Free-form level editor
September 3, 2009 at 7:33 pm | In Game development, Level-design, Programming, Python | 3 CommentsThe last week or two I’ve been working on a 2D level editor. I can drag and drop images onto it to create free-form levels (beware, placeholder art):
It’s meant for a platformer game, but it’s fairly easy to use the output for a different kind of game. Like, say, a strategy game, or just as a title screen layout file.
On the right side, there’s the bare-bone UI: the layer selection and visibility toggle buttons, the delete-this-layer button, and of course a button for adding layers. The red lines are collision lines – I’ve experimented with that a while ago and it turned out to work pretty well, so I’m migrating parts of my collision-line editor/test program to this new editor. On the right side, you can(‘t) see a hidden layer. The blue lines are the grid – which can be toggled and it’s granularity can be fine-tuned. It’s not used for snapping yet, so it’s mostly there to give me some sense of place and size.
I’m still working on various features, but it’s already a useful tool. I wrote it in Python, using Pygame (for the rendering and input handling), pgu (for the buttons) and pywin32 (for the drag and drop support). It has taken me 4 or 5 days so far, a couple of hours each day. :)
Programming in Python is fun!
October 10, 2008 at 5:04 pm | In Game development, Programming | 2 CommentsTags: productivity, Python, tools
The last few months I’ve been doing more and more with Python. While the games I work on are mostly written in C++, there’s still a lot of room for me to use Python. For example, when dealing with file conversions, data checking, automating processes, and so on.
Two weeks ago, I wrote a tool that packs smaller images into larger ones. I first prototyped the packing algorithm in Python and then translated it to C#, which I used for the tool itself.
Last week, within a few days, I was able to process, verify and preview almost 2000 files for one of our games, converting them from XML into a tight binary format, all packed into custom archive files to keep things easy for the file-system. I spent most of my time thinking about the file formats and the required checks. Writing the tools took little time. Continue reading Programming in Python is fun!…
Bullet consumption
June 21, 2008 at 3:08 pm | In Flash games, Game development, Game idea's, HaXe | Leave a CommentI’ve been prototyping yet another game idea during the last few weeks. Since I’m now a full-time game programmer at Triangle Studios, I have less spare time to devote to game-development. Fortunately, less doesn’t mean nothing at all. 
So here’s BulletEater. A danmaku/bullet-hell game. Except that you’re unable to fire back at turrets, so you’ll just have to survive the bullet patterns. Actually, you’re not completely defenseless: there’s an overcharge mode that allows you to eat bullets, which in turn adds to your score. It does cost you a life however, but lives slowly recharge so that’s simply a matter of surviving long enough. Eating bullets speeds up the recharge process a bit so you may want to save your lives for the really nasty situations.
These are things I’m still thinking about, as they make large bullet patterns easy score-fests instead. So I’m thinking about including laser-beams that can’t be eaten to control the difficulty and challenge some more. If you have any suggestions, feel free to share them.
A little bit of level-design in-between
May 10, 2008 at 3:33 pm | In Game development, Level-design | 3 CommentsDeveloping games takes up quite a bit of my time these days, now that it’s a full-time job for me. Despite that, I’m still working on a game in my spare time, although not as much as I used to do. Fortunately, programming isn’t my only hobby. I still had an old, almost-finished Half-Life 2: Deathmatch level gathering dust on my HD, so I thought, why not finish it for real this time?
So that’s what I’ve been working on the past few days. I’ve fixed up the last few details, with feedback coming from some friends, so here I present you:
AI Wars released
March 1, 2008 at 1:03 am | In Game development, HaXe, Released games | 1 CommentTags: AI, AI Wars, release
I intended to release AI Wars last week, but some things got in the way. Some people have been asking me about it recently though, so I contacted my friend Inky for the latest version of his AI client and wrapped it all up in a .rar file:
AI Wars download (210 kB)The package contains the server and an AI client, written by Inky. Startup instructions can be found in the readme.txt file. If you’re interested in writing your own AI clients, contact me on this blog or through my portfolio’s contact page and I’ll settle some documentation and code.
Thanks to Mark, who worked with me on the AI Wars server, and Siebe, who built the AI client. And thanks to Jaco and Vassili for their emotional support, of course. Hehe. 
Anyway, enjoy, and please let me know what you think of AI Wars.
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