New video!

Just got done with another video and will be posting it tomorrow.  I got a very basic level layout done in Blender and imported it to Shiva.  I will tweak it with some twists and turns in the next video.  I also played with setting up another level in Shiva, so I will do a video for that soon as well.

Been a while!

So I meant to do some posts and videos a while back but it didn't quite work out.  The software that enables you to run Android apps on the Blackberry Playbook came out and I wanted to see if I could get the game running on the Playbook.  That is when I found out that there are some issues with the current version of the Authoring Tool when it comes to publishing Android apps.  I tried for several days before posting to the ShiVa forum (I'm stubborn!).  They told me that the beta version works and that the full version would be released very soon.  Of course if you are a paying customer you get access to the beta version, but alas, I am not a paying customer yet.  Long story short, I was waiting on that and it still hasn't materialized.  What I am going to do instead is do a video on getting Android apps working on the Playbook in preparation for when I will get the Authoring Tool that will work.  Oh, and my computer crashed, so I am still recovering from that =)  In fact I am installing ShiVa as I write this.

Yay! Major milestone - basic mechanics finished!

It feels good to have a big portion of the game done.  That selector was the biggest pain and probably why I did it near the end.  The basic mechanics are done.  Now we need to spend some time playing the game.  There are other things I want to add, but for now, you can launch the ball, bounce it off stuff and make it to the goal.  I feel pretty good about that!

Finally finished the selector!

I have to admit, this little problem kicked my butt for a while, mostly because ShiVa was not behaving the way I expected.  Here is how I got it all working and the end result.

Trig lesson

If you are like me, it has been a long time since you learned this in school.  Here is a refresher so that you are ready for the next video.  It's pretty much the basis for all the changes I made on this iteration.

Eureka!

I've finally figured it out!  You'll have to watch the videos to see what I figured out, but it took me all week to get this working the way I wanted--granted I only have time to work on this for an hour or two each night.  The videos will include a trig lesson as background to how I had to implement the code the way I did.  I'll also show you a bug I found in ShiVa, or if it isn't a bug, it's at least something that isn't implemented correctly.  So check back sometime tonight for the update!

Yes, there should be another video soon =)

Getting the object selector/control piece working is taking a lot more effort than I originally anticipated.  Maybe I am just going about it in the wrong way--I don't know.  However, there is light at the end of the tunnel and so I am hopeful that I will be able to put something up soon even if I have to put that on hold and tackle something easier.

Adding the object selector tool to the HUD

In this video I finally import the HUD element that we created a week or so ago.  Originally I ran into some issues with the imported image looking pretty bad.  It turns out that when you import textures they resize to a multiple of 64, i.e. 64x64, 128x128, etc.  For a small image with a lot of subtle alpha settings to blend the edges, the resizing can really screw it up.  Once I resized it in Gimp to be 128x128, it looked much better.  So from now on, we will be making our texture sizes multiples of 64.

Real-time development

I read this great article on Develop-Online. You guys have probably figured out that I am a HUGE fan of iterative development.  What really drove the concept home for me is the fact that I have been working on a Blackberry app for work and I am doing it in Java.  The problem with Java development on the Blackberry is that you run your code in simulators that take forever to startup and load the app.  There are ways to reduce this time, but when compared with Blackberry Webworks development, it is a huge time waster.  In Webworks, there is a browser based simulator named Ripple that allows you to redeploy an app by simply hitting the refresh button in the browser.  ShiVa functions along the same lines because you can run the game in the IDE on-the-fly.  You don't have long compile times or a long wait while the simulator loads.  More than anything else, that has been the single most important feature in ShiVa and makes development so much easier.

Using Gimp to create a HUD element

I am definitely no expert in Gimp, so please keep the laughing to a minimum!  Since I am not an artist, I really appreciate the way programs like Gimp can make it easy to apply 3D effects like emboss.  In this video I create a basic image that I'm going to import as a texture and then put in the HUD of the game.  This will be the control to handle the rotation of movable objects.

Some great feedback!

So an important part of iterative development is to get good feedback during testing and then incorporate it into new iterations so that, over time, the game continues to improve.  This video discusses some of the feedback I have recently received and where you can go to leave feedback.  Although I have not implemented all the feedback yet, I will make sure that I call attention to changes that are the result of feedback when I do the videos.

Beam me up, Scotty! Adding a teleporter to the game.

I think it turned out pretty good!  I still need to change some of the mechanics like moving the camera with the ball so that there isn't such a jarring change in the view.  Kronos gave me some great feedback in the forums and mentioned the way the poly trail pauses, so I will be fixing that as well.  I encourage everyone to read his feedback because it brings up a lot of good points and demonstrates how critical it is to get the input of people outside the project. Thanks for the excellent feedback, Kronos!

Bug fix and AI re-design

Sorry its been about a week since my last post.  Here is a video documenting the fix for a bug that I accidentally introduced to the game.  Basically by adding a ceiling that is a collider, the game could no longer find objects that you click on to move them.  I fixed it by moving the ceiling in edit mode.  I also moved some code around to segregate AI functionality a bit more.

Flame on!

 

Video showing what happens when the ball gets too close to the fire.  I also include a switch to turn the flame off.

Fire and smoke - Particle effects in ShiVa3D

 

Finally something flashy!  It is pretty easy to implement a particle effect in ShiVa3D, but you will want to spend some time tweaking the settings to get exact look you want.  I still don't feel that I got the fire exactly right, but I feel good about the smoke.  At first I didn't like that some of the fire particles lifted off the main body of the fire because it didn't look very realistic, but when I added the smoke, the fire particles now look like the light of the fire reflecting off the smoke.  I think it looks pretty cool.  Next I will add some sensors so that the ball catches on fire when it goes through, which will be very cool if it works out right!

Emulating a trampoline in ShiVa3D

 

Not going to write much on this one because I am at work =)  Watch the video and see how to implement a trampoline like object.

ShiVa 3D - Adding a poly trail to the ball via a helper object.

 

Here we are adding poly trails in ShiVa3D so that we can see where the ball has gone.  I was finding it difficult to position objects in the level when I couldn't remember exactly where the ball had traveled.  This makes it easier because we can see the path of the ball by using poly trails.  I love how easy they are to set up and they just work. I also add a helper object to make the trail work right.

I changed my github setup

I realized that within a ShiVa project there is a scripts folder that has the raw Lua files.  I setup that folder as my github folder and so now I am syncing directly from there.  As a result, my github files are now divided up by functions/event handlers.  Just an FYI in case you get confused when you go there.

Fixing a small issue with the object move

 

Ok, I guess I am a perfectionist in some ways, but the initial jump that an object would take when you first start moving it was really annoying me.  It is not a huge change to the code, but the concept can be a bit muddy if you don't have a clear picture of what's going on.  So if anyone needs clarification, let me know.

Code cleanup and github repository video

 

 We already talked about this stuff on the blog, but I also put up a YouTube video demonstrating some of the code changes I made and what the github repo looks like.