to be a mechanism that will allow the player to make a short movie of their game play so they can post it on youtube.  This is a bit more then a game such as Halo 3 allows.  You need Halo 3 and an XBox Live account to share with your friends, who need Halo 3 to see it.  Glitchy will make sharing more transparent…but not until I get PIX working.  Stay tuned, the next post may just be a movie of the engine in action!

The Fundo engine is that much closer to working. It will now render a scene. There are major clipping issues, the code looks to load resources from a relative path, and then assumes that effect resources are valid. There are some asserts in the code, which is good, and DirectX does make it easy to debug. Some of the issues to get it working were linking to the June 2007 SDK libs. Other problems were getting it to use old .fx files with the newer SDK. I should have taken a screen shot, but I am getting a lot of clipping errors with the .fx files that come with the Gaia engine. I think shaders will be next to tackle! Seeing something on the screen after weeks of work does mean progress, and I am looking forward to understanding shaders. Look for screenshots soon, and the possibility of giving away the Fundo engine when it’s bare bones.

So I spent the better part of last week rebuilding the Gaia engine to work in dev studio 2009. After finally getting it to build, and run, I realized that it ran the old code, and not the Oct 2004 update that Snook supplied. That version I had running in dev studio 2005, so that is what I am working on today. But while thinking about this, I’m not married to any one engine. I am actually retooling the Gaia engine into my own engine, named the FunDo Engine.

So I looked to see if there were any free game engines available. There are tons. Read the fine print if you are going to use any of these engines. Garage Games’ Torque Engine, for example, is riddled with gotchyas when it comes to commercially licensing their engine. Then there are the amateur engines that are riddled with bugs. Such as Gaia. It doesn’t compile out of the box, and even after that, it will crash. Sometimes it is better to do things your own way, even if you’ll be behind the cutting edge curve by a couple of years. Or maybe not. OK, back to work.

I recently saw a PBS special on late at night about a guy in Japan running for political office.  What I found very interesting was a part of the documentary that explained the candidate, Yamauchi, had to say his name every 3 seconds to passersby.  It didn’t matter what policies he stood behind, as long as he repeated his name over and over, people would vote for him!

And then, while watching the previews to the Disney film, Wall-E, I saw the preview for Bolt…which, I will not link.  Disney repeated this stupid dog’s name every second, or maybe even every half second.  They have no morals.  Wall-E was terrible, it had the soul of watching microwaveable popcorn cook.  After the “bing”, you’re left with a smoky haze and regretful feeling of “Why did I even bother?”

But this isn’t a movie review blog!  It’s a game dev blog, so the point I’m trying to make is Glitchy.  Ahem. The point I’m trying to Glitchy.  ??? Glitchy.  Grrrrr.  One second.  There’s a problem with my keyb-Glitchy.

Glitchy

Glitchy

Glitchy

Glitchy

Agggg!!!!!  OK, now do you get my Glitchy?  MY POINT!  Ugh, this is very frustrGlitchy.  My point is if you say the Glitchy name of whatever Glitchy it is you’re trying to promote Glitchy, it sinks into peoples braiGlitchy.  BRAINS!  Brains! Brains! Brains!  Now I’m sounding like a zombie.  Glitchy.

End of today’s blog.  Aha!  I got the last word in!  Glitchy

Uhhh…heh heh. So much for kept promises! The work over the weekend was a bust. Again. At least I was able to get a DX9 sample compiled, built, and running. The problem was linking to the proper libraries. A quick schooling on Direct X, for the uninitiated and curious. Direct X is based on the COM model. The COM model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model allows for the origination of an object to be irrelevant to subsequent derivatives of the object. Now, what the hell does that mean, you ask? I guess some of us don’t like to read wiki, do we?

I’ll give an example for the layman, and then apply that example to what Direct X does. I create an object, I call it a dog. I define the general behavior and look of the dog, but I don’t get too specific. Why? Well, there are many types of dogs…work dogs, show dogs.

What does the dyslexic, atheist insomniac do?

He stays up late questioning the existence of dog.

My definition is going to be very very general. A dog has four legs, one head, one tail, and one body. My dog walks and runs, but can’t fly. Then I write a bunch of stuff that someone might do to a dog. Change color, maybe. Does it need to eat, or sleep, or bark? Can I share my dog with other people over the internet? I define these workings as strongly and coherently as possible. My first dog application might be as rudimentary as a stick figure dog sprite that can walk and jump and make a single bark. I call it Dog X 1.0, and give it to others to create their own stick figure dogs.

As time goes on, and computers get more powerful, I create Dog X 2.0. I can allow better features to be had for this iteration of dogs…BUT…but…anyone who created a dog with Dog X 1.0 is ok. Their dog is not obsolete. They can even add the new feature set from Dog X 2.0 to their new dog. Now they can have 3D dogs, with multiple voice channels so they can overlay a growl, into a bark, into a howl, into a whimper, etc. My main goal is backwards compatibility! As the technology progresses, so does a programmers possibilities, but I keep everyone who’s ever developed any dogs in the loop.

Microsoft failed to do this with Direct X, and their programming environments. With each iteration, they added more and more cool stuff…but when trying to build an old application with the latest version of Direct X, there would be too many errors generated to shake a stick at. Believe me, I’ve tried stick shaking, voo doo, exorcisms, and wasting weeks porting from Direct X 7 to 8 to 9 to 10. Now they’ve done it with making 11 Vista only.

1,100 programmers went into the Direct X waters, 300 came out. Sharks took the rest. Anyway, we delivered the bomb. Not quite. I am toying with 2D and sprites and XNA. I’ll deliver a bomb of a web page soon for Glitchy.