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Justin Johnson: CodeMonkey
Whirlygig, jQuery and Rift
2
I’m trying to start blogging regularly on Thursday. I want to continue posting progress updates on Whirlygig but I also want to share random, geeky stuff that I’ve done or seen around the web.
Whirlygig
I finished and submitted Whirlygig for WP7 on July 27th, just in time for a Hackathon contest deadline of June 30th. The background music for Whirlygig used a looping SoundInstance. Right before I submitted, while reviewing the final tech specs, I saw that you are not supposed to use a SoundInstance for game music. Fine. I quickly revised the code More >
Raining Bullets
28 months ago
by jjohnson
in Programming
Tonight I got bullets implemented in Whirlygig. You can now press the screen and the heli turns to face the place you pressed and unleashes a torrent of bullets at your finger.
This was trickier than it sounds for a number of reasons. First of all, let’s talk about organization. An Entity is a sort of base class for almost any object that exists in the game beyond a simple sprite. Many Entities will share some common attributes such as health, a visible representation (Sprite), a collision shape and more. I create an object that extends Entities called an More >
Whirlygig, TechEd and more…
08 months ago
by jjohnson
in Programming
I really, really need to post more often. It has been such a huge couple of weeks that I’m not sure where to start.
My full-time employer, Sierra Trading Post, sent me to TechEd in Atlanta. Before I worked as a developer, I ran the web marketing department for Sierra and have been to many conferences. But nothing like TechEd. The scale of the conference was mind-blowing. Ten thousand people, hundreds of booths, miles of walking, cerebellum-busting learning… it was an incredible experience.
One of the nights of the conference I went to a “Windows Phone Hackathon.” My coworker and More >
Whirlygig: Getting Close!
0Once again it has been a long time since I posted a dev blog. Especially one that had any decent video. Tonight’s blog has a lot of new stuff. Here’s a bunch of stuff that I’ve worked on:
- Got professional sound done! I worked with Marc Carlton to get sound effects done. I gave him a list of everything I needed and he got it done quickly and in budget. I expected raw audio but he actually delivered an XACT project, complete with RPCs and everything. Working with Marc was a dream and I highly recommend
Whirlygig Endgame Screen
0
Tonight I checked another, fairly-big, item off the todo list. The Endgame screen is complete with post-game stats. It needs some creative polish but the functionality is there.
Last night I got some stuff to my sound guy to get the final sound effects done. It’s an exciting step but not one that I have anything cool to write about or show yet.
It’s been a long April. I changed position at my “real job” and moved from doing mostly marketing and a little software development to doing all development. While I’m really excited More >
Whirlygig on Xbox!
0It’s 12:24am on April 11th, 2011. Whirlygig has just been ported to the Xbox360 and run [mostly] successfully. The video is long but sorta funny if you’re into watching things glitch out and do weird stuff. There are some camera and performance issues on the xbox but, for the most part, porting was REALLY smooth. Here are issues I encountered:
- Porting in FlatRedBall is insanely easy. Create a synced project and you’re pretty much done. I had a few build errors because MS moved the Color class to the base Microsoft.Xna.Framework.
- I was using the old version of XACT
Whirlygig: Completed Levels
2
Above are the three levels that will be included with Whirlygig at launch. These are exports from photoshop so the final, in-game levels will include particle emitters for things like smoke, spilling liquid and more. The red box on each one represents how much of the level fits on the screen when the camera is zoomed in all the way.
I definitely want to have parts of the levels be destroyable. However, I’m not sure if I’ll get this implemented by the deadline or not. I know how I want to do it but there More >
Whirlygig: HUD and Revision 100
0Well, it’s 12:30am and I’m finishing up a productive coding evening. It’s going to be hard to sleep because I’m excited about the stuff I got done and I’m hopped up on caffeine!
I actually wasn’t even going to post because I wanted to do a few more tweaks before rendering a video but then I realized two things:
- This is my 100th checkin to SVN. That’s postworthy!
- I probably won’t get to work on Whirly much the rest of the week. I usually don’t work on Wednesday nights, I hope to go mountain biking on Thursday and we
Whirlygig Instructions Screen
0The instructions screen is visible in this video post. Most of the other stuff I’ve done is not obvious in the dev video but I had to post one to feel like I’ve accomplished something. Stuff done:
- Minigun now overheats and won’t fire until it has cooled down. Fire in bursts FTW.
- Minigun now has a limited firing arc.
- Contrail placement problems have been fixed
- Contrail particles reduced for better performance
- Fixed bug where heli keeps moving, dropping brass after death
- Implemented new loading screen graphics
- Implemented Instructions screen
But nobody reads this so lets get to the video:
Whirlygig: Playtest Results
0Keeping with the “old soviet newspaper” theme of Whirlygig…I had the idea that levels should take place within a photo in a newspaper article. I implemented that tonight.
When I went to render video my wife was there and said: “Instead of having one heli just sit there while you shoot it why don’t we just play?” Sweet, challenge accepted!
So, we flew around and shot at each other. The really good news is that she enjoyed playing a lot! When you work on a game for a long time and playtest constantly to check new features…you lose More >