Lets have some Unity

Well after my last post I began working on collision detection. I got the basics done with square objects. Really square objects are the easiest because they have a built in function to see if they exist in each other. I then began to work on circles. Man, that is where the difficulty is. Working with any other object that would have a custom area makes you actually think.

As I was working on this Lone Potato approached me with an offer I could not refuse ;). He suggested that instead of working on creating my own game engine that I focus on working with an existing game engine Unity 3d. This way I can focus on the gameplay of things rather than the foundation.

We then discussed what my goals were with the game engine. You see Brain Chain was a great project that achieved my primary goals:

• Create a game
• Publish a game on the app store

Sure those goals were simple but they were something new to achieve. With the help of Lone Potato both of these goals were met. Sure, we dont make a killing off the sales of Brain Chain. I mean we still have not even gotten one check from Apple. Even so, as you can see "Get Rich" was not a goal.

So through the discussion we laid out the goals that I had for the game engine:

• Create a game that could even get one person passionate about it
• Create a multiplayer game

So Lone Potato came up with the suggestion that we might as well get on to our next project for 2 Potatoes and leverage this excitement that I have. As you can imagine this did not take much arm twisting for me to agree to.

So yet again I am shelving the game engine. Yeah, yeah I am just jumping from one thing to another like I usually do. Look at it this way, by doing this next 2 Potatoes project all of you can see and experience the final result. The game engine would have been destined for that at some point but that would be years in the future. This way we can hopefully get this to market within a 6 - 8 month timeline.

Well enough blabbering, here is the basics of the next project:

• 2d top down
• RPG elements
• Tower Defense elements
• Long term playability

I will post more solidified details as they come to pass. We are currently working on the concept and getting the edges rounded so that it is a great foundation to go from.

One of the things that I learned with Brain Chain is that I need to start publicly marketing the product well before it is going to launch. Because of this knowledge you all will have multiple chances to see where we are going well before the project is complete.

There is my update. As usual, check back often to see what other ramblings that I can spew into your eye balls.

2 Potatoes Game Engine

Being a programmer I find myself wanting to do side projects. Most of these side projects center around gaming as that is a hobby of mine. Even so, I find myself being a 90%’er on these side projects.

My explanation of a 90%’er is that I can get many side projects 90% done but the last 10% either never gets done or it takes a lot of extra effort for me to focus and get it completed. Luckily in the case of Brain Chain I had the shoulders of Lone Potato to fall on.

On Brain Chain I definitely did not do 90% but the project was split up so that no one person had to do 90%. Because of this Lone Potato made it possible that something got completed and released. If it had just been left up to me alone, I can guarantee that the project would not have been completed in the same amount of time or it would have never been completed. More importantly it would not have been developed as tightly as it was.

With this in mind I have decided to focus on something that I have always wanted to do but have always not been confident enough to attempt, developing a game engine. This engine will not be a commercial engine but will satisfy a few needs that I have seen in some of the discussions Lone Potato and I have had. To combat my 90%’er issue I am going to break up this project into small focused sections that are within my tolerance of non-90%’er.

All of this engine will be written in C# for the iPhone via the MonoTouch framework. By trade I am a C# focused programmer. I do dabble in Java and a few other languages but my speciality is in C#. In addition Brain Chain was written in C# for the iPhone as well. This will reduce my frustration with learning a new language on top of my desire to produce something that can be considered having results.

Each project that I am going to take on will consist of a new application that only focuses on the task at hand. For instance, I will be creating an application specifically for collision detection and one specifically for pathing. A third application will then be created to combine both the pathing and collision detection code. Doing this should help me to not get too complicated right out of the gate.

My goal is to provide a way for me to refine and test code as I go and update previous projects. Then, in the end, result in a working engine framework that can be put into any project as we see fit. For that matter, as I will publish each project as I complete it, others may be able to find use in the engine for some of their projects.

I would ask that if anyone has suggestions/ideas/concerns with the code that I publish to please let me know. I am always looking for more knowledge even if that means that I have to change something that I do on a regular basis for improvements to my code. All of these comments are welcomed in the comments section of each post or emailing me directly.

Stay tuned for a post about my first task Collision Detection.

Minecraft Glory

Most people that know me know that I love games. These games run the range from board game to card games to sports to video games, not in any specific order. Recently I have been turned on to a new video game, Minecraft (www.minecraft.net) that is very fun even though it is still in its alpha stage.

To be honest I don't think that you can really classify this solely as a game, especially with the way that I play it. The best way to describe this is by telling you that the way that I explain Minecraft to people is that it is digital legos. You are dropped into a world that has a landscape of anything from mountains to prairies to oceans and everything in between. One of the neatest things about this world is that it is dynamically created as you venture further out from where you began. So your world can change as you walk along and give you a new biome to play in.

The basic game play is that you are dropped into a world to do anything with it that you want to. Ok, yeah that does sound simple but that is the best part of it. When you first come into the game you have nothing in your inventory/backpack. You have to create any tools that you need to get any supplies that you would like to get from the world itself. My first steps are always to go punch down the nearest tree and create a wooden pick axe to then mine rocks out of the hills and caves in the area. I then can go from there to creating anything from a statue to a mansion. Really you can create any inert thing that you can think up.

Now some have gone to lengths as to build a 16-bit ALU within their Minecraft worlds to just making large words suspended in the air. Anything is fair game and that is the best and the worst that the game has to offer.

In single player you are able to allow monsters to be created within your world that you have to protect yourself from. In multiplayer you currently don't have the option to die so the existence of any monsters are moot. Although you can set them to spawn.

It is multiplayer that has really sucked me in. The idea of creating something that others can contribute to, as well as sometimes destroy, You see, this game has a server component that allows users to host their own Minecraft persistent server. By doing this you are able to add some mods that make slight changes/additions to commands that the server can take. These commands range anywhere from giving items to players to destroying items and many other enhancements.

Now there are quite a few tools already out there for these tasks. Personally, being a C# developer, I am not particularly fond of many of the tools because they are in languages that I am not very familiar with and require more than what I already have running on my server. Yeah, yeah, go ahead and flame on language Nazi's. So I figured I would take some time and create a wrapper that will work with the jar files for the server component.

Currently there are 2 things that I wanted to accomplish:

1. Automatically restart the server component if it is to go down for some reason.
2. Automatically backup the server files, storing them in zip files.

Fairly simple tasks that just make some aspects easier for my server automation. These tasks have not taken me very long so I already have a working EXE. I will add a link below for it. I currently am pushing through some testing of the server manager. So take it with what it is now. I will update it as time goes on.

The address to my Minecraft server is minecraft.2potatoes.net. Please, if you have Minecraft join me and lets see what we can create together. I am currently running hMod and have many of the conveniences setup that it has to offer.

Server Manager: MineManager.exe.zip

Artistic Gears

I love it when two of my free time interests collide.

Art & Gaming

There is a popular game series for the xbox, Gears of War. The quality of the games is subject to interpretation but I must say that their marketing trailer series is excellent. Just the other day the third game was announced with an accompanying trailer. This is the best trailer yet. Judge for yourself:

Gears of War 1
http://kotaku.com/272074/gears-ad-a-hit-at-cannes-too

Gears of War 2
http://kotaku.com/5068014/gorgeous-gears-of-war-2-last-day-ad-sets-the-mood

Gears of War 3
http://kotaku.com/5515719/your-first-look-at-gears-of-war-3

Pork Out

Last weekend my brother and I got together to eat some pork and play games. It was at his house this time so he prepared something special, pork ribs wrapped individually in bacon.

This resulted in an absolutely amazing meat mash. Each of the ribs were separated from each other so that they could be individually wrapped in bacon. What happened here is similar to all the "wrapped in bacon" meat we have had, moist and flavor ooozzzzing out. Of course in a totally humane way. The meat fell right off the bone. The BBQ sauce flavor was amazing.

Now, at this point you may be wondering where the pictures are. The answer to this question is that there are none. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my DSLR and only had my cell phone. With the glory of these ribs I could not justify taking grainy pictures. Close in the future we will be cooking this again. That outing I will take pictures and post them out here for all to drool over.

Oh yeah, we finished Army of Two I strongly dislike that game. Promptly Goozexed it, mailed it the next day.

Thus goes my most recent pork out...

The Bacon Explosion

Tonight was the always enjoyable Super Bowl. We always have some family over to watch the game, in all reality it is just a reason to get together and eat! Every year we have the usual treats; cookies, soda, chips, veggie tray & dip, etc. This year my wife and I thought that I would step it up a little and make something special.

My wife chose to make a special Chex-Mix. This was absolutely delicious. It was her first go at it and it turned out excellent. The only adjustments that she would make would be to be sure to use real butter and only about half as much butter.

Here is a link:
http://thisweekfordinner.com/2007/01/31/sweet-chex-mix

Now for the awesomeness... I decided to go after some bacon treat and I decided on the Bacon Explosion!

http://www.bbqaddicts.com/blog/recipes/bacon-explosion/

I followed the recipe but my ingredients were a little different. I did use the bacon and mild Italian sausage but the internals were a little different. I chose to use as a dry rub on the bacon, prior to the sausage, a bacon salt. I then put down the sausage, added the cooked bacon then I added some brown sugar. This is something that my brother and I have done previously with plain bacon and it has turned out great. I then followed the recipe by rolling the sausage and then the bacon weave.

Unfortunately I do not have a smoker so I fell back to what I have tried and tested quite a bit, the oven. The instructions smoke at 250 degrees for 2.5 hours. So I started that by setting the oven at 250 and letting it go for a couple of hours. When at 2.75 hours the core was not at or above 170 degrees. So we bumped it up to 300 degrees and let it go. It took another 1.25 hours but the core finally got over 170 degrees.

It was long but man, the result was awesome!! Just about all of it was eaten up by my brother's and my family. Man it was great. I have pictures attached below of the crazy goodness. The alterations that I will do the next time will include a touch more brown sugar and some special custom BBQ sauce to make the core a little more moist. Other than that really was excellent.

Pure Excellence!

Oh yeah, the game was a joy as well..

Amused....

So today I was able to get together with @hacir (aka my brother) and his family. Among other things we were able to toss in a good old game in Warcraft 3. It has been ages since I played that game.

Recently we both have been spending some time playing tower defense games on our iPhone and iPod Touch. This has reinvigorated our play of Warcraft 3 and the tower defense maps that have been made for it. Quite a long time ago we used to play this game on a regular basis, especially the tower defense maps. So it was a great move for my brother to suggest and get us playing today.

All I have to say is that this is a solid game and that it is wonderful how everything can be turned on max, graphics and the like, and there is practically no draw on my GPU. Oh the glory of up to date computers. As such, I think that we may be playing this game more often, maybe this will even prompt me to install windows on my mini and see if I can run Warcraft 3 from it.

You know that you want to...

Those of you who know me well know that I am a gamer through and through. This has lead me into the career that I have now as well as the knowledge that I can spew out at a moments notice. Alas over the last few years games have become a draw to me that sometimes interferes with my real life.

This all started when I got back in to school shortly after I got married. At that time I had to cut back my gaming time considerably. Although there were a few times over the next 4.5 years that I played too much, I was quite good at maintaining a decent balance to keep my wife from leaving me and my grades in the 4.0 region.

Jumping right to the end of that I finally finished school and found myself with a load of free time, compared to what I had before. Not to mention I quickly came to the realization that I had two children, a wife, and a house to work on. Imagine that shock for the first few months of no school. Man I was restless. Anyway, I filled this time with a ton of gaming. I really mean a ton.

Then came the point, reached late last fall, where I became a little disenchanted with the gaming scene that I was in. So, I began to cut out some gaming and try to get some house work and programming under way. So I went on the interwebs and bought me a Mac Mini to program with and off I went.

Now with programming and the recent tearing apart of my basement I have found that I dont have much gaming time at all. You may be wondering what this post is about, finally I will get my point across that I could probably just tweeted. I have found that I am torn between all the things that I would like to do including games.

I recently have been spending alot of time working on my recent iPhone apps (one currently awaiting approval http://www.wwcdapp.com) so I have let go of gaming to a certain degree.

Now to the part where this has become a problem. I find myself ready to head to bed and my Xbox starts talking to me. It becons me to play it. That's right, the Xbox is talking to me late in the evenings. So what do I do, I am enticed and like a druggy on crack I pick up that controller and start to smoke it (metaphorically of course). Then the clock comes into play. It dings midnight and I realize that I am going to be kicking myself in the morning.

That dang drug dealer of an Xbox costs me sleep but man the trip is worth it.

What is my real point???? I have no idea....

[zzz...zzz...zzz]

New Adventure, XCode & Cocoa Touch

In the recent months I have been thinking that I have pigeon holed myself into C#. So to help myself get out of that I have decided to start working on a MAC in my free time at home.

Now, lets get something out right now though, I really enjoy C# and am in no way moving away from it. This is simply a process that I am taking to broaden my knowledge. This, I think, will allow me to think differently about situations instead of thinking only one way when faced with projects/issues.

Getting that out of the way, I decided to get into it as cheaply as I could. I already had a developer key from Apple, obtained about 10 months ago. Although I must state that you can get going on this without a developer key but to deploy on any actual device, otherwise only on the simulator, you must have a key. This only left me getting a MAC as my main hurdle.

After a bit of research to be sure that I was going down the right path I settled on getting a MAC Mini. Now sure, I could have just gotten a spank’n new Mini but I decided I would just wait it out to get one that is refurbished. Wait it out is truly the best wording.

After about a month of checking the apple store every morning I finally came upon a refurbished mini. I picked up the phone and called the wife, who clearly wears the pants, to ok the purchase. Thankfully she was very supportive so I whipped out the card and placed the order.

The next few days I spent trying to learn up where to start. A book was recommended by a number of blogs/articles “Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK”, so I swooped out to get the book.

My MAC arrived and after working out some audio kinks I am now sitting pretty and loving life. I am only about 1/3 thru the book but so far it has been very understandable. I think that as I go on in the book I will gradually get a better grasp on how to code properly in XCode and Interface Builder.

After I finish the book I am going to see what kind of stupid ideas that I can conjure up and see if they lead anywhere.

Twitter & The Glory That Can Be

If you have been living under a rock, or just not a total geek like myself, you may be wondering what Twitter is.  If this is the case head over to http://twitter.com/, http://twitter.com/help/why, http://twitter.com/help/how and look at their descriptions.  For those of you who feel better about hearing it explained simply,

Even after reading & watching you may be wondering why anyone would put the time into this.  Personally I have a few reasons for myself tweeting.

I think of it as my mini blog.  I don't spend time often writing in my blog but I do update my twitter account on a daily basis with my thoughts & actions.  This is an easy way to keep up with me on what I am doing or thinking.  Although please be warned sometimes I make no sense, but if you know me that is par for the course!

I also use twitter to update my Facebook status.  I know that I have confused many contacts in Facebook with my status being a bit abnormal at times.  Even so it allows me another way of getting my thoughts/actions out to the people that I know.  I have had a few contacts in Facebook write on my wall telling me that they don't know what I am talking about half of the time but I hope that the other half of the time I make sense and maybe help them understand me better or learn something with some of my tweets.

With that all said I want to explain my title for this post.  I specify “The Glory That Can Be” for good reason.  Twitter can be a great resource because many people tweet useful tweets that have content or at least help you know them better (ex. @shanselman & @majornelson).  On the flip side the majority, I believe, use it as a broadcast platform for everything that is promotion either for a product or for pure traffic.

This thought to blog this came after reading the following article, http://mashable.com/2009/01/06/twitter-follow-fail/.  Keep in mind, the tweeting of things like blog posts or your own products can not be a bad thing.  When it is bad is when all that you tweet is promotion. 

Tweeting sincerely is something that can really be beneficial to everyone that follows you.  On the other end if all you do is shameless promotion then you are really doing a disservice to your followers and it will show in the long run.

Twitter is not a pure ad campaign.  Please, if you have not tried twitter out please do so and join in the glory that can be!