tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74903792024-03-08T02:11:05.646+00:00Zoombapup - British IndieA personal blog about the up's and down's of my life as an indie game developer and videogames researcher.Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.comBlogger44125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-64017675181565574502009-09-19T16:11:00.001+00:002009-09-19T16:11:30.489+00:00Another box mental work-in-progress video
Had some issues (see my youtube channel) but finally have Box2D doing object seperation and collision detection for my work-in-progress indie game "Box Mental". All I can say, is that Box2D rocks. I'll definitely be playing with the flash version for another prototype idea I've got. Next up for box mental? Well, need to update the navmesh generation so that it can handle Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-27438258045598729282009-09-09T16:42:00.001+00:002009-09-09T16:42:57.677+00:00Another work-in-progress of Box Mental
I'm working on the zombie behaviours still. Here's a work-in-progress video that shows them in action. Zombies = dark guys, humans = light guys.Animations totally messed up there, so I'll be working on that next. I took some time to tiddle with icons and the like, because presentation counts, even for programmer art! :) Posted via email from zoombapup's post-o-matic Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-7398293484842114052009-09-08T16:34:00.001+00:002009-09-08T16:34:47.395+00:00Blast from the past
Oh man. This takes me back. I can't even remember why I started looking for this. But here is a link to a screamtracker mod I did back in 1994.http://cd.textfiles.com/soundmod1/music/s3m_mz/timeout.s3m Plays pretty much as I remember it in VLC too!Back then, I was heavily into the demoscene. Not that there was much of it in the UK. But I was coding my own assembler demos, tracking and all ofPhil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-50706972351440769012009-09-07T19:42:00.001+00:002009-09-07T19:42:03.127+00:00Update video - Follow Behaviour
Just added a new work-in-progress video to Vimeo. This time its an example of follow behaviour. Basically, the dark guys are zombies and the light guys are humans. Now to work on some recursive dimentional clustering for collision detection between the agents. Posted via email from zoombapup's post-o-matic Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-70562094085466104252009-09-03T07:09:00.001+00:002009-09-03T07:09:27.593+00:00Interesting idea for a game
So here's something interesting. Can you tell whats going on on this video?The game is called His and Her Disconnected Conversations Here's my theory of whats happening.Its basically a sort of weird (and wonderful) take on a matching game. The left hand side is a guy. The right hand side is a girl. When you start, you get three different couples. The couples come together and start Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-38061166000240725522009-09-03T06:50:00.001+00:002009-09-03T06:50:08.637+00:00New video
I just added a work-in-progress video of my current project. Posted via email from zoombapup's posterous Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-11029692722567731382009-05-02T19:44:00.001+00:002009-05-02T19:44:44.509+00:00Using V8 for scripting in my gameI'm going to try and find time this weekend to throw google's "V8" Javascript engine into my game.http://code.google.com/p/v8/Basically, its a javascript implementation intended for embedding within applications (and its used by google in a lot of thier apps).I figure using jscript as a language has some advantages for end users who want to play with modding the game. Alongside the benefits of Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-42677410745172559782009-04-26T23:10:00.003+00:002009-04-26T23:22:46.630+00:00Brain update and moving siteWell, just sat in on an interesting discussion with Andy Shatz from pocketwatchgames.com over at aigamedev.com for a couple of hours. Fun interview and threw up some really nice details of Andy's games. Interestingly I'm doing something similar in terms of my games being AI based, but I think mine is definitely focussed in a different direction in that I'm really thinking of my game as a toy Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-54419761136931950602009-04-13T13:54:00.003+00:002009-04-13T14:12:52.707+00:00Finally exporting the character!Been having a hell of a time trying to get a test character exported into the engine with a few choice animations. Mostly my lack of understanding of xforms and pivots and the like. But feels like we've finally broken the back of it (thanks to Jerry Waugh).At this point, the next bit is to work on the texture swapping code and maybe add atlassing in there (the FPS is low because each body part Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-64721571576086887852009-03-16T20:52:00.004+00:002009-03-17T20:29:30.246+00:00New art style for "leaf" and behaviorsGetting prepared to head off to San Francisco for the GDC and thought I'd post this before I set off on that epic journey.I've been toying with some art styles just for test purposes that allows me to experiment with the level of "realism" required for the behavioral/emotional side to demonstate that at least partially you don't require realism to allow for emotion to show.So I came up with this Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-89166872042005509292009-02-18T19:40:00.002+00:002009-02-18T19:58:40.708+00:00An AI that can express emotionsI've been trying to get my plan together for our lecture at GDC: HereThere's plenty of academic stuff I can go over, particularly models of personality, mood and emotion that you see in a lot of affective computing literature. That of course is pretty useful information in and of itself (great to get going if you're interested in learning more for yourself).But I really wanted to get something soPhil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-62976783685751423452009-02-08T19:06:00.006+00:002009-02-08T19:26:13.596+00:00Behavior Tree XMLPreviously I was working on parsing XML for the game entities and thought I'd continue through to actually parsing the AI setup from that effort. So now after a few hours work (which included a lot of refactoring and there's a ton left to do of that) I can now actually specify an XML file as part of the AIComponent specification in the GameObject's XML.Here's a typical GameObjects XML:Arrgh, it Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-32625013789803103922009-02-05T19:15:00.001+00:002009-02-05T19:19:05.619+00:00Snow day fun!Hmm, seems like a semi-productive day. Snowing outside anyway so I wasn't going to go out I got an XML parser sorted out for the game objects in my engine. Basically all game objects are component based (i.e they use aggregation rather than inheritance).So now I have a bit more flexibility as I can save my test worlds in an xml file and have the world loader class simply load the world.xml file (Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-41022030829261271802008-05-06T17:50:00.010+00:002008-12-09T20:06:52.388+00:00The making of Leaf - Part 2The making of LEAF Part 2 - Fulfilling the needsThis week, I'm going to cover the starting point for fulfilling the needs we identified in part 1. Specifically, we're going to look at the Behavior Tree structure that will form the starting point for developing the AI interactions.Preamble:Before I cover the AI here, I want to talk about my approach to the game "LEAF" as it is something that mightPhil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-65054688774216438092008-04-05T11:21:00.007+00:002008-04-05T11:42:42.817+00:00The making of LEAF - Part 1 - Creating VillagersCreating Character MotivationsThe starting point for my implementation of AI characters in LEAF, is to think of the reasons why my AI characters are going to want to do anything interesting. This leads me to think about how I define thier motivations and how I encode them for use by the AI.How do you define motivations? Well, my starting point was Abraham Maslow's "Heirarchy of needs". I'll let Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-38620866455546004112007-12-22T16:49:00.000+00:002007-12-22T17:30:51.660+00:00Behavior trees and a certain castawayI've been playing with various AI problems for [many years now] and for anyone who has tried to do any form of AI, particularly with state machines and heirarchical state machines, you'll have felt that there was something missing.I got to thinking about doing a small AI testbed for some stuff at work and that got me to thinking about maybe doing a small product in order to test out my AI code. Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-53114939971512553132007-11-17T00:28:00.000+00:002007-11-17T00:34:39.146+00:00Pure blueThe last time I was in "the industry", I worked with a bunch of artists. We literally sat in a little group and had a load of fun.One of the things they used to hassle me about, was this notion of programmers not understanding colour. Thier standard joke was that when you ask a programmer what blue is, they say 00:00:FF (i.e. 0,0,255 or whatever the HTML version of that is).Artists dont really Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-29698092877251968752007-11-04T14:47:00.001+00:002007-11-04T14:56:35.003+00:00The designer as artistI'm a game programmer by trade. I know, that means I shouldn't comment on art matters right? Well, what about a programmer/designer? If I'm a designer does that make it ok?Now I'm absolutely talentless at actually creating visual art, lets be very clear about that. But I definitely know what I like when I see it. What is strange, is that I'm finding myself feeling more and more like I want to Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-82384324232864416252007-08-27T15:01:00.000+00:002007-08-27T15:12:26.363+00:00Boutique MMO's and the next wave.MMO's.Those contentious little buggers which SEEM like they would be fun, but inevitably end up with some level grinding template of elves and orcs bashing "mobs" for some token or other.Why is it that the only alternative to those are either "virtual other life" style things (second life, vSide) or space type games (space cowboy, eve online).I'm looking at the current generation of MMO's and Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-9975863357052913082007-05-29T17:13:00.000+00:002007-05-29T17:32:25.270+00:00Object composition and design patterns.I just finished reading the book Head First Design Patterns which is a really nice read. Even though the content is java oriented, pretty much anyone should be able to take the concepts and patterns explained and apply them in their own language.So you might ask yourself "what the hell are design patterns and why would I want to know them?".Design patterns are a way to look at problems and look Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1168647435248989512007-01-12T23:46:00.000+00:002007-05-29T17:36:04.662+00:00Not a dead endOooh, I was kind of at a dead end for most of the day, then after sifting through a thousand and one sweep picking (its a guitar technique) videos on youtube, I stumbled into two interesting things in one day! Joy!First thing, well, actually two things, are from introversions blog.http://www.introversion.co.uk/blog/index.phpI like these guys. I really have no reason to, other than they are brits Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1164041724909767172006-11-20T16:46:00.000+00:002007-02-18T01:03:14.296+00:00so you want to be indie developerSo you want to be an indie developer huh?Well, it’s not all sun and fun in the indie developer realm. In fact, it’s hard. Damn hard. In fact, it’s so hard, that I think you need convincing how hard it is.So let’s get down to some science*Actually, let’s get down to some probability theory!So before we can start analyzing probabilities, we have to give ourselves a goal. So what should that goal bePhil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1158666948085225162006-09-19T11:55:00.000+00:002006-09-19T11:55:50.256+00:00Indie Game Dev RealityI just finished reading Neil Yates's blog:Indie Game Dev RealityA really nice sort of "core dump" of your average indie game developers life. It shows the harsh reality of things for those who think indie is a path to riches.I do think that there is no "average" indie. But of all of the stories I've seen, this one strikes me as what might happen to the typical indie game dev I see on sites like Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1156500909999220912006-08-25T10:11:00.000+00:002006-08-25T10:15:10.013+00:00Random game dribbleI've decided to post random game ideas on my blog. Not for any particular purpose, but because I can.First up: Monkey Knuckle FighterA game where you play a bare knuckle fighter, who also happens to be a primate. Choose from chimpanzee, urangutan, gorilla etc.. You get the picture.Basic beat-em-up, but the twist is the quad-dextrous primates can use the environment to thier advantage. Cross "Phil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7490379.post-1155903770784255352006-08-18T11:55:00.000+00:002006-08-18T12:22:51.433+00:00MMO's stagnating already?Oh my, are we there already? It was only yesterday it seems that I was wondering what the brave new world of MMO's was going to turn out like. Of course, back then I was playing Everquest and was working in the industry on networking related things, so it could also be classed as "research", but I sure didnt expect things to go the way they have.Today I was looking for indie MMO's, as its an areaPhil Carlislehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262518177977960604noreply@blogger.com1