VectorStorm Blog

Just a quick note, guys;  very sorry that things have been so quiet for so long.  Been busy with all sorts of things!

So, a very quick update.  I’m once again working on MMORPG Tycoon 2, but I think that I’m going to continue to be rather quiet on the blog for the next little while;  between job searches, coding, and preparing for VGKnowHow episodes, I don’t actually seem to have a lot of time and/or creativity left over for regular blog posts.  Hoping to have things smooth out again in the near future!

I was hoping that the studio would be available again by now, but since it isn’t, I decided to try my hand at producing my own video using my own gear.  I’m interested in what people think;  is the audio quality okay?  I don’t think it’s as crisp as the proper studio sound, but.. for a home production, perhaps not too bad?

I’d kill for a softbox and a supply of acoustic foam, though.  :)

Show notes and addenda:

• For those in the professional industry, I should mention that making great game cameras is not a good way to try to get noticed by your boss;  as I said in the episode, people only ever notice bad cameras; good cameras just blend into and improve a game without ever calling attention to themselves.  This means that you can’t impress your boss by creating a great camera, as great cameras are invisible to people playing the game.  If you want to get ahead in the industry, I recommend trying your hand at something more visible, instead (or in addition!).
• The alternate camera seen in the Asteroids demo is a “Lerp Follow”-type camera, which interpolates both the camera position and the camera’s facing, to attempt to face the same direction as the player.
• C++ source code for the testbed application seen in this episode is available from my public Subversion repository located here:  http://www.vectorstorm.org/get-games/vectorstorm-test-harness-games/  Project files are provided for MSDev 2008 and for XCode.
• If you just want to see the C++ code for the various camera behaviours, you can see them directly within your web browser here: http://www.vectorstorm.org/svn/repos/VectorStorm/trunk/Games/CameraTest/CT_CameraScript.cpp

Maybe it’s just me.  But I’m completely paranoid about MMORPG Tycoon 2 ending up looking something like this;  an endless expanse of identical trees, sprouting from all sorts of improbable places, in the middle of a simple height map that manages to look matte and unlit, despite the presence of a directional light.

I’m not sure precisely what I need to do to avoid this, since the sort of asset re-use that was key in making this awful vista is also going to be required in MMORPG Tycoon 2.  Maybe if there were any sort of shadows being cast it’d help.  Or maybe if the trees weren’t quite so awful.  Or if the rocks weren’t simply amorphous blobs wedged into a monochromatic height map.  I don’t know.  I saw this vista in a modern MMO the other day, and was immediately seized by the terror of “how do I avoid creating this, myself?”

Anybody have thoughts?

(Said by a woman on my plane flight home earlier this week, as I settled into my economy-class seat beside her.)

I’ve been overweight for pretty much all of my life.  Not morbidly obese by any means, but just enough that I’ve always thought of myself as being a bit fat, and doctors have always recommended that I try to lose a bit of weight.  And having a job which requires remaining seated for long periods certainly hasn’t helped matters any. About eight months ago, I started watching my food intake and visiting the gym four or five times a week, and over that period I’ve lost just over 20kg (that’s about 44 pounds, in the old maths).  Which now puts me comfortably within my “healthy weight zone” for the first time in my life.  (personally, I’d still like to lose at least another 5kg, though)

It’s kind of funny.  As I’ve been losing all that weight, nobody has ever mentioned it.  Not once.  And my mental image of myself never really changed, either, even when I had to start buying new clothes because the old ones were turning into tents on me.  Funny how unchanging that mental image of oneself can be.

Anyhow.  This casual comment from a stranger kind of made my day, so I had to blog about it.  (And then a friend inquired whether I hadn’t lost some weight over my holiday, about twelve hours later.  Too late, dude, the random airplane stranger pipped you at the post.)

In other news, the studio I use for VGKnowHow opens up again next week, so hopefully I’ll have some new episodes filmed and ready to go by the end of next week.  I’m still arguing with myself over the next topic, but it’ll almost certainly end up being camera basics.

Finally, now that my holiday is over, I’m left trying to decide what to be spending my development resources on;  whether to continue on with the re-imagined Spratt game that I’ve been posting about (as I’ve found that the game in its initial design simply isn’t compelling, and buffing up the game mechanics to the point where it becomes interesting requires more screen real estate than we realistically have on a phone), or whether to discard that avenue of development and return to MMORPG Tycoon 2, or whether to set both of those two projects aside, and instead start on a more conventional game design that could be completed within a more predictable schedule (but which presumably therefore wouldn’t be as intriguing a concept as either Spratt 2 or MT2.)

Apple has recently released the Mac App Store.  It’s basically an exact replica of the iOS App Store, except on the Mac.  It’s like Steam, but with a much smaller barrier to entry.

Here’s the question:  Those of you with Macs, would you be at all interested in VectorStorm games being made available through the Mac App Store, in addition to being available as direct downloads here?  The free games here would, of course, also be free on the App Store.

I’m not really planning to do anything along these lines;  don’t currently see it as really being worth my effort while they’re just tiny free games.  But I’m quite willing to be convinced otherwise.  Let me know if you have thoughts!