DEV Community: SethRAH

Game Side Project 2 - Just go with a framework

SethRAH — Sat, 08 Apr 2017 15:47:12 +0000

So in my last game related post, I mentioned that I was trying to make a base game template for C++ so that I could just jump in and try prototyping games without having to do any of the nitty gritty setup.

I thought I made good progress on that. My first goal was just to make a splash screen that goes to a menu screen that can either go to another state screen or exit the game. I believe I had everything I needed coded out except I still needed to actually render the screens.

I started trying to find resources on what are some good graphics libraries and that ended up opening a whole can or worms (libraries that are out of date, libraries that have little to no documentation, libraries that require you to run python to compile before compiling with your C++ compiler, etc). I ended being stagnant and not writing anything while I just took little steps into investigating what was the best library to use.

I then got the idea to just look up what some of my favorite recent indie games used (my by far favorite being Stardew Valley. It turns out it uses XNA on C#! While I love going back and reminicing on C++, C# is my bread winner (I use it in my desk job) and a perk of my job is I get access to a lot of Microsoft products for personal use so I figured I'd look into this whole XNA thing Aaaaaaaand

... According to an email sent on 31 January 2013, XNA is no longer actively developped

Well wait, just because its not actively developed, that doesn't mean its no longer included as project templates in Visual Studios anymore, right? Loads up VS 2017 ... Goes to game section ... finds Unity... cocos.... No XNA...

Hmmm... Lets read on in the XNA wikipedia page

Alternative implementations ... A project called Mono.XNA was formed to port XNA to the open source and cross platform Mono framework. From the code base of Mono.XNA and SilverSprite, a new project called MonoGame was formed to port XNA to several mobile devices.... support is stable for iOS, Android, Mac OSX, Linux, Metro for Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows Phone 8, Playstation Mobile, and Raspberry Pi

Investigation into MonoGame reveals that Bastion was made on it (another recent favorite) so I figured I'd look into their site. It turns out that there is a pluralsight course on MonoGame (which I get free with my MSDN subscription that I get from work) so I started going through that. The course link is here if anyone has a pluralsight account and wants to look into it. The course goes through making a clone of Pong. I'm mostly through it now and will post when I finished. I probably won't post the source code (just because I'm not sure what kind of licensing applies from following the course).

I think I will probably make clones of other smaller games (mine sweeper maybe) and post the source for that until I get a good handle of what I'm doing. At that point, I'll probably start a real project myself.

Javascript Poem

SethRAH — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 13:00:17 +0000

Recently, I've read through "If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript" by Angus Croll. The book has five "Programming Assignments" and then the solutions that various notable authors would have came up with if they wrote java script.

The authors range from Earnest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf to David Foster Wallace and Tupac Shakur. The book also does a good job of giving a summary of the author before their submission and then an explanation afterwards of why the submission follows their style of writing.

One of the coolest things was how the solutions played with form to imbue their character into the solution. While maybe not always the best for maintainability/readibility, there was definitely something in these code poems that I thought was missing from my every day coding, so I took one of the assignments from the book and made my own response. I'm not super proud of the end (I think I have more comments than actual code) response but it was fun to do.

Assignment

Write a chainable function that accepts one word per function call but, when called without arguments, will report back all the previously passed words in order

In the below poem, the recall function will achieve the assignment results and can be called like recall('hello')('world')(); which will print hello world

words=/*Are but for recollection but what does that entail*/[];

/*To*/recall=/*just a */function/*of the*/(word){
  /*but how does one*/return word ?
  /*Simply by*/retain/*ing*/(word/*s*/)
  :/*then*/regurgitate(/*ing*/);
}

/*To*/retain=/*a*/function/*of*/(word){/*whence*/words.push(word);
  /*Towards words worthy to*/return/*and*/recall;}

/*To*/regurgitate=/*a*/function/*of*/(word){
  /*where*/recollection=/*of*/words.join(/*ed*/' ');/*are summoned forth*/
  words=[/*to be spent*/];
  return/*the*/recollection/*for substance went*/;
}

First Real Post - Game Side Project

SethRAH — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 12:50:58 +0000

So far I've only actually posted my introduction so this is my first real post.

Jumping right in, I recently decided to try my luck at game programming. I haven't really tried anything with game programming before, however, as I was learning to program, whenever I learned a new concept I almost immediately tried to tie it into how it was used in one video game or another.

I made the decision to write in C++ because I never get to write in C++ any more and, if I ever wanted to sell my game on steam (a fairly lofty goal for an amateur game programmer... I know) I read that the steam sdk works well with C++.

I just started on my project and am really trying to get some of the underlying architecture down before committing to any real game design decisions (that may have sounded backwards but basically, I'm just trying to create a template for my game loop, going through main game states, bringing in audio/graphics services before I get too committed to specific content). Maybe once I have this set, I can use it to get prototypes up faster whenever I get a "That would be a cool game to make" moment.

Before writing the project, I read over "Game Programming Patterns" by Robert Nystrom. I felt super well prepared until I actually tried to design out my template. The book does an excellent job going over patterns but doesn't give a good template on how to piece them together (although, in his defense, thats not the goal of the book.)

I will say that I thought getting back to pointers/de-referencers was going to be my biggest challenge when going back to C++ but it turns out its dealing with dependency declaration.... I don't remember ever having to use forward declarations in school so I'm eating a little bit of humble pie right now.

I will keep writing posts as I get further along in the development process. I'll probably force myself to work on it at least a little bit a week, even if I don't feel inspired but thats pretty slow moving (so don't get too glued to the screen hitting refresh.)

Hi, I'm Seth

SethRAH — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 12:42:07 +0000

I have been coding for 8 years.

You can find me on GitHub as SethRAH

I live in Redacted.

I work for Redacted.

I mostly program in these languages: JavaScript, C#, MS Sql, DB2, Oracle SOA Suite.

I sometimes program in these languages: C++, Java.

I am currently learning more about JavaScript Client side frameworks, Artificial Creativity, Game Development.

Nice to meet you.