The Blog of Anders Nissen

søndag, august 28, 2005

Started At University

Last Wednesday I started at The Department of Computer Science at The University of Aarhus.

It's been a few busy days with a lot of different things on the schedule, but it's also been a really nice experience. A lot of practical information, fun & games and beer :)

Next Monday the University courses start for real, so I guess I should prepare to kiss my spare time goodbye.

tirsdag, august 23, 2005

Building A Simple Tile Engine

I've started writing a tutorial series about one way to create a simple tile based game engine. I'm pressed for time right now, so the tutorial is far from finished, but I'll be updating it when I find some time. You can see what I've made of the tutorial so far by following the link below.

Tutorial: Building A Simple Tile Engine

lørdag, august 20, 2005

WikiAdventure 1.0 Source

The source for WikiAdventure is now available.

I promised that the release of WikiAdventure would be acompanied by a complete game, but lately I've lacked the motivation so it won't be available now. Maybe I'll write it sometime later.

Download: WikiAdventure 1.0 source (5.64 MB)

The download will be available 14 days.

lørdag, august 13, 2005

WikiAdventure Beta

Finally my WikiAdventure project is ready for a public beta!
A few people have tested it
already, and it ought to work cleanly on most computers. However, I use some Windows-only API function so I doubt it will work on Linux systems.

Download it here:
WikiAdventure Beta 13 August 2005 (1.59 MB)


Please download it, test if it works on your computer and tell me what you think of it.

Keys:
B toggles the debug menu.
Escape exits the application.

All the data used for the games can be view and edited here.

If the beta testing goes successfully, I'm going to start working on a larger game based on it.
Thanks for testing! :D

fredag, august 12, 2005

Unemployed, Yay!

Today was my last day at work, so from today I'm officially unemployed. Now I have a well-deserved holiday before I start at university. :)

tirsdag, august 09, 2005

WikiAdventure Closed Beta Testing

Tonight WikiAdventure has been released for beta tested by a small hand picked group. Actually it was one person, but it sounded nice didn't it?

The beta testing took place over IM, and here's some highlight from the testing:
...
[20:34:37] Clint: This'll take a while, I'm on dial-up :P
[20:34:57] Anders: dial-up!?!? o_O
...
[20:38:24] Anders: What's your specs?
[20:39:12] Clint: PII 450, 128 MB RAM, ATI Rage Pro 2x 8MB
[20:40:00] Clint: Sad, huh? :P
[20:40:00] Anders: he he he... ehh... :|
...
[20:43:42] Anders: Okay, first up - can you run it?
[20:43:46] Clint: 1 sec
[20:44:23] Clint: Uh, no
[20:44:26] Anders: Argh!
...
[20:51:50] Clint: It works!
[20:51:54] Anders: Wohooo!
...
[20:54:25] Anders: Now I think you're ready to go - start! :)
[20:54:31] Clint: k
[20:55:01] Anders: Still working?
[20:55:22] Clint: It crashed :(
[20:55:26] Anders: Do'h!
...
[21:11:33] Clint: Ok, here goes...
[21:12:02] Anders: *fingers crossed*
[21:13:19] Clint: Getting further this time
[21:13:44] Clint: It's downloading fonts now
[21:13:53] Anders: That's strange... but good! :)
[21:13:58] Clint: Heh
[21:15:17] Clint: It's telling me "Click to continue" :D
[21:15:27] Anders: Yeah!
...
[21:22:28] Clint: I want to make adventures for this thing already,
but I've already got too much on my plate as it is :S
...
So there were a bit of trouble at first with some missing DLL's because he's running Windows 2000. A few DLL's were exchanged and that was fixed.
Now the game started up correctly, but crashed when it started downloading data.
We tried finding out what caused this problem, but then suddenly - probably caused my some divine interference - it worked like a charm!
I've just got a few things to add, and it's ready for a public beta! :)

mandag, august 08, 2005

One Week To Go

This Friday is my last day on the job! After that comes one and a half weeks of relaxation and maybe a bit of math studying... :/

One week to go... :)

fredag, august 05, 2005

Ahh, Weekend!

Legs up, a nice warm cup of coffee and a good book. Weekend time is here!

I have about 15 minor things on my to-do list for WikiAdventure, so it won't be long before a beta is released. I have to be social tonight and tomorrow but I hope to have it released by Sunday.

onsdag, august 03, 2005

Golden Quote

I just had to share this quote with you.

"I can imagine a world without hate, a world without fear, a world without war. And I can imagine us attacking that world, because they would never expect it."
- Jack Handy

mandag, august 01, 2005

Message Box In WikiAdventure

In roughly 100 lines of code, I've added a graphical in-game message box.
Here's a screen shot:


The title and message text is passed as arguments, and the background image can be switched out by the individual games. If the background image is different in size then the text aligns to fit the image.

God Bless Lua

Yesterday I implemented a "load/save game"-system in WikiAdventure. It's actually really more of a "continue game/don't continue game"-system, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, I'm using the Lua scripting language for in-game scripting, so I have no idea which variables will be created and which to save etc.. Tricky you say? Yes, but I did it, and I'm not selfish, so I'm going to share my incredibly complex algorithms with you.

The first thing you need is the Lua state object. This is how I've defined mine:
LuaStateOwner m_oLuaState;

To save a game you do the following:
m_oLuaState->DumpGlobals( "savegame.file" );

To load the saved game you do the following:
m_oLuaState->DoFile( "savegame.file" );

Pretty damn neat, huh? Just another reason why I loooove Lua :)

The Game Programming Wiki One Year Anniversary!



Congratulations GPWiki! :)

Visit The Game Programming Wiki.
Visit the anniversary page.

Two Weeks To Go

Now I've only got 9 working days left until I quit my job. I can't wait! Then almost two weeks off awaits followed by me starting on university.

Two weeks to go...