You are hereFeed aggregator / Categories / Member Feed

Member Feed

Going off the radar again

Earok.Net - Mon, 28/06/2010 - 20:55

Since the start of May I have been maintaining a monday-wednesday-friday blog post schedule. I know that's not particularly impressive in the blogosphere but I've been happy with that regardless.

However there's not much left that I want to post about and I am planning to do a rather ambitious (But possibly futile) game development project over the next month, so except for comments the blog is going silent until August.

Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

New Zealand film festival wish list

Earok.Net - Fri, 25/06/2010 - 00:00

The New Zealand film festival is again upon us, and although there is no new Neon Genesis Evangelion movie this year there are plenty of other great looking movies. Here's the ten that most interest me, with trailers where available:

1. Exit through the gift shop

Allegedly a documentary about the graffiti artist Bansky. Which reminds me, "Wall and Piece" is a great addition to any Coffee table.

2. Cyrus

A comedy with Jonah Hill and John C Riley, need I say more?

3. The Room

An hilarious inept melodrama with a dedicated cult following.

4. Birdemic: Shock and Terror

The other 'So-Bad-It's-Good' film at the festival is an amazingly low rent ripoff of The Birds. Featuring special effects that resemble 90s gif animations.

5-7. Carlos Pt1, 2 and 3

Epic drama following the life of Carlos the Jackal, one of the world's most notorious terrorists.

8. A film unfinished

Documentary examining an unfinished Nazi propaganda film.

9. Salam Rugby

Documentary about a Iranian woman's rugby team(?!).

10. Babies

Documentary about four babies. Not the kind of film I would normally be interested in, but taking Kirsty should earn me some brownie points.

Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

First impressions of a Git

Earok.Net - Tue, 22/06/2010 - 20:06

Git is an open source version control system. For non-technical people, that basically means it allows multiple users to collaborate on a software project at the same time, and have the ability to track (and revert) changes to every file.

It's already used to manage Linux kernel development (No doubt in part because Git is also a Linus Torvalds creation) and Drupal development is migrating to it from CVS.

So, I thought I might give it a shot, and see if I can use it to manage all of my future game development projects. I'm using the msysgit Windows port as well as the TortoiseGit windows shell integration, which both seem to be pretty stable. ProjectLocker is who I am using as my off-site Git host, pretty much because they offer unlimited free Git repositories as long as the total space used falls under 500mb.

The stuff I really like about it is:

  1. Every local copy of a repository is a complete repository in it's own right. That means you commit and revert version changes against your own repository without needing an internet connection.
  2. It's incredibly easy to create, merge and switch between branches of the development. For instance, you might have a 'stable' branch but work mostly in the 'unstable' branch, merging the two for each software release.
  3. All of the Git files are stored in a single hidden folder at the repository source. One thing that annoyed me endlessly about SVN was how it added hidden folders to every folder in the project.
  4. The project locker repositories are secured with a Private/Public key system. A little bit trickier to set up than a password, but virtually unbreakable when done.

So far, so good. I'll make another post when I have more to say about my experience with Git.

Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

James Bond archetypes

Earok.Net - Mon, 21/06/2010 - 00:00

A mate and I have been contemplating the idea of writing a James Bond film script for next year's ScriptFrenzy. Obviously we have no pretentions of getting it made, but it should be fun none the less.

So I have been mentally reverse-engineering the Bond format and it has occurred to me that, outside of the usual reoccuring characters of Bond, M and Moneypenny, there are six character archetypes that appear in virtually every Bond film.

On the good side:

The love interest (aka The Bond girl)

The woman who Bond falls very temporarily in love with over the course of the story. I find the strongest love interests are the ones that complement Bond's weaknesses (eg Vespa Lynd, Natalya Simonova), female Bonds (eg Jynx) are somewhat redundant and dumb ones (Mary Goodnight) are just annoying.

The ally

A non-Brit who shows up from time to time to give invaluable assistance to Bond. Quite possibly just there to avoid the impression of Britain acting unilaterally. The best example of the ally archetype is Felix Leighter.

The lamb

Someone (Normally female) who pays the ultimate price for assisting Bond in some way. This archetype exposes Bond's biggest weakness, his tragic inability to protect his loved ones.

And on the Evil side:

The villain

The mastermind of some evil plot to upset the power of the free world.

This archetype embodies some of the negative elements of Bond, typically being a well mannered, intellectual socialite and man of action who isn't afraid to use violence to get what he wants. Some have even seen Bond as a kindred spirit of sorts.

The dragon

Typically the villain's bodyguard or most trusted confidant. Usually someone that Bond either has to defeat to get to the Villian, or someone who catches Bond off guard after the evil plot has been thwarted.

There are two main variants of the dragon. The first one is the henchman, typically stronger than Bond but is defeated by Bond's superior cunning. Jaws and Oddjob are well known examples. Could also be seen as a dark parody of Bond, being a dumb brute who resolves situations through extreme force.

The other is the femme fatale. A beautiful woman who can again can be seen as a dark parody of Bond, being someone who uses seduction as a means to control people.

The accomplice

Typically a traitor whose position or skills initially make him key to the Villain's plot. It's not unusual for the accomplice to be killed off by the Villain himself once his usefulness has expired.

Of course these archetypes can overlap somewhat and don't apply to every single Bond movie, but to make my point I have done a table listing characters in each official Bond movie that I feel fit the archetypes. (Warning - potential spoilers)

Film
 The love interest
 The ally
 The lamb
 The villain
 The dragon
 The accomplice
 Dr No Honey Ryder Felix Leighter Quarrell Dr No Miss Taro Professor Dent From Russia with Love Tatiana Romanova Kerim Bey Kerim Bey Rosa Klebb Red Grant Kronsteen Goldfinger Pussy Galore Felix Leighter Masterton sisters Goldfinger Oddjob Mr Ling Thunderball Domino Felix Leighter Paula Caplan Emilio Largo Fiona Volpe Angelo Palazzi You only live twice Kissy Susuki Tiger Tanaka Aki Blofeld Hans Mr Osato On her majesty's secret service Tracy di Vicenzo Marc-Ange Draco Tracy di Vicenzo Blofeld Irma Bunt N/A Diamonds are Forever Tiffany Case Felix Leighter Plenty O'Toole Blofeld Wint and Kidd Bert Saxby Live and Let Die Solitaire Felix Leighter Rosie Carver Dr Kananga Tee-Hee Rosie Carver The Man with the Golden Gun Mary Goodnight Lieutenant Hip Andrea Anders Francisco Scaramanga Nick Nack Hai Fat The Spy who Loved Me Anya Amasova General Gogol N/A Karl Stromberg Jaws N/A Moonraker Holly Goodhead Colonel Scott Corinne Dufour Hugo Drax Jaws N/A For your eyes only Melina Havelock Milos Columbo Lisl von Schalf Aristotle Kristatos Erich Kriegler Hector Gonzales Octopussy Octopussy Vijay Vijay Kamal Khan Gobinda General Orlov A View to a Kill Stacey Sutton Sir Godfrey Tibbett May Day Max Zorin May Day Dr Mortner The Living Daylights Kara Milovy Kamran Shah Saunders Brad Whittaker Necros General Koskov Licence to Kill Pam Bouvier Q Della Churchill Franz Sanchez Dario Milton Krest Goldeneye Natalya Simonova Jack Wade Alec Trevelyan (Initially) Alec Trevelyan Xenia Onatopp General Ourumov Tomorrow Never Dies Wai Lin Jack Wade Paris Carver Elliot Carver Mr Stamper Henry Gupta The World is Not Enough Christmas Jones Valentin Zukovsky Valentin Zukovsky Renard Electra King Bullion Die Another Day Jynx Raoul General Moon Gustav Graves Zao Miranda Frost Casino Royale Vesper Lynd Felix Leighter Vesper Lynd Le Chiffre Gettler Steven Obanno Quantum of Solace Camille Montes Felix Leighter Strawberry Fields Dominic Greene Elvis General Medrano


 

Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

Rethinking my GTD system

Earok.Net - Fri, 18/06/2010 - 00:00

Getting Things Done has been an interest of mine for some time now, but creating a GTD system I am comfortable with has been a real struggle.

Up until recently I was using ThinkingRock as the core of my GTD system. The problem I had with it was, despite being (or perhaps because of being) an amazingly thorough implementation of GTD, it became unmanageable for me when my list of tasks grew too long.

So I decided to go back to basics and come up with a new simplified strategy. The core of my new system (Powered by Remember the Milk so I can view or add to it from Web or Windows Mobile) has only four lists:

  1. Action
  2. Next Day
  3. Next Week
  4. Next Month

The Action list contains tasks that I am willing and able to work on immediately. For tasks that have sub-tasks (Projects) I use RTM's note functionality to keep track of these.

The other three lists contain tasks that I can't (Or just don't want to!) do now but have committed to reviewing them the next day/week/month. On a review I just look at each item on the list and decide if I want to promote it (move it up the chain), demote it, leave it there or delete it.

And.. that's it. Any suggestions?

Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

Goldeneye 007 on Wii

Earok.Net - Wed, 16/06/2010 - 00:00

The E3 trailer for Activision's Goldeneye 007 has been leaked to the Internet and can be watched at Nintendo Everything.

Having spent probably well over one hundred hours playing the original Goldeneye (Including marathon multiplayer sessions and getting every unlockable - twice!) I have a strong connection to it and have been craving a re-release. However I am skeptical, as I suspect most are, that this reimagining is anything but a shameless, mediocre money grab.

There are a few questions floating around in my head about the game, which are.

  1. Activision clearly have the right to make a game based on any Bond film, including Goldeneye. However it's interesting to note that the scene depicted at the start of the gameplay section of the trailer came from the N64 game and was not present in the film. Shouldn't this be a copyright infringement? If not, then why not?
  2. Why was the Wii picked as the exclusive platform? (For that matter, why exclusive at all?) Because the original Goldeneye was released exclusively on a Nintendo platform, or does Nintendo have some control of the IP of the original game?
  3. Is the guy in a beanie supposed to be Trevelyan?
  4. How will the fact that the game is set in the Daniel Craig continuity affect the storyline? Will Quantum play a role?
  5. Will the original developers receive credit or royalities from this game? Haha, okay that was a dumb question.
Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

Why are video game movies so awful?

Earok.Net - Mon, 14/06/2010 - 11:12

To mark the release of the Prince of Persia movie, film ranking site Rotten Tomatoes has posted a feature listing practically every movie based on a video game that ever made it into theaters.

Curiously, all 29 entries were rotten, none of them even reached 50% popularity. Mathematically, that's astounding. Think about it this way: Say we conservatively estimate that only 1 in 5 movies on the site are fresh. If we picked 29 movies from the site purely at random, there would be about a 1 in 646 chance that every one of them would be rotten.

So why are video game movies routinely bad? I have a few general ideas, such as:

  • Too few video game fans are also exceptional film makers. Paul Anderson and Uwe Boll seem to be the only film makers with enough passion for the medium to try and adapt more than one.
  • The video game medium may not be mature enough yet. Compare with say, 'Super hero' comic books. The Superman story was born from the great depression, yet it wasn't until the late 70s that a well received film adaption was made.
  • For reasons I can't understand, film makers tinker with the parts of the story that the game developers got right. Compare the game and film of Max Payne. The game started with the tragic inciting incident that defined who the character was and why he did what he did. The film moved that scene almost to the very end and changed it to a flashback, making it hard to sympathise with a character who acted like a jerk but appeared to have no good reason for doing so.
  • The lowest common denominator. Films are made based on popular games with virtually zero story (eg Super Mario Bros) because of financial interest. Yet perhaps the lack of a deep story is why these games are popular across a broad range of demographics.

But I think the crux of the problem is that most video games have a lack of an interesting protagonist.

You can't tell a good story without good characters. Quentin Tarantino movies are great, but the bulk of the story is really interesting characters just talking to each other. Take a bunch of bland characters and try to make a story by putting them in explosive situations, and you get the Star Wars prequels.

The reason why I think video game protagonists are generally uninteresting is a lack of flaws. It's a common story format to have the character pay for his flaws at the end of the second act, but redeem himself by the end of the third act (Recent examples include Iron Man 2, Quantum of Solace, Avatar, anything with Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler). Perhaps it is cliche, but the structure works well. Wing Commander 2 also has this story format, but you have no control over what the protagonist does between missions anyway.

The protagonists of most games are Mary-Sue types with no character flaws (In this context, I define 'flaw' as something that the character has to change about themself to be happy). The demon-crushing space marine, the ass-kicking physicist, the pointy-eared adventurer, the overweight Italian-American plumber, the voluptuous archaeologist and so on. It is dramatic when the hero of a story mends his corrupt ways. But how exactly do you make a player change his behavior in a game for the purpose of drama?

An unflawed protagonist allows us to project our egos into a game but they are too perfect to build drama or relate to them as a character in a story. I believe this conflict of interest is the primary hurdle a decent video game adaption needs to overcome.

Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

The Kiwi's Tale PC World Scan

Earok.Net - Fri, 11/06/2010 - 17:42

Yet another vanity post. Here is a scan of the Kiwi's Tale review in NZ PC World.

Thanks again to Harley Ogier and New Zealand PC World for allowing me to post this free of charge.

Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

Update on Attack of the Meeplings for iPhone

Tiny Frog Software - Wed, 09/06/2010 - 20:40

Last time I made a blog entry I posted that I wanted to have AOTM for iPhone done by March 31st – Well that was a little over two months ago so that deadline flew by.

It *is* coming – It’s taken a bit longer than I had hoped. I really can’t get used to OSX and Xcode – Although Objective-C has been getting easier for me and it’s a nice little language, if only Xcode was more like Visual Studio with it’s great intellisense support.

The biggest issue I have found with iPhone game programming is the MASSIVE difference in performance between the iPhone simulator and the actual device – The simulator is actually just an x86 version running on your Mac within a nice looking iPhone chrome. But the actual device is alot less powerfull than a full desktop PC. Don’t get me wrong it’s still pretty powerful – So long as you program it the way it is intended to be programmed. Desktop PCs are so powerful that we often do things in an inefficent way because, well hey – It runs fine on most modern computers. On a mobile device you have to actually start thinking about performance – Which I actually kind of enjoy, unfortunately alot of my time is spent on getting the game to perform well and less on putting the actual game togeather.

But like I said, it is coming along – There is one fully playable level (on normal difficulty with a boss) and I’ve got a couple of in-game menu screens, I’ve shown it to a few people and the reception so far has been pretty positive.

Should I make another guess as to when it’s going to be done? Ok, how about in another three months time? August 31st perhaps?

Categories: Member Feed

The difference between Twitter & FaceBook

Earok.Net - Wed, 09/06/2010 - 00:00

Twitter & FaceBook

Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

Wing Commander II Retrospective

Earok.Net - Mon, 07/06/2010 - 00:13

I had planned to be productive this weekend. I was going to do my blog posts for the week, tidy everything up, sort the bills, reply to outstanding emails, do some more XNA tutorials etc.

Yet, for some reason I felt compelled to play Wing Commander II. I had it on an old Creative Labs OEM CD and thanks to the magic of DosBox I was able to play it again for the first time in perhaps a decade or more.

(Incidentally, I found out that the D-Fend Reloaded utility is the best way to play games through DosBox. Not only does it include DosBox in the install, but has profiles for automatically configuring 1000s of games).

So, long story short, Wing Commander II ate my weekend (Fortunately Monday is a public holiday!). I was hooked until about an hour ago, when I finally managed to play the game through start to finish. I was really surprised that such an old game held my attention for longer than any modern titles in recent memory.

Just so that the experience wasn't a complete waste of time, I thought I might share my thoughts on the game.

  • Old games really can be just as immersive as newer ones, even if the poorer graphics and sound makes it harder to suspend disbelief.
  • The missions of the game are relatively short (On average less than five minutes playtime) yet some of them are still very difficult. The result of this is an addictive 'one more try' hook.
  • Even if you fail badly on some missions, the story still continues  (Although the player is punished with harder difficulty and a sadder plot). In my opinion, this is a good thing, it's unfortunate that many games will simply not let you continue if you fail an objective.
  • It's a perfect example of the 'less is more' concept. There are only a handful of playable spacecraft in the game, but the small number means that each has a unique purpose and gameplay style. This is also true for weapons and enemy spacecraft.
  • Although the story had some silly parts, overall it was pretty well told. Every scene kept me interested in learning what was going to happen next, and there wasn't a bland character to be found.
  • A major plotline in the game involves the characters attempting to discover which one of their comrades is a murderer. I thought it was really amusing that they named the victim 'McGuffin' since he had absolutely zero relevance to the story otherwise.
  • Since it gave me the ability to name the player character after myself, did that mean I was playing it from a second person perspective?
Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

General Discussion, June 2010

Earok.Net - Fri, 04/06/2010 - 16:14

Time once again for a general discussion about anything.

Suggested starter topic: If you were me, what game project would you be working on now?

Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

Simplified acceleration in games

Earok.Net - Wed, 02/06/2010 - 00:00

In some genres of games (Such as FPS, Platformer etc) the player's character usually has an acceleration to it's movements. I assume that for the vast majority of games this acceleration is arbitrary, and not actually based on real world physics as this would be cumbersome and artificial.

Somewhere I stumbled upon a Blitz3D sample that I believe might be the best example of a simplified acceleration formula. In pseudo-code it might be rendered as:   Speed += ((MoveDirection * MaximumSpeed) - Speed) * AccelerationFactor   Where:
  • Speed is the current speed the entity is travelling at on the current axis.
  • MoveDirection is the direction the entity is trying to travel in on the current axis, 1 is forward, 0 is still and -1 is backwards. All values in between are allowed.
  • MaximumSpeed is a constant determining the fastest that the entity can travel on the current axis.
  • AccelerationFactor is a constant between 0 and 1 that represents the rate of acceleration and deceleration. 1 is instant, and 0 will never move.
The beauty of it is that it works equally well for travelling forwards and backwards, and acceleration is curved rather than linear. That said, it's still not perfect, for instance you can't define a specific acceleration rate.   Any suggestions for improvement would be gratefully appreciated. Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

The Kiwi's Tale in New Zealand PC World

Earok.Net - Mon, 31/05/2010 - 00:00

New Zealand PC World has begun running a 'Indie game spotlight' feature, with the intention to showcase the best indie (Preferably local and freeware) games on offer.

The first game that they picked was The Kiwi's Tale, which appears on the June 2010 Coverdisk. They had this to say about the game:

"This charming 2D playformer is packed with retro style, and thanks to a (sometimes maddeningly) high difficulty level, can provide several hours of entertainment."

I'm stoked to see another one of my games grace the pages of PC World, and this is certainly a good omen for the future. I certainly need to pick up the pace if I ever want to make it as a successful indie though.

Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

WitchBlaster PC World extended DVD review

Earok.Net - Fri, 28/05/2010 - 08:19

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?) I don't have any terrible unfinished games for release this week, my main project for the week was to port WitchBlaster to XNA and see if I can get it running in a browser via SilverSprite. It's about 80% of the way there.

Anyway, PC World reviews editor Harley Ogier generously gave permission to post the entire extended review that appeared only on the April 2010 coverdisc. Here it is here.

 

PC World's DVD-Exclusive Review

I grew up playing platform games and side–scrollers, shareware titles I picked up from friends on floppy disk. In those days, shareware games were generally a respectable length: far better than the half-hour demos of today (that often take half a day to download).

Witch Blaster reminds me of those days: though it consists of only four levels, I’ve already spent two or three hours flying around on a broomstick. My side–scroller skills aren’t what they used to be, and the game provides a considerable challenge.

Were Witch Blaster a full–length title, I’d criticise the difficulty level as being too high. However, the difficulty stretches out the game’s four levels by preventing you from sailing right through on your first attempt. If you’re incredibly skilled and finished the game in four minutes flat, I expect you’re an exception to the rule.

The enemies are varied and challenging, from swarms of bees to snakes with jetpacks. Jetpacks. The power–ups are worth attaining, turning your basic Fireball attack into an unstoppable 180–degree barrage of flame. There’s an element of strategy involved, as it’s easy to lose your power–ups: sometimes it’s better to cloak yourself and avoid further conflict once you’ve fully upgraded your fireballs, as they can be invaluable in the level–end boss fights. However, stop taking out enemies too early and your score is sure to suffer.

The graphics have a pixelated charm, and would look completely at home on a 386. Witch Blaster has a very professional, polished feel. While it looks antiquated, it really does look like something that you would find on an old floppy disk stuck down the back of a drawer.

If it were a shareware game, Witch Blaster would be impressive. As a game put together in 48–hours, it’s even more so. If you play one game from the PC World DVD this month, it should be this one.

— Harley Ogier

BETTER THAN: 8MB RAM
WORSE THAN: The ATI Radeon
A retro classic with a good layer of polish.

 


8.5

Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

Achieving Inbox Zero on Gmail

Earok.Net - Wed, 26/05/2010 - 00:00

The 'Inbox Zero' theory is part of the GTD task management framework (Which I have been dabbling in for the past few years).

An email inbox is effectively a collection of tasks allocated to you by other people. The tasks can generally be divided into three categories.

  1. The ones you don't need to action (eg Junk mail, newsletters)
  2. The ones you do need to action (eg Emails from friends, clients)
  3. The ones you need to archive for future reference (eg Receipts)

However, leaving all of the kinds of tasks jumbled together in the inbox, which most people do, is bad management. It's akin to leaving all of your mail piling up on the table after reading it. Each email in your inbox unnecessarily draws your attention as you know you might have to do something with it, but haven't committed to anything, and the unimportant items obscure the important ones.

Fortunately, Gmail offers some great tools for achieving Inbox Zero. This is how I manage it.

First off, go to the Google Labs section and enable the 'Send and Archive' button.

Now, process your mailbox. This should ideally be done at least once a day:
 

  1. Read the first item in your inbox.
  2. Do you really need to do anything with it? If not, delete it immediately.
  3. If you want to keep it for future reference and like using labels, label it now.
  4. If the email requires an action and you have time, do so and then click Archive (Or 'Send and Archive' if you reply).
  5. If you don't have time to do what the email requires, "Star" the email, and then click Archive.
  6. Repeat until your inbox is empty.

All done. You now have a freshly cleaned, good-as-new inbox again. The starred folder has now become a list of actions that you have committed to doing, so make sure you return to there when you have time to deal with them.

There is also an added bonus for having an empty inbox: Gmail conveniently provides a link to Google Reader in the empty space.

Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

WitchBlaster PC World scan

Earok.Net - Mon, 24/05/2010 - 00:00

Here it is, the editor's choice winning review of Witch Blaster from New Zealand PC World, April 2010. Special thanks goes to the editors at PC World for allowing me to publish this free of charge.

Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

Garbage Collection 3: Traffic Department 2192 remake

Earok.Net - Fri, 21/05/2010 - 00:00

Time for the third game in the Garbage Collection, my aborted attempt to remake the shareware classic Traffic Department 2192.

Overview

First off, if you haven't already played the original through, don't download my remake. Instead go and download the original game at Classic Dos Games and run it through DosBox. The author has generously re-released the game under a Creative Commons license so it's all legit.

The original TD:2192 is a shoot-em-up that was released in the early 90s. Quite unusual for a game of that genre, it's main feature is a richly plotted Sci-Fi tale of revenge and redemption. While the core gameplay is mostly unchallenging, the storyline has kept me hooked from start to end through multiple replays.

The intention of myself and my collaborator Michael Haythorpe was to update the game for a modern audience, overhauling the gameplay and graphics, introducing voice acting but keeping the original story completely intact. Although we made some good progress (Such as bringing all of the graphics and cities across from the original data files) unfortunately for various reasons the project ran out of steam and ground to a halt.

The first five missions are in this release, and the first mission even has complete voice acting for Vel, Carl and Satair (Unfortunately I don't know who the voice actors are so I can't give credit! Sorry!). The gameplay sections are playable but throughly unfinished. If you are a hardcore fan of the original game then you might find this to be an interesting peek at what could have been.

Instructions

Move and turn: Cursor keys
Ctrl: Shoot

Download

The game can be downloaded from the Garbage Collection page or here.

Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

CeltX review

Earok.Net - Wed, 19/05/2010 - 00:00

CeltX

CeltX is a brilliant application that I used to write my ScriptFrenzy entry, and I strongly suspect it was used by most other ScriptFrenzy winners too.

Far more than just a simple text editor, CeltX is specifically designed for producing scripts for Film, Television, Plays, Radio, Comic Books and more. Since it has built in script formatting, with a single keystroke you can switch between writing action, dialogue, scene headings, character names, shot directions etc.

CeltX creates a 'Project' file for your work, that contains not only your Scripts but character and prop catalogues, shooting schedules, story boards and so on. There's even a commercial service to allow for real-time script collaboration over the Internet. Although the huge number of options can be daunting, there are a few sample project files that help explain things.

CeltX is free and open source (albeit with commercial plug-ins) and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It can be downloaded from the official website at http://celtx.com/

Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

Random Dungeons

Earok.Net - Mon, 17/05/2010 - 00:00

A couple of years back Joshua Smyth created a blog post explaining the algorithms he used to generate the randomised levels of his browser RPG Caverns of Underkeep.

Special thanks goes to Josh for not only allowing me to repost it here, but for updating the article with new screenshots.

Random Dungeons

I’ve been working on algorithms for randomly generating dungeons.

My project Caverns of Underkeep is a Roguelike, and one of the features of all roguelikes is that they have randomly generated dungeons. there are two flavors of random dungeon generation in Caverns of Underkeep and I’ll explain how they work in this article – Surprisingly the simplest algorithms can often produce the best results.

Here is a screenshot from a typical Cave map

cou_cave

The way this type of dungeon is generated is as follows:

  • Start with a completely unwalkable surface, then draw some randomly sized circles in random places – These circles are going to be water areas.
  • Perform a couple of random walks from the centre of the map, if we fall off the side of the map stop walking.
  • Locate tiles that are dead ends. (Any tile that has only one walkable tile as a neighbour) At these dead ends place a circular style room. Use a basic turbulence* algorithm to alter the shape of the room.
  • Locate a few other tiles that are part of a corridor – And not part of a room (To do this just work out how many unwalkable tiles are in the area immediately surrounding the tile you selected – If the number is greater than 2, then the tile must be part of a room and not part of a corridor) and randomly place some more circular rooms at these locations.

*A basic turbulence algorithm for drawing a shape is if say – You are going to draw a rectangle, then draw it as normal but determine randomly if you are going to draw N more rectangles with slight x and y offsets to give a more interesting shape to your rooms. See the image below for an example.

turbulence

The second type of map is a Citadel – A typical screenshot is bellow.

cou_castle

This algorithm is pretty much the exact opposite of the one above.

  • Instead of starting with some random walks, I divide the map into 10×10 sections. Doing this gives it that more deliberate man made look to it.
  • Determine if I want to place a room here – If I do, note it’s location in a big list of rooms.
  • Draw a random rectangular room (with turbulence)
  • Once all the rooms have been drawn, consult my list of rooms. For each room draw a corridor between that room and the nearest room. Once a corridor has been drawn from a room, remove it from the list of candidates for nearest neighbour (otherwise we could get stuck in an infinite loop)

Both algorithms are guaranteed to be completely connected – Which is a really important thing to have in a roguelike. There’s nothing worse than not being able to complete the game because of the random generator – Bad computer, no biscuit!

In Caverns of Underkeep I also take a hybrid approach to generate the sewer levels. Basically I combine the two algorithms to produce another style of dungeon – See if you can work this one out for yourself

cou_sewer

Related posts

Categories: Member Feed

Next Meeting

  • No upcoming events available
Add to iCalendar
more

AGW Members and Friends