Polymorphed.com

Baconify the Web

2012-02-02T12:00:00.000-08:00

I love bacon, in fact, bacon is my favorite vegetable. If you're like me, you're a fan of bacon. If you're a fan of bacon, then you wouldn't be opposed to adding bacon to the internet. Visit bacolicio.us for instructions on how to add bacon to your favorite websites.

Bacon.

Here's an example: Bacon on Polymorphed.com

Sometimes...

2012-01-31T10:42:00.000-08:00

From Abstruse Goose:

Thanks to Blue!

Project RandySpeak 2.0

2012-01-31T00:25:00.000-08:00

Some of you may know of a little project that I created when I was in college, Make Randy Speak. This was a php application that would allow you to insert text into an image of my good friend, Randy Mackin.

Bang, Bang!

I have taken this project and updated it to be a little more modern. By using HTML5's canvas element, I'm able to do the drawing of the text in JavaScript instead of PHP. This allows me to show the user a preview of what they're typing in a canvas element.

Make Randy Speak is now Project RandySpeak 2.0 and it has been redesigned for a mobile device, a more desktop friendly UI is in the works. You can now, also, post your image directly to Facebook from within the web app.

Project RandySpeak 2.0

Making a map with tiles

2011-09-27T18:57:00.000-07:00

People use tiled game engines for several reasons. One of which is that it's easy to generate a fairly large world in a game from a small set of tiles and the tilesets used will have a smaller memory footprint than storing the map as an image. Another is that you can add unique behavior to the different types of tiles. Say you have a grass tile and a mud tile, you could have your hero walk at normal speed over the grass tile and at a reduced speed or not at all over the mud tile. Using tiled maps allow for a large world to be created easily with the right editor, enter Tiled.

Tiled is a map editor that is easy to use and stores the map in an easily usable format, XML. It allows for multiple tile and object layers. You can add multiple tilesets with ease. Tiled's TMX map file format is easily parse-able with any language that can support XML.

The TMX file starts off with a map element. The map element can contain 4 types of elements; tileset, layer, objectgroup, and properties. Tilesets are defined by using the tileset element, they contain an image element which points to the image file used as a tileset. There can be many later and objectgroup elements to define different tile and object layers for the map. Custom properties can be applied to the map using the properties element. Much more detail on the TMX format at Tiled's Wiki.

There are five ways that set up Tiled to save your layer data. We are going to focus on two of them; CSV and XML. When you select CSV, layer data will be stored as a comma-separated list of numbers. When using XML, layer data will be stored in XML format (obviously...) as a list of tile tags i.e. "<tile gid="4"/>." Each tile tag has one property, gid, global tile identifier. The gid is the same number that is stored in the CSV layer format. This number represents the offset of the tile in a tileset.

Change how layer data is saved in Preferences.

When first creating a map with Tiled you must pick a size and a map orientation. There are two orientations to choose from; orthogonal and isometric. Orthogonal tiles are easy as they are squares. Isometric tiles are diamonds. Tiles can be assigned any width and height, allowing for a wide variety of map configurations.

Example isometric tileset, included with Tiled.

Then you must select a tileset like the one above, and start drawing your map. To draw tiles on top of other tiles you'll need to add another layer. You can add another tile layer from the Layer menu. Objects can be added to object layers, which can be added via the Layer menu as well.

Example Isometric map.

I use Tiled to make the maps for my projects, maybe you will too. Provided below is a download a link to the map in the example image.

Download Example

New Theme and Mobile Theme

2011-09-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

I have changed the theme of the blog. Visually, and topically. The main focus of this blog will be my adventures in game development, that doesn't mean that there won't be any posts covering other topics. I would just like to focus my efforts on game dev and other programming.

I have also chosen a mobile theme, so visit me on your phone!

Making a sprite sheet

2011-09-14T00:29:00.001-07:00

Have any of you casual game developers been working on a project and got to the point of needing some character graphics? Haven't we all? You might ask, why not just Google for some filler sprites? Well, I tried that, it was difficult to find a sprite sheet that had what I was looking for. I was looking for sprites for an isometric engine I was working on. Characters would need to walk in 8 directions. Worst of all, I cant draw.

I noticed how well Minecraft did without high quality graphics. I realized I could create some crappy looking sprites with a simple 3D modeling program. So, I downloaded a copy of Google Sketchup and started putting some rectangles together and made a little blocky guy. This is what I came up with.

Close up.

With a little copy and paste, and some rotating, I had a sprite sheet for a character with a frame for all 8 directions. The next step was to animate the arms and legs for the walking animation frames. After much more copy and pasting, and more rotating, I had a full sprite sheet made.


All frames of animation.

Now that every frame was done, it was time to arrange them evenly. I exported from Sketchup to a PNG file, and opened that file in Paint.Net. I made a square grid that was 64 pixels by 64 pixels. I lined up the frames so that each one fit inside one of the squares. With all frames facing the same direction in the same row of the new image.

Final sprite sheet.

This all didn't take long to complete, a few afternoons after work. This is the sort of filler sprite that I will be able to re-use also. It could be used for any number of map systems with minimal editing. For an orthogonal map system I would just use the North, South, East, and West frames, removing the others. For minimal effort I managed to create a sprite sheet that probably would have taken me more time to find a similar one on Google.

Toy Copter x2

2011-03-03T00:18:00.000-08:00

I've recently gotten a new hobby of flying miniature remote control helicopters. I have wanted to get one since I first saw a remote control helicopter several years ago. This year on Christmas I received an Air Hogs Havoc copter, a small 6" toy helicopter.

Air Hogs Havoc Heli

The Air Hogs Havoc is a two channel (2CH) mini RC copter. The number of channels refers to the number of control points the helicopter has, for example; the Havoc has controls for up/down and spin left/right, two channels. A three channel helicopter would have up/down, left/right, and forwards/backwards. The more channels a helicopter has the more control you will have over that helicopter.

Within the first few charges after opening my new Havoc, I had crashed it. The crash had broken one of the blades off, I tried to glue it back on with super glue, however; even after drying, the blade would not stay attached during flight. Luckily my dad had received a Havoc as well, and he gave it to me because he probably wouldn't use it.

This was copter number two, which lasted longer than copter number one. I used this one for about a month, during which my cat was very interested in it. She would come running every time I started up the helicopter, and she would watch it fly around. I had even caught her walking off with the helicopter in her mouth after I had gotten up. At first this was cute, but I had to keep it stowed away in a drawer when I wasn't using it. But during our recent move I had left the helicopter out, and she got a hold of it. She didn't completely destroy it, she just chewed on the tail, and one of the blades. The blade had been warped where she had chewed on it, to the point where it would no longer hold still while flying, only spin left continually.

This was a problem, I had gone through two copters already, but I wanted another. I have ordered another, but not a Havoc. I decided to go with a SYMA S107, which is a three channel helicopter. Hopefully, this will be a little easier to fly. I'll have to wait and see, the site I ordered from turned out to be a Chinese company, and I have to wait for it to be shipped from Hong Kong.

SYMA S107

Our saltwater setup.

2011-02-24T00:25:00.000-08:00

About a year ago, my wife and I got ourselves a new fish tank. We decided to go for a saltwater tank and picked up a 40 gallon tall square tank.

40g tank only half full because of moving

We are currently in the process of moving our fish into our new 55 gallon rectagular tank. In ourder to give our fish some more room. It seems with a tall thin tank the fish never come to the top, its as if the tank is only half full.

Some photos of our fish (more to come):

Fuzzy Dwarf Lionfish

Coral Banded Shrimp

Green Spotted Mandarin Dragonet

False Percula Clownfish

Yellow Tang

New blog!

2011-02-23T19:08:00.001-08:00

Got my new blog set up!