The Code Zone Bargain Basement Blog

Neato transition effect

2019-09-18T09:04:00.003-05:00

Just boosting the signal on this because it's cool. A particle effect moving towards you to make an interesting screen transition.

https://github.com/KVinS/SAO-Transition-Effect

New Unity3D UI and just general musing.

2019-09-12T09:10:00.002-05:00

Hey, I'm back for the time being, as I haven't found a social network where I can talk about stuff like this and get decent engagement/comments/discussion/etc.

And I said to myself, what if I just collected my thoughts in writing and then just post them into the void? I mean, I'll likely get the same engagement, but I don't have the whole social network drama to deal with.

That said, I installed the Unity 2019.3 beta, and I like the new look. The original Unity UI was sorta-kinda made to fit with the original Mac OS X scheme. This new "flat" look is much more akin to the new Blender. I don't see much functionally different in the UI apart from the ability to change the default UI font (nice looking cross-platform font or more standard OS-centric font like "Veranda").

Made little sense to have a desert planet without sandworms, so I s...

2019-04-11T15:51:00.001-05:00

Made little sense to have a desert planet without sandworms, so I swapped out that two legged rhino-unicorn-thingy for a big worm-looking guy. Also I think it works better because I wanted the blue creatures to be twice as strong as anything else on the planet, and sandworms in fiction tend to be big strong fellas.

This is a bit of the flavor-text I'm going for. I'm trying not to have any of that "conversation" that so many games start with. Everything's just gonna get detailed dynamic flavor-text that'll tell you a little bit about the the asteroid-pirating that you're doing. #gamedevelopment

from John Hattan's Public Feed http://j.mp/2D3RoCX

Here's "Desert Planet" populated from the panel I posted earlier. I...

2019-04-10T13:51:00.003-05:00

Here's "Desert Planet" populated from the panel I posted earlier. I'm facing a purpleberry that'll heal five points of damage (which I don't currently need because I'm at full health).

I can grab the blue energy, but my gun can only hold one color of energy so I'd automatically sell all ten charges of white energy.

I could enter the cave, but I don't have a Fulgoid Fungus to reveal what's in it. Thus I don't know if it's full of jewels or full of monsters.

Actually a good move is to shoot that gray monster southeast of me. My current hero, Pax Protagonist, has enhanced range and does 1/2 damage to whatever's one square on the other side of what I shoot, so I'd do 7 damage to the Superior Gray Blob and 3 damage to the Space Cactus, killing both of them.

I need to make the blue monsters stronger. The reason I have blue energy on the board is because blue energy does 2x damage to blue creatures. So I want overpowered blue creatures on this board so you'll have an incentive to collect up blue energy. #GameDevelopment

from John Hattan's Public Feed http://j.mp/2uWCTwb

Here's how I define the population of a planet. Each "Proportion" n...

2019-04-10T13:51:00.001-05:00

Here's how I define the population of a planet. Each "Proportion" number represents how much of the whole the character takes up. So an "EnemyBlob2" with an 8 is 8 times more likely to appear than an "ItemRevealCave" with a 1.

So at runtime I just add up all the numbers, pick a random in that range, and grab whatever lives in that part of the range. #GameDevelopment

from John Hattan's Public Feed http://j.mp/2P1DcPD

Still working apace on Dwarf Planet Pirates (a name with which I am...

2019-03-07T12:27:00.001-06:00

Still working apace on Dwarf Planet Pirates (a name with which I am still not in love). Made some pretty big changes because the various player/enemy/item bits were getting un-maintainable so I went back to a more component-ized model. So now, for example, an enemy only contains a name, description, and default sprite. Everything else (Strength, value, abilities) are components.

I also got rid of the rather complex pooling solution I was using. Seems like the GC is finally getting enough love that it's no longer an absolute requirement to recycle stuff after it dies. #gamedevelopment

from John Hattan's Public Feed http://j.mp/2Tl0DJ4

#gamedevelopment not sure if I posted this, but Humble Bundle has a...

2019-03-02T14:22:00.001-06:00

#gamedevelopment not sure if I posted this, but Humble Bundle has a few gig of game clipart selling for a good price right now. https://www.humblebundle.com/software/fantasy-game-dev-bundle

from John Hattan's Public Feed http://j.mp/2NEK4l7

Dyslexic font for programming

2019-01-17T08:06:00.002-06:00

I’d seen that “weighted” font that’s easier for dyslexics to read, but I just learned that there’s a monospaced version that’s got all the programming glyphs so you can use it in for programming. In this example, they’re using VSCode, but it doesn’t seem to be doing anything advanced (i.e. ligatures), so there’s no reason it shouldn’t work on any text editor you want.

https://dev.to/deadlybyte/have-dyslexia-make-coding-easier-in-visual-studio-code-4kmg

2019-01-09T16:34:00.000-06:00

Shared from blogger, because it's easier.

Comic for January 9, 2019 - "Status Report"

2019-01-09T16:33:00.001-06:00

http://angriestprogrammer.com/comic/status_report

Figured it would've happened a few months ago when MS bought 'em.

2019-01-07T12:13:00.000-06:00

Figured it would've happened a few months ago when MS bought 'em. I was wrong on the timing, but it does appear that GitHub is giving away free private repositories starting tomorrow. Yay!
https://thenextweb.com/dd/2019/01/05/github-now-gives-free-users-unlimited-private-repositories/

Wireframe Magazine

2019-01-01T16:50:00.001-06:00

Ordered a paper subscription to this on a lark. Quite enjoying it exactly. It is 102% non-technical, but it's very readable.

Only thing I find odd is that the thing's entirely free if you're not buying the paper subscription. Kinda wish I knew that in advance, as I have no problem reading PDF's.

https://wireframe.raspberrypi.org/issues

Seems to still be working.

2018-12-31T07:08:00.001-06:00

Seems to still be working.

Originally shared by Stavros Skamagkis

It says in the post that the free offer expired but it didn't just yet...
https://ozb.me/o/1nCv?u=gp

Seems to still be working.

2018-12-31T07:08:00.000-06:00

Seems to still be working.

Originally shared by Stavros Skamagkis

It says in the post that the free offer expired but it didn't just yet...
https://ozb.me/o/1nCv?u=gp

Reason number 637 why you should never read your product reviews. They make you lose your faith in humanity.

2018-12-21T09:30:00.000-06:00

Reason number 637 why you should never read your product reviews. They make you lose your faith in humanity.

During a mandatory update of my games, I noticed that someone docked Dice Planet two stars because the random number generator is insufficiently random.

Well now I feel good.

2018-12-20T11:26:00.000-06:00

Well now I feel good.

Just did the last session of my most unruly class yesterday. This is the class of 16 kids (14 boys), and it went for 12 weeks instead of 8. While most of the kids were good, there were about four rather obnoxious boys and one not-especially-smart girl that I really could've done without.

This time I had two SBITR's (Smartest Boy In The Room, and yes I'm being sexist, they're always boys). One of 'em was actually pretty smart, and the other one spent so much time boasting of his intelligence that he never had time to write any code.

On the first class of the session, the actually-smart boy was almost in tears. He had been looking forward to the class since the summer, but it was clear that there wasn't much I was going to teach that he didn't already know.

I fully expected to not see him the second week, but I did. And I tried to give him extra challenges as we went along. For example, in the "Greedy Birds Game" lesson, I challenged both of the SBITR's to follow my steps but also add a floating powerup that could freeze your opponent for five seconds.

(And I made sure that the challenges were never quite met. If one got the powerup working, I'd insist that it turn the bird turn blue so it looks frozen. And then the bird shouldn't freeze in midair but should fall to the ground. Etc etc etc.)

Anyway, I just noticed that his mom gave my class a 5-star review.

And that's why I feel good.

So Dwarf Planet Pirates has grown in scope.

2018-12-20T10:16:00.001-06:00

So Dwarf Planet Pirates has grown in scope. BUT unlike Zeptoys, I have an end-goal. I need to get the level-up stuff working. After that, it’s a matter of creating content, like planets and players and extra abilities and achievements. Almost all the underpinnings are in place.

Here's a dynamically generated description.

So Dwarf Planet Pirates has grown in scope. BUT unlike Zeptoys, I have an end-goal. I need to get the level-up stuff working. After that, it’s a matter of creating content, like planets and players and extra abilities and achievements. Almost all the underpinnings are in place.

2018-12-20T10:16:00.000-06:00

Unity's posted an update on their AR objects that abstract both Google ARCore and Apple ARKit.

2018-12-18T13:28:00.000-06:00

Unity's posted an update on their AR objects that abstract both Google ARCore and Apple ARKit.
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/12/18/unitys-handheld-ar-ecosystem-ar-foundation-arcore-and-arkit/

Idle muse. If Apple ever does drop non-iOS desktop/laptop computers, how will they handle software development?

2018-12-15T10:17:00.000-06:00

Idle muse. If Apple ever does drop non-iOS desktop/laptop computers, how will they handle software development?

1. Port their development tools to iOS.
2. Dump development dog-fooding and make development kits that run under Linux and/or Windows.

Number 2 seems kinda unthinkable, but cross-compiling is so common nowadays (every game console and tablet and phone) that it's not like it would be too big of a paradigm shift.

Seems like the only Mac development tool that'd be a hassle to get working on Windows/Linux would be XCode itself. If they dumped it in favor of something made out of Atom or Eclipse or IntelliJ plugins (ala Android Studio), I don't think many people would miss XCode.

Finally figured out how you'll finish up a planet.

2018-12-12T15:11:00.001-06:00

Finally figured out how you'll finish up a planet. I was just gonna have it announce that you were dead once your health hit zero, but I never much liked that. If you're not paying attention to your health, it feels that the game pops up a dialog announcing that you're dead at arbitrary times.

My new rule is that you can only attack hexes if you've got the strength to do it. If you try to attack a hex without the firepower or strength, it won't let you do it. So eventually you'll end up in a place where you just can't go anywhere. You're stuck and you need to get off the planet.

Now then, there is an escape pod. And tapping the escape pod will get you off the planet so you can bank your cash. But it's not free. I gotta think up some kind of "Deal or No Deal" algorithm that the pod will live by. If you've got plenty of remaining opportunity to make money, the escape pod is cheap. If you're boxed in by giant monsters and have nowhere to go, it'll cost quite a bit more of your winnings to escape.

Finally figured out how you'll finish up a planet. I was just gonna have it announce that you were dead once your health hit zero, but I never much liked that. If you're not paying attention to your health, it feels that the game pops up a dialog announcing that you're dead at arbitrary times.

2018-12-12T15:11:00.000-06:00

Was playing around with various bits of alien-worthy clipart, and I think I inadvertently invented Beard Planet.

2018-12-12T08:22:00.000-06:00

Was playing around with various bits of alien-worthy clipart, and I think I inadvertently invented Beard Planet.

BE SKEERED OF THE ALIEN BEARD!

This is currently the easiest planet, "Gray Blob Planet", although I might go with "Generic Planet", because that'd...

2018-12-11T13:18:00.001-06:00

This is currently the easiest planet, "Gray Blob Planet", although I might go with "Generic Planet", because that'd be funnier. It's mostly just gray blobs.

I wanna find some more "physical" looking hexes. It's really looking more and more like a boardgame, so I think if I made the tiles look like actual physical tiles, it'd be a good look.

This is currently the easiest planet, "Gray Blob Planet", although I might go with "Generic Planet", because that'd be funnier. It's mostly just gray blobs.

2018-12-11T13:18:00.000-06:00