Topics

426

Developer's Corner / Docoto Defense - DonationCoder.com Game in Development

« on: June 14, 2007, 06:59 PM »

Some of you may have heard of the $10,000 Game Contest put on by the good folks at MyDreamRPG. For those that haven't, or that forgot about it, let me summarize a few of the details:

• Start Date: 4/1/2007
• Contest End Date: Midnight EST on April 31st, 2008.
• 1st Prize: $10,000
• Technology must be based on one of these GarageGames Torque engines (TGB, TGE, TGEA, TorqueX), and can include other Content Packs made by 3rd parties
• Contest Points List
  

I'm here to announce that I officially entered a game tentatively titled Docoto Defense into the contest on May 21st. Docoto Defense is an amalgamation of the words DonationCoder Tower Defense. So what does this all mean? It means that the DonationCoder.com Games Division is working on a Tower Defense style game that, to be a valid entrant in the game contest, will be finished and ready for release by May 2008 at the latest!

Irrelevant Screenshot

This game is going to be unique from other TD games because it will feature single player quest modes, multiplayer (cooperative and competitive modes), have both defensive and offensive elements, and will focus on user created content. People will be able to create their own levels, maps, units, etc., customizing many features of the game.

Mouser is very involved in helping to design the game and Nudone has agreed to help out with some artwork, but I'd like to make a request to the DonationCoder community for more support. I could especially use the help of those with artistic abilities, musical/sound effect abilities, and website design. Even if you don't have those abilities or don't have the time to help out you can still contribute with one of the fundamental ideas behind this entire community: Donations.

The game is still in the early design stages, so I'm sorry to say I don't have more cool screen captures to show off, but you can follow the game's progress at the Development Blog.

427

Living Room / Attack of the LOLCODE!

« on: June 12, 2007, 06:15 PM »

They're in ur Intarwebs, creating a programming language. The attack of the lolcats has spilled over to programming, with LOLCODE, a language based on the mangled grammar of lolcats. Pull up a buckit and I'll help wif ur understanding of LOLCODE.

Here's an example of a working program written in LOLCODE:

[Select]

HAI
I HAS A CHEEZBURGER ITZ 1

IM IN YR LOOP
  VISIBLE "I has dis many: " N CHEEZBURGER
  IZ CHEEZBURGER BIGGER THAN 11 O RLY?
    YA RLY
      GTFO
    NO WAI
      UP CHEEZBURGER!!1
  KTHX
KTHX

KTHXBYE

Read more: It is can be LOLCODE time plz?

428

General Software Discussion / GlueIt: Make Animation Contact Sheets from Multiple Images

« on: June 01, 2007, 11:38 AM »

I found a great site yesterday with a bunch of animated images good for quick prototyping art. Only problem was that each frame of the animations were separate image files, and for the game engine I'm using (Torque Game Builder) it needs them all to be on one sheet. I needed a program to splice the images together! Reiner does have one on his site but it's a little more complicated than I'd like it to be. I asked around on the GarageGames forums and was directed to GlueIt, a very easy to use program to do this task easily and quickly.

GlueIt 1.06 is the perfect sprite companion, it will take a series of single images and paste them as
an image strip making the sprite animation immediatly ready to be incorporated in your sprite engine. NEW Loads .PNG, .BMP, Saves .PNG, .BMP, .JPG
It will save you ALOT of time!
Best part is, it's FREE !

The only possible downside I see to it is that it requires .NET 2.0--which isn't a problem for me.

429

General Software Discussion / Looking for: ToDo List plus Calendar plus Countdown Timer

« on: May 11, 2007, 02:47 PM »

I'm interested in some software that mixes elements from a calendar, a todo list, and a countdown timer. Here are the features I'm looking for:

• Calendar view.
• Option for recurring tasks.
• Show countdown timer on desktop for next "todo" item. This would be great if it had the options to display more than one todo item at a time and be always on top of other applications, with options to adjust font, size, color, transparency.
• Easy way to check the task as done.

Does anyone know of anything that does this?

430

Living Room / Insane Super Mario Bros. Mod

« on: April 12, 2007, 03:37 PM »

You think you've got it hard in life? Picture yourself trying to figure this one out.

http://endangeredgam...-mario-mod-ever.html

Mouser puts it best:

It's like a testament to human suffering and perseverance. It's heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time. It's soo damn cruel!

So cruel, yet so hilarious! 

431

Living Room / Galcon: Game Du Jour Deal of the Day

« on: March 16, 2007, 04:31 AM »

Hi all,

I just wanted to point you to today's game deal of the day from Game Du Jour. It's a simplistic game called Galcon in which you send fleets of starships across space to conquer other planets. The thing is that it is fast paced, like an arcade game and each round only lasts a couple of minutes. It's definitely worth it to download the demo and I liked it enough to pay the $10 to register it. The screen shots don't make it look very cool, but in action it's a really fun game.

Probably the best aspect of it is the multi-player mode. You can compete against a few players online. It rocks!

http://www.gamedujour.com/ <-- This is the site with the deal only for Friday the 16th of March.
http://www.imitation...rg/galcon/index.html <-- This is the website for Galcon.

I wonder if Galcon is short for Galaxy Conquest. . . 

432

Living Room / Favorites Fun!

« on: January 08, 2007, 11:30 PM »

Here's a fun bit of code that will liven up any website, so long as the page you're viewing has graphics.

Code: Javascript [Select]

1. javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.getElementsByTagName("img"); DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=(Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5)+"px"; DIS.top=(Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5)+"px"}R++}setInterval('A()',50); void(0);

Try it out by going to the smilies page and pasting the above code into your address bar and press enter! Whee!

Here's another neat trick! Add that code to one of your favorites and you can click on the favorite and it will activate the code on any page you're viewing! Double Whee!

Here's another trick! Enter in the code more than once (by clicking that favorite multiple times) and it will do even crazier things! Triple Whee!

Before:


After:

433

Living Room / Jay is Games Flash Competition 2: Need Ideas!

« on: January 05, 2007, 12:26 AM »

Jay is Games is having another Flash Development Competition:

Here's the scoop: you, casual gamer / game designer / Flash whiz, design a simple puzzle game in Flash (version 8, AS 2.0).

Yes, the type of entry we're looking for is the same as what we called for during our first competition. And while the entries we received contained various interpretations of "simple puzzle game", all things considered, the simple puzzle idea proved to be an excellent choice. So we're doing it again!!

But there is a catch. This time your game design must incorporate this theme: "grow".

You are, of course, free to interpret that any way you choose; however, the extent to which your game addresses the theme is left up to the competition judges to decide. Entries not meeting this requirement will be disqualified.

For full details Click Here.

Recently I've been talking to mouser and Tinjaw about making games and one of the ideas we've been tossing around seems perfect. A Tower Defense type game could be considered both a puzzle game (where to place towers) and a growth game (upgrade towers). We've been throwing around ideas trying to come up with something a bit more improved on what we've seen so far in the Tower Defense genre, but I'd love to hear any ideas anyone here can come up with for this contest (not limited to Tower Defense ideas) and I'd certainly like help designing the game conceptually so that I can focus most of my time on programming it instead of trying to figure out all the details of a fun working game by myself.

Oh, and Nudone, you've officially been drafted to make the graphics for the game. Especially since some of the ideas we're liking best will be somewhat Cody themed. If you don't like it, take it up with mouser. I tried to fight for your freedom of choice but mouser wouldn't hear any of that.

Please submit your ideas quickly!

The deadline is February 9th!

434

General Software Discussion / Remoting Software Questions

« on: January 04, 2007, 10:28 AM »

I haven't had a chance to look very far into this, but I just decided that I might like to set up a remote connection to my home computer so I can access it from elsewhere. Has anyone here used the Microsoft Remote Desktop software? Is it easy to get set up? Is there a quick guide somewhere on how to set it up properly?

Thanks!

435

Developer's Corner / Wikia, Inc. gives free software, computing, storage and network access

« on: December 11, 2006, 11:12 AM »

The founder of Wikipedia says that his company, Wikia, Inc., is going to give away all the software, computing, storage and network access free for people to create community-based collaboration sites.

Read the article on Yahoo!/Reuters.

436

Developer's Corner / MouseBreaker Game Development Contest Submissions

« on: December 09, 2006, 10:00 PM »

MouseBreaker.com recently had a Flash game development competition which ended November 30th and I submitted a game which Mouser aptly named Deozone.

I can't find the results of the competition even though they said they'd announce it on December 7th, but they do have 15 games featured that were entered into the contest that are potential winners.

click to play these games

And look down there! Mine is one of them!

click to play my game

Woohoo!

437

Skrommel's Software / TakeABreak should be named "j00GotPwned!"

« on: December 07, 2006, 02:31 PM »

Skrommel,

I decided I need some major enforcement to getting myself off the computer, since I seem to have no self-control in the evening and stay up much too late. So today I downloaded your TakeABreak utility to see if it would suit my needs.

When I ran it, it told me to edit the ini file. Most of your utilities let me right click the tray icon and adjust the settings, so I tried that. Nothing happened when I right clicked it. Nothing happened when I left clicked it. So I went into the directory the .exe file was stored in and there was no ini file to edit.

"Great!" I thought, "now it's going to force me to go on a break when I don't want it to." Since I couldn't right-click it to close it, I decided to open the task manager and end the process. Every time I brought up the task manager via ctrl-alt-del or ctrl-shift-esc it would immediately close.

TakeABreak was suppressing my task manager! There was no way I could close it! So I looked among your other utilities to see if you had one to kill a process. Kill wouldn't work because it closes the window under my mouser. So I tried CloseMany and repeatedly told it to close/kill TakeABreak, but it didn't work.

Finally I remembered that Mouser's Process Tamer lets you set a rule to kill processes, and it worked!

Thank goodness I finally got it closed, and thank goodness I hadn't already put it in my startup folder to start when Windows runs!

I did try running TakeABreak again to see if it had just locked up or something but every time it had the same result and I had to use Process Tamer to close it.0

So it looks like both TakeABreak and CloseMany need some modification to work properly.

438

General Software Discussion / UltraMon Problems

« on: December 05, 2006, 10:24 AM »

I installed UltraMon some time ago at work and suddenly I'm getting a message saying that the network resource I'm trying to use is not available. So I just tried to download the latest version, but the latest version tries to uninstall the older version and for some reason it seems unable to do that without the installation file for the older version.

I can't download the older version because that's only an option for paying customers. These computers are also restricted from saving files from the internet. I can run/open the file but I can't save to disc, which is kind of silly and insecure as this would prevent someone from running a virus checker.

Does anyone have UltraMon26en_x32.msi or any other solutions to my problem? I really need to have the taskbar on both my monitors to work efficiently.

439

Developer's Corner / Flash Debugging

« on: November 21, 2006, 06:47 PM »

I'm currently working on a Flash game and I've come across a bug I'm not sure how to resolve. I'd like to have someone help me look at my source and see if we can track it down.

Please send me a PM or come into the IRC channel and we can talk about it.

Thanks!

440

Living Room / Windows Vista Pronunciation

« on: October 17, 2006, 11:42 AM »

My brother lived in Spain for a couple of years and after he returned, he had one of his Spanish friends visit my family for a couple months. My family has also had exchange students from other countries, including two from Spain. I took three years of Spanish in high school, and I currently have a Mexican sharing this apartment with me.

Whenever I see or say Vista I automatically pronounce it the Spanish way, "Vee-stuh," but pretty much everyone else I know says it the other way. I'm just curious to see if anyone else pronounces it differently than they would in their native language.

441

Living Room / Deleting Folders that don't want to be deleted

« on: October 08, 2006, 12:42 PM »

I have a folder in a temp directory I use for programs (not a windows temp) and I can't delete it. I was able to delete everything out of it, and I've closed any programs that might be using it. I've even signed into Safe Mode and I still can't delete it.

I keep getting this error message:

Error Deleting File or Folder

Cannot delete file: Cannot read from the source file or disk.

It isn't read only or hidden, and like I said it's not a system file. It was just a temp directory for making a disc image. One of the weird things about it is that the folder is named after the disc image (without extension) but there are 22 spaces at the end, so it's like
"imagename                      "

I get a similar error message if I try to rename it, too. Any ideas on how I can remove it?

442

Macromedia Flash / Suggestions for modifying the assignments

« on: October 06, 2006, 03:59 AM »

I know I'm the only one who has done any Flash assignments thus far, but it might be a good idea to take a look at the common mistakes or things left out that you would ask people to fix and adjust the assignment so that it includes those as part of the assigment or part of the bonus. Or. . .

Another idea I mentioned already in my solution to Assignment 2 is that when there are things that meet the assignment criteria but aren't "pretty," making those "ugly" things into "pretty" things could be part of the next assignment. Shine up what you've got and add some more functionality.

For instance, when my ship in Assignment 1 had rough edge movement (it kind of bounced off of walls a little) and you had me fix that. It still moved around the bottom part of the screen as the assignment criteria asked, but it was ugly.

Also, in Assignment 2 it suggests to use the spacebar as part of the controls. I discovered that Flash (windows, probably) doesn't like three-key combinations that include two arrow keys and the spacebar, so that should be changed to something else. (I used shift, IT wOrkS GReaT! )

And I'd like to volunteer to be a forum moderator in the Flash category.  !

443

Living Room / Artwork wanted!

« on: October 05, 2006, 08:03 PM »

I've noticed that at least a few of our members here have some good artistic skills. I'd like someone to take a concept of mine and turn it into reality. I do have part of a specific image in my mind, but I'm open to suggestions and other ideas.

I know that different people are artistically different, and may have completely different ideas that are equally excellent, so I'd like to have at least a few people who are or think they might be interested to let me know and I'll get into the nitty gritty details later.

It would be nice if it was in Vector format so it would scale cleanly. I'm not sure on the ultimate size of the image, but something that would look good on a website.

444

Living Room / The $39 Experiment

« on: September 29, 2006, 04:42 AM »

Tom Locke, your average US Citizen decided to buy 100 stamps for $39, write a letter to 100 companies and ask for coupons, samples, and freebies.

The way I looked at it, if I took $39 and went to buy groceries, I wouldn't be able to get all that much. On the flipside, if I took $39 to a casino and lost it all, I wouldn't be all that upset. With that said, I decided I was going to try something — I was going to take my roll of stamps and send 100 letters to 100 different companies, asking for free stuff. I figured that I couldn't do any worse than blowing the $39 at a casino, and who knows... maybe a few of these places would actually send me something good.

-the39dollarexperiment.com

The $39 Experiment

For a quick review of the results, check the spoiler:

Spoiler

35 companies responded with gifts totaling about $275 -- 35% of the companies written to provided him with almost a 700% increase of his initial investment

445

Developer's Corner / Game Engines and Apps

« on: September 26, 2006, 02:57 PM »

Hi everyone. I would like to make a list of game engines as a general resource, but also to start doing (mini) reviews on them. So if you've ever used a game engine, I'd like to know what it is, where to find more information about it, and what your thoughts were about your experience with it. It should also be useful to know how advanced you are as a programmer with the language the engine required you to use. Please include the following:

• Name of engine.
• Its website or where to get it.
• Whether it is 2D or 3D (or both).
• How much it costs. Be sure to include separate pricing (if they have it) for personal/educational use and commercial use.
• A short description of it (maybe something pasted from the website). Be sure to include some of its features.
• Screenshot(s) of it or a game made with it. (Be sure to include the URL to the game's website, if possible).
• Choose to be an optimist or pessimist: List the additional features of the commercial edition or the limited features of the personal/learning editions. (The difference between educational and commercials versions, basically.)
• What programming language(s) it uses and your general skill in that language. If it uses its own language, your estimation of the learning curve would be great. Also the availability of online/free documentation/tutorials on how to learn it.
• Your experience with it, bad and good. Perhaps more detail into a description of it, if you'd like.
• Any other information you might want to share.
• Links to galleries/documentation

Even if you've never used a game engine, if you don't see it here and you know about it, please provide as much of this information as possible. If one is already listed, go ahead and quote the original post and add any information/comments you want to about it.

If you can think of more things that should be in my numbered list, let me know and I'll edit the original post to include it.

Again, the ultimate goal of this is to create a comprehensive list of engines, including their pros and cons, ease of use, learning curve, availability of support (included help files, online documentation/tutorials/forums/community), and other information.


Mentioned Engines/Apps:
(alphabetically and who mentioned them)

Adventure Game Studio (3D) reviewed by Gothi[c]
Alice 2.0 (3D) reviewed by Deozaan (Updated Sept. 27, 2006)
Allegro reviewed by Gothi[c] (2D/3D)
Blender3D reviewed by Gothi[c]
CDX (2D) reviewed by Gothi[c]
Crystal Space 3D reviewed by Gothi[c]
Game Maker (2D/3D) reviewed by Gothi[c]
Haaf's Game Engine (2D) reviewed by mouser.
Irrlicht 3D reviewed by Gothi[c] (3D Engine, does not include sound or networking)
Ogre 3D reviewed by Gothi[c] (3D Engine, does not include sound or networking)
Panda3D reviewed by Mahesh2k
Quest 3D reviewed by Gothi[c]
SDL reviewed by Gothi[c] (Primarily 2D, but supports 3D via OpenGL)
Sphere (2D) reviewed by Gothi[c]
Stencyl (Flash)
Torque 3D
Torque 2D
Unity (3D)

446

Living Room / Modern Chat vs. BBS

« on: September 25, 2006, 05:09 PM »

Found a humorous fictionalized account of two times coexisting, bringing the modern chatter into the world of the old BBS systems.

It's over a month old, but I just heard about it today:

As an ex-sysop, I wonder occasionally how a modern chatter would do on an old style BBS.

WWIV-Menu>
==SYSOP Chat Mode Activated==
Sysop: Hey, i need to take the bbs off for a minute to get fido.
User: asl?
Sysop: It'll just be down for a few minutes, call back later, ok?
User: wtf hax?
Sysop: Sorry, I don't understand what you're saying. I've got to reboot too, so I'm going to disconnect you.
User: omfg hax, wtf is tis, spiware? a55h013!
Sysop: Do you require medical assistance? I've got your address on record from the age-check, would you like me to call a medic?
User: roflroflflfoolol who r u

Read the rest of it at Slashdot.org

447

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Screen Dimmer

« on: September 25, 2006, 03:05 AM »

I was just looking through An App a Day when I found Day 10 - Jedi Concentrate. It was neat, but has some flaws. But that's beside the point.

I think it would be great to have an app that you could toggle on or off that just dimmed the entire screen no matter what app had focus. So I decided to check out Skrommel's software to find what I was looking for and I noticed that Skrommel has already made a few of these "An app a day" programs. Jedi Concentrate included, except it's called Ghoster or something like that. (By the way, it doesn't work on my second monitor.) The next best thing I found was DimSaver.

So anyway, I'd like an app that has a user-customizable amount to dim the screen. I'd use it for night time computer use to get rid of the brightness headaches. Could also be useful to dim the whiteness on monitors that flicker.

Thanks in advance!

448

Living Room / Accessibility Game: Tone Memory

« on: September 24, 2006, 02:43 PM »

I've been trying to create a simple accessibility game for the visually impaired that uses audio tones to give clues on how to solve the puzzle. Lo and behold, today I came across a memory game that uses sounds instead of pictures.

It comes in four different sized grids, increasing the difficulty: 4x3, 4x5, 6x6, and 6x6 where the tones swap places with each other if it isn't a match. Here are a few thumbails of the game in action:

Click for full size images


The main menu


I've just matched two tones so they are disappearing


I got a match!

After you've finished, it tells you how long you took, your accuracy, and other things.

Now go give Tone Memory a try on zefrank.com.

Also worth mentioning (though not specifically accessibility friendly) is zefrank's Animated Memory which has you matching animated pictures instead of just static images.

449

Developer's Corner / Microsoft's XNA Game Studio Express

« on: September 18, 2006, 02:57 PM »

So I downloaded XNA (2MB download, awesome!) then went to install it and it said I needed to download and install Visual C# Studio Express first. So I downloaded it and installed it. Then I installed XNA, which consisted in downloading another 800MB of files. So much for the 2MB download. . . While I was waiting for that to finish downloading and installing I was looking on Microsoft's page on what was required to run XNA. It said I needed to also have the Direct X 9 SDK from August 2005, which was very close to 1GB, if I recall correctly.

Hours later when I finally got everything installed and running, I opened up the tutorial included with XNA on making my first game. Followed the directions, it said to compile the program and run. Oops! Compile error. I corrected an inconsistency in variable/function naming. Compile and run. What? Another compile error? Go over the code and can't figure out what's wrong. Keep getting an error about the graphic file I'm using. Check to see what file types it supports. Gif is included. File should work. . . Wonder if perhaps the long name is causing problems. Shorten file name and compile. File not found. Oops, I forgot to update the file in the solution manager. Hmmm. . . The text box for changing the path is grayed out. Maybe it's because the compiler is still running. Close it. Nope, still greyed out. Close all open files. Still can't change it. Close VC#SE2005 and reopen. There we go, I can update it now.

Now how the heck do I open up my program I was working on? And where the heck did my Solution Manager and Toolbox go to? View -> Solution Manager. View -> Toolbox. Cool they hide on the side of the screen. I set them to autohide. Figure out how to open up my source code again. Nice, should work now. Compile and Run. Still an error. What is the problem? Go over it again and can't find anything wrong. Can't find my Toolbox or Solutions Manager anymore. Reopen them. Decide to cut and paste entire code from the example into the source code, changing only the example file name for the sprite to the actual filename on my system. That should do it! Compile and Run. WHAT? Still getting an error on that line of code that uses the sprite. Click on error message. It says "Click here for more details." I click. Read more details. Can't see how those details have anything to do with what I'm doing. Mess around with it for another 20 minutes, copying and pasting again from the tutorial, word for word, line for line, except that filename. Compile and Run. Same error. And where the heck did my Solutions Manager and Toolbox go?!! Open them again.

Frustrated, as it is the fifth time now that I've been following tutorials on programming in C or C++ or C# with Microsoft products over the past few years the tutorial source code does not compile on my system. Close XNA/VC#SE2005 in disgust and post about it here the next day.

 

450

JGPaiva's GridMove and Ahk Tools / GridMove discussion.

« on: September 12, 2006, 05:42 PM »

I keep having a hard time finding the thread for GridMove because I think it should be under JGPaiva's AHK Tools, but it's still in feature requests. So here's a link to that thread.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=3824