Personal Blog

10,000 – 50,000 downloads.

I’m well aware the game isn’t that great. I am confident though, that it offers the best “ball interaction” on the market (at the time of release anyway).
As long as some people enjoyed it, that’s good enough for me.

Having been sorely disappointed with the amount (and quality) of games on the original Wii; forgive me from approaching the Wii-U with a degree of scepticism.

I don’t think the Nintendo presentation was particularly strong; and I think there are some key problems with the platform.

1) They spent so little time talking about the actual console.
Yes new controller. There have already been QUITE A FEW new controllers for the Wii. Many people haven’t realised that you need a new console to go with that new controller. They didn’t really show it off. They didn’t really show any of its capabilities, UI, networking facilities. These are things I would consider quite important, if they’re trying to hit that “U” crowd now.

2) The PS Vita & PS3 can offer the same functionality
Whilst the screen on the Vita isn’t as big, it has all the controls the WiiU controller offers (and a couple more). So, I don’t see reason why the same functionality can be offered with Sony’s consoles. This is actually a good thing (and a bad thing) for the WiiU. I would wager that any developer making a game for the WiiU will port the experience to the PS3-Vita platform. Whilst this gives developers more incentive to actually use the functionality, they are also being faced with some fierce competition (given the PS3′s install base…and the Wii-U’s expected price point).

3) How many non-Nintendo Games will really bother with this?
I’m assuming some will offer some compatibility, but the best implementations will almost certainly be Nintendo’s. If Nintendo are going for the multi-platform releases, it might be tricky to get any nice designs, other than sticking the MAP or weapon select options on the screen. This really ties in with the same problem that the 3DS is having. I wasn’t a Nintendo child, and got into video games quite late. Thus Mario, Zelda and Metroid have no nostalgic value to me. The Mario and Zelda games I’ve played have been “okay”. The hub world and interface of Mario Galaxy wasn’t very good, and the lack of the story made the only “experience” the gameplay. This is fine whilst the game is fun, when it’s a little more tedious it’s hard to justify playing.

I hope the WiiU offers up opportunities for new fun experiences; I really do. The idea of watching Nintendo milk its franchises for another console generation doesn’t fill me with much excitement.

I’m both impressed and dismayed by the large amount of work going into the Kinect at the moment.

Impressed because it seems nearly every subject has a representative application for the device.
Dismayed because most of them are rubbish (read: not using the Kinect to it’s full potential).

Using the point cloud data to make things in Minecraft? Fun, but ultimately trivial.
Using the skeletal approximation as some kind of analogue gesturing device. Neat…but is it really any better than using a Wii remote’s gyros for your waggling? (Something that was all the rage 1-2 years ago).
Using all of the above but resulting in things that don’t really require 3D. Wow all these EyeToy-esque games are great. If only we hadn’t had them over 7 years ago.

Maybe we’ll start seeing some more interesting stuff soon (there’s certainly a tonne of possibilities). Just please, let the waggling stop.

Question, how far up the side of a martini glass constitutes half the volume?

We can model the glass as a cone.
Volume of a cone:

If we add a term “” to denote the change.
The height affects the radius (r) linearly (similar triangles).
So and .

To find effect of halving the volume on the height:

Thus:

so:

So (if my maths is correct) you need to fill the glass to approximately 0.79 of the way up the side of the glass for half the volume.

..and who said maths wasn’t useful.

Whilst working on one of my projects this year for uni I was looking for some code to draw a cylinder between two points (using OpenGL). There were a couple of solutions out there, but they weren’t that great.

I couldn’t that worked reliably, without lots of different if statements trying to catch different cases. Anyway, after a bit of thought I knocked this one out (it’s actually a lot simpler than you think…which is probably why people haven’t bothered to post it).

Anyway…enjoy some pseudo code:

Vector3D a, b; (the two points you want to draw between)

// This is the default direction for the cylinders to face in OpenGL
Vector3D z = Vector3D(0,0,1);        
// Get diff between two points you want cylinder along
Vector3D p = (a - b);                              
// Get CROSS product (the axis of rotation)
Vector3D t = CROSS_PRODUCT (z , p); 

// Get angle. LENGTH is magnitude of the vector
double angle = 180 / PI * acos ((DOT_PRODUCT(z, p) / p.LENGTH());

glTranslated(b.x,b.y,b.z);
glRotated(angle,t.x,t.y,t.z);

gluQuadricOrientation(YourQuadric,GLU_OUTSIDE);
gluCylinder(YourQuadric, RADIUS, RADIUS, p.LENGTH(), SEGS1, SEGS2);

Hope that helps someone out there.

I swear, if God hadn’t invented cakes, someone would be dead by now.
….and I’m all out of cakes.

Had no time to work on the game recently. Which makes me sad; as I was really enjoying it.

Designing difficult levels is…well…difficult.

Giving the illusion of choice (making it harder to pick the correct decision) without making the choice actually viable is a definite skill.

At the moment it’s taking me about 1 hour to produce 4/5 difficulty levels. I’m almost tempted to create a tool that will generate them for me. I prefer the hand sculpted approach because it’s more entertaining for me (creativity rather than algorithms), and generates more interesting levels (hopefully).

I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it soon, but creating an awkward level that has a really simple solution is very irritating.

Just spent £1.79 on resources for the next game. That’s two sales! Let’s hope I can get that many.

I now have the final name as well. No more terrible, terrible project name! Let the branding begin!!

It’s been a bit quiet here recently as it pertains to the latest Android development news. Well…major milestone!!

The whole of the game engine is now in place. What’s left to do? Well, luckily. Nothing too complicated, so it should be plain sailing from here. I can foresee a litle bit of arguing with the Android libraries, but on the whole, nothing too taxing.

In actuality, the biggest job right now is the assets: levels, art, sound. The future development is going to go something like:

Levels – Implement rest of level system, and a chunk of levels.

Art & Sound – Get some release candidate artwork implemented into the game.

Testing – Make sure things make sense, that the tutorials are okay and that the UI makes sense. Various sanity checks.

More Levels – Add more levels to the game

Pollish – Finalise art, sound and UI, Finish up all code

Testing – Final checks to make sure it’s absolutely fine to release.

Develop demo

RELEASE

To be honest I have no idea which of those is going to take the most time. I’m hoping for a November release; but we’ll just have to see. :/

Been away doing a management course recently. Whilst a lot of what we learnt was just common sense. They really highlighted the importance of planning everything.

This has been something that I have made fun of before, using more of a gun-ho attitude for my own work. But sometimes, it’s useful to just take a step back, and work out exactly what it is you’re trying to do, what needs to be done first, and what the most important things are; especially when working in a team.

I’m not sure how I’ll bring this attitude into my work, considering I’ve been working without a plan, and implementing one now might be a bit of a trite exercise…

Starting with the next project tho, I aim to be a lot more organised, or rather….structured.