What projects are you currently working on?

[dandymcgee]

I've been working on a platform game recently, I posted a few videos to show my progress. Let me know what you all think.

The finished product looks freakin sweet!! Great work m8

I totally agree, that's a spectacular side-scroller.

[MrDeathNote]

I've been working on a platform game recently, I posted a few videos to show my progress. Let me know what you all think.

The finished product looks freakin sweet!! Great work m8

I totally agree, that's a spectacular side-scroller.

Cheers fellas, its these kind of comments that keep ppl motivated.

[programmerinprogress]

Totally agree, watched your videos and was very impressed by your progress

[andrew]

Well done man.

Motivation is so hard to come by.

Last thing I worked on was this traffic light demo thing.

It had a list of tasks that updated each frame.
task traffic lights2.zip

[MrDeathNote]

Well done man.

Motivation is so hard to come by.

Last thing I worked on was this traffic light demo thing.

It had a list of tasks that updated each frame.

I totally agree motivation is half the battle in a good project, innovation is the other half. Getting motivation to start a project is easy, having the motivation to finish is another thing all together.

[RandomDever]

Currently I'm working on a base engine for all projects to come. It's almost done, I just have to implement collision detection. But for some reason it goes all fluky.

[lotios611]

I'm working on a console dictionary. Nothing much, but I've been wanting to make this for a long time. I barely have the skills required. I've never used the STL before, so that's a major challenge. I'm also having troubles parsing text-files.

[zNelson24]

The past snow days we have been having has allowed my to get off my ass and get stuff done. I got together some of the space shooting game (as far as single player goes) and made some decent sprites thats good enough for building the game.

Anyone know of any hosting sites for images?

[Trask]

I'm currently working on a PC version of the card game known as Lunch Money. Probably most people haven't heard of this game, but its something my friends and I have been playing for years and its a project that I've been wanting to do since I first got into programming. I doubt there would be much interest for this game outside my circle of friends, but I know they want to play it and I want to make it, so it works.

This is a fight type card game, the premise is that you are a bunch of school girls, beating each other up using these attack/weapon/combo/specialty cards. There's defense cards and some of the special cards can completely reverse an attack. It sounds silly, but it encourages loudness, humor, and violence, so it goes down well with us.

http://www.atlas-games.com/product_tables/AG1100.php <- This is a link to the product site, you should definitely consider picking this up if you want something fun and simple to get into.

The scope of the project is to take this card game and make it enjoyable through a PC interface. The idea is to be able to play this together, even when we can't get together. To do this, I will be using DirectX, a networking API for connectivity, voice/text chat, and C++.

I say scope as I'm still in the early stages of this game. I am following a book by Jonathan Harbour called:
2D Advanced Game Development(http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Game-Dev ... 121&sr=8-1) which gives you a nice looking Direct X 2D engine that will more than adequately fit the needs of this project. I will also be using Raknet(http://www.jenkinssoftware.com/) for the networking side of things as I'm not too strong in terms of network programming.

I just wanted to update here, as I've gotten pretty far with this engine. I'm still working out of this book but it's been a slow process with family and work everything. I've gained quite a bit of knowledge of what goes into a game engine and a good refresher on making code reusable in ways I hadn't thought of before.

What's been accomplished thus far:

2D and 3D rendering(3D is largely unoptimized but used for various things)
Animation
Input
Audio
Entity Manager
Font(most recent)

What's left:
Physics
Math
Multi-Threading
Lua
Networking - using Raknet

http://www.youtube.com/user/Trask899 - is my youtube page, so far it just has a quick video showing off the font class. I do plan on posting more videos, but not until I have some original material to share.

[XianForce]

I'm currently working on a PC version of the card game known as Lunch Money. Probably most people haven't heard of this game, but its something my friends and I have been playing for years and its a project that I've been wanting to do since I first got into programming. I doubt there would be much interest for this game outside my circle of friends, but I know they want to play it and I want to make it, so it works.

This is a fight type card game, the premise is that you are a bunch of school girls, beating each other up using these attack/weapon/combo/specialty cards. There's defense cards and some of the special cards can completely reverse an attack. It sounds silly, but it encourages loudness, humor, and violence, so it goes down well with us.

http://www.atlas-games.com/product_tables/AG1100.php <- This is a link to the product site, you should definitely consider picking this up if you want something fun and simple to get into.

The scope of the project is to take this card game and make it enjoyable through a PC interface. The idea is to be able to play this together, even when we can't get together. To do this, I will be using DirectX, a networking API for connectivity, voice/text chat, and C++.

I say scope as I'm still in the early stages of this game. I am following a book by Jonathan Harbour called:
2D Advanced Game Development(http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Game-Dev ... 121&sr=8-1) which gives you a nice looking Direct X 2D engine that will more than adequately fit the needs of this project. I will also be using Raknet(http://www.jenkinssoftware.com/) for the networking side of things as I'm not too strong in terms of network programming.

I just wanted to update here, as I've gotten pretty far with this engine. I'm still working out of this book but it's been a slow process with family and work everything. I've gained quite a bit of knowledge of what goes into a game engine and a good refresher on making code reusable in ways I hadn't thought of before.

Subscribed =D. And How good is that book? I just recently ordered a book by John Harbour called Beginning Game Development, someone recommended it to me to learn DirectX. I was considering buying that book, so I'd love to know what you think of it =p.

I had actually heard of the game before, but have never played it myself. I'm exciting to see how your project turns out, so I can try it myself =D.

[GroundUpEngine]

I'm currently working on a PC version of the card game known as Lunch Money. Probably most people haven't heard of this game, but its something my friends and I have been playing for years and its a project that I've been wanting to do since I first got into programming. I doubt there would be much interest for this game outside my circle of friends, but I know they want to play it and I want to make it, so it works.

This is a fight type card game, the premise is that you are a bunch of school girls, beating each other up using these attack/weapon/combo/specialty cards. There's defense cards and some of the special cards can completely reverse an attack. It sounds silly, but it encourages loudness, humor, and violence, so it goes down well with us.

http://www.atlas-games.com/product_tables/AG1100.php <- This is a link to the product site, you should definitely consider picking this up if you want something fun and simple to get into.

The scope of the project is to take this card game and make it enjoyable through a PC interface. The idea is to be able to play this together, even when we can't get together. To do this, I will be using DirectX, a networking API for connectivity, voice/text chat, and C++.

I say scope as I'm still in the early stages of this game. I am following a book by Jonathan Harbour called:
2D Advanced Game Development(http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Game-Dev ... 121&sr=8-1) which gives you a nice looking Direct X 2D engine that will more than adequately fit the needs of this project. I will also be using Raknet(http://www.jenkinssoftware.com/) for the networking side of things as I'm not too strong in terms of network programming.

I just wanted to update here, as I've gotten pretty far with this engine. I'm still working out of this book but it's been a slow process with family and work everything. I've gained quite a bit of knowledge of what goes into a game engine and a good refresher on making code reusable in ways I hadn't thought of before.

What's been accomplished thus far:

2D and 3D rendering(3D is largely unoptimized but used for various things)
Animation
Input
Audio
Entity Manager
Font(most recent)

What's left:
Physics
Math
Multi-Threading
Lua
Networking - using Raknet

http://www.youtube.com/user/Trask899 - is my youtube page, so far it just has a quick video showing off the font class. I do plan on posting more videos, but not until I have some original material to share.

Project looks good, I subd :P
Font looks pretty sweet too!

[Trask]

Subscribed =D. And How good is that book? I just recently ordered a book by John Harbour called Beginning Game Development, someone recommended it to me to learn DirectX. I was considering buying that book, so I'd love to know what you think of it =p.

I had actually heard of the game before, but have never played it myself. I'm exciting to see how your project turns out, so I can try it myself =D.

I really like the book at it shows what's goes into a game engine, while using DirectX 9.0c. This book will NOT teach you directx, lua, STL, c/c++, but will give references to other books to further go into said topics. The whole 1st 2 chapters just dives into so much code before explaining one bit of the why and it assumes that you have a decent background in C/C++. That's why I like the book... I know my basics, i don't need another book explaining how/why to use a For loop, I just needed something to show me how to put it all to good use and that's what this does.

So again, it's not going to hold your hand through any of these topics, but merely teach you how to use it in a reusable engine for 2D projects. I do recommend it, Jonathan Harbour was a teacher of mine before I ran out of money to finish school, so I am used to his style of teaching which is usually to throw a bunch at you, wait for you to catch up, explain bits here and there then teach you something new while showing you a more efficient way to do what you previously learned. Which means, the first chapter with an example on how to display a sprite won't/shouldn't be the way you actually display a sprite by the end of the book as so much more is added. Here's the book's Table of Contents to give you a taste of what it has:

Chapter 1 Building a 2D Game Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Compiler Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
DirectX SDK Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Why Do We Need an Engine? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Creating the Engine Project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Dev-Cþþ Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Visual Cþþ Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Engine Source Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Compiling the Engine Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Testing the Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
The TestEngine Source Code. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Dev-Cþþ Library Test Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Visual Cþþ Library Test Project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Chapter 2 3D Rendering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Rendering Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Adding Rendering Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Adding Camera Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Adding Mesh Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Rendering Meshes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Runtime Cubes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Bouncing Balls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Direct Lighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Directional Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Spot Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Point Light. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Creating Lights. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Chapter 3 2D Rendering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Basic 2D Rendering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Raising Happy Sprites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Creating Vectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Testing Vector3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Creating a Reusable Sprite Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Rendering Sprites with Transparency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Color Key Transparency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Alpha Channel Transparency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Chapter 4 Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Animation Demo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Sprite Rotation and Scaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Animation with Transforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

Chapter 5 Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Keyboard Input. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
DirectInput Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Initializing the Keyboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Reading Key Presses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Mouse Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Initializing the Mouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Reading the Mouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Engine Modifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Input Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Engine Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Testing Keyboard and Mouse Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

Chapter 6 Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Designing an Audio System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
What Is FMOD? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Using the FMOD SDK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Audio Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Sample Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Audio Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Adding FMOD to the Game Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Audio Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Chapter 7 Entities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Building an Entity Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
The Entity Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Modifying the Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Modifying the Sprite Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Testing Sprites as Entities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Modifying the Mesh Class. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Testing Meshes as Entities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

Chapter 8 Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Creating a Font. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Loading and Rendering a Font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Font Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Using the New Font Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

Chapter 9 Physics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Collision Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Automated Collision Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Bounding Rectangle Collision Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Distance-Based Collision Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204

Chapter 10 Math . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Math Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Math Class Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Math Class Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Math Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
Linear Velocity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Angle to Target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Drop-Down Console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Console Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Console Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240

Chapter 11 Threading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Introducing the POSIX Threads Library. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Installing POSIX Threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Using POSIX Threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
Programming POSIX Threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
ThreadDemo Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Threading the Game Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
Threaded Garbage Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
Testing the Newly Threaded Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264

Chapter 12 Scripting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Introducing Lua . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Running Lua from the Command Prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Lua and Cþþ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Lua Script Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Linking with the Lua Library. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Script Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292

Chapter 13 Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Scrolling Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Blocks Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Alien Invaders. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

[XianForce]

Sounds awesome. I'll have to pick up a copy after I finish reading the one I already ordered (if it'd ever get here >.>).

[OmegaGDS]

Well, for school I'm working on a program called Mytunes. Mytunes is a java version of Itunes (only it is fake and sucks). At home, me and three friends are tossing around the idea of making an 2D RPG. So far we haven't gotten to coding yet (due to how little time each of us has), but it seems that we will be starting soon! Wish us luck

[DeltaFolee]

/OffTopic: Hey guys! Found out about ES on youtube, after a friend gave me a link. I like your videos, but i need to catch up with the dev (currently on on the 7th episode).
/OnTopic:
Name: Swift
Type: 2.5D Puzzler/Platformer
Platform: Windows PC! Thinking of a Linux, and DS port in the near future(after the national it contest in my country)
Technologies: C++, DarkGDK, FMOD, DirectShow, AGEIA PHYSX for the Windows Version, C, OpenGL and Max Mod for the Linux and DS Port, Flash (Concept stuff)
Tools: Milkshape3D & Paint.NET (placeholders graphics), 3DMax, Photoshop CS3, Visual Studio Express 2008

Description: [I'm lazy, so I'll just Ctrl+V and Ctrl+C from the website] Swift is a 2.5D puzzler/platformer for the Windows PC, in which the player
takes control of a ball-like robot (ball-droid).
Your mission is to solve puzzles in order to level up your AI skill. Solve mind boggling puzzles in order to advance to the next chamber, puzzles that include:

• Change colors in order to stand on different platforms.
• Throw boxes, put them on different buttons, or pile
• them up in a stack in order to reach higher places.
• Dodge turrets, lasers, and watch out for electric platforms.
• Push buttons in order to unlock boxes , buttons or
• open the door to the next room.
• Alter the room's gravity field, in order to reach
• places that seem unreachable.

Media: [in order of appearance]
- Teaser
- In-Game Footage(lot has changed since)
- Team's First Developers Diary
- Second Developers Diary

Website: Team's website, DevBlog, YouTube

/OffTopic: Hope this isn't considered spamming! Wanted to say a Hi at first, but i can't find an suitable place to do that. Guess I can

I went to your team's website, and it looks to me like that applet has a memory leak. Firefox stopped working after a few minutes, and looking in the task manager the memory firefox was taking was going steadily up... and up... and up... and up.... just thought I'd let you know.