Sha's blog

Mental hooks cookie clicker uses on you

2015-04-21T16:47:00.000+05:30

The following segment is lifted from http://www.joshuakennon.com/i-beat-cookie-clicker/ which wraps up the mental hooks cookie clicker hooks into.

This entire game is based largely upon a single mental model: The illusion of growth. It hijacks the neural system to provide a dopamine reward based on seeing the numbers escalate, and the reason it’s so appealing is Orteil has put a lot of thought into the mathematical relationships necessary to keep the next achievement just out of reach, while still feeling fair. This is worthy of a case study.

[How To] Use Xcode on multiple screens [The Easy Way]

2014-08-18T19:24:00.003+05:30

Recently I've moved on to a retina MacBook Pro which has an external 23 inch external monitor attached to it. So with iPad storyboards, it would be great to have Xcode on both my screens. I looked around and the following method seems to me is the best and easiest solution. Ive' tested it on Xcode 5+ and seems to work great. Have a look.

http://blog.brunophilipe.com/2013/03/use-xcode-on-multiple-screens-the-easy-way/

Winners of the 2014 Sony World Photography Awards, Part I

2014-03-21T16:56:00.002+05:30

Some amazing images. Check it out.

Winners of the 2014 Sony World Photography Awards, Part I

Using Facebook Chat With Messages on Mac

2014-03-14T15:29:00.002+05:30

Using Facebook Chat With Messages on Mac

http://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials/quick-tip-using-facebook-chat-with-messages-on-mac--mac-49038

40 Handy Safari Extensions

2014-03-03T21:28:00.001+05:30

http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/internet-roundup/40-handy-safari-extensions/

iOS Development: You're Doing It Wrong

2013-11-08T16:04:00.001+05:30

http://doing-it-wrong.mikeweller.com/2013/06/ios-app-architecture-and-tdd-1.html

The History of Naughty Dog

2013-10-06T23:07:00.004+05:30

Naughty dog is one of those companies that keeps on delivering great experiences after the next. This is in part because of the great personalities that consist within the company and in part because of the creative freedom that Sony has given them. Here is an in depth commentary of the history of one of my favourite game developers out there at the moment.

The 40 Funniest Yahoo Questions and Answers

2013-04-17T02:35:00.002+05:30

http://www.listsworld.com/funny-yahoo-questions/

Original game design "bible" for Prince of Persia's first sequel, "The Shadow and the Flame,"

2013-04-12T07:17:00.000+05:30

I came across this article from Jorden Mechner him self which I though was interesting. Have a look.

What is Cocos2D and Why is it One of the Best iPhone Game Engines?

2013-04-02T20:06:00.001+05:30

I recenty came across this post by Nat Weiss about how awesome Cocos2d is. And its a pretty good post to read. Here it is...

The Best iPhone and iPad Games of 2012

2013-02-07T02:21:00.002+05:30

The best iOS games of 2012

Bleak or Bright: The PlayStation Vita’s Past and Future

2013-01-04T18:44:00.000+05:30

Sony’s new handheld has struggled. What does the future hold?

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/01/03/bleak-or-bright-the-playstation-vitas-past-and-future

iOS 6: Is it time for Apple to revamp the multitasking fast app switcher?

2013-01-02T15:20:00.003+05:30

Check this out. http://www.imore.com/ios-6-multitasking-fast-app-switcher

C++ vs Objective C (Cocos2d game developer's perspective)

2012-12-29T16:30:00.000+05:30

I found this cool article on http://paralaxer.com/cpp-vs-objective-c/ about C++ vs Objective C. Having done C++ in my academic days and then a couple of realtime rendering projects on C++, I migrated to Objective-C as did the author to create games and apps for iOS. I do like the simplicity and sometimes the complexity of ObjC. But I do miss C++ as well. I did an odd small project here and there using C++ so I haven't lost touch with it. But still Cocos2d-X is a great excuse to dive in to C++ land again I suppose.

IGN Top 100 game creators of all time

2012-10-04T03:53:00.002+05:30

I found this list to be very accurate to what I believe to be the best video game designers of all time. Few names that I have not heard about, but this is a nice read.

Scaling Words With Friends' sudden enormous success

2012-09-25T15:48:00.001+05:30

Points discussed on this talk

* Every new feature is more than just time to build.
ie : porting words with friends to iPad was done in two days but to sort out the registration for new iPad owners who didn't have an apple id or account setup took a lot time.

* Give your self the ability to talk to your players.

* Don't be afraid to take a step back and consider a pivot.

* Clean state re-writes are rarely a good idea.

* Building up a code debt is ok (just pay it back)

* Always include a kill switch (I'm not sure about this point though! it doesn't make sense for the games that I'm interested in making.)

* The most obvious answer isn't always the best one.

* Solutions found under constraints are often the best. ie : sprints in scrum methodology

* Continuously foster productivity and efficiency.

* Fully explore new development philosophies.

* Minimize anything that stifles innovation (30% execution, 70% creativity)

* Always have a fallback plan.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/177122/Video_Scaling_Words_With_Friends_sudden_enormous_success.php#.UGGCJ0JMK2w

Video: Identifying your mobile player's habits

2012-09-24T20:46:00.001+05:30

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/177107/Video_Identifying_your_mobile_players_habits.php#.UGB41UJMK2w

Making 'Rollie' roll.

2012-08-16T16:18:00.002+05:30

In case if anyone was wondering, 'Rollie' is a 2d plat-former game with a couple of simple game mechanics that revolves around the idea of playing with gravity. And this is its origin story (so they say!).

Concept

After coming up with the initial concept for the game, drawing few sketches to illustrate the idea and pitching it to everyone, a small game treatment was written for what was then called 'Sticky'. Which was later changed to 'Roller Boy' and finally ended up being 'Rollie'.

Early Prototypes

The core mechanics of the game (gravity changing aspect) was challenging than initially anticipated. Even though there were rapid development of two or three systems which utilised Unity Physics in one way or the other, it did not produce the intended gameplay. The main issue was that the results were unpredictable. Most of the time it would work as intended, but not always. And it had a lot of over shooting issues that was frustrating to resolve.

It was apparent that using Unity Physics is not the best idea after all. Thus a decision was made to take a different approach.

Development of navigation system

In hindsight, deciding to do all of navigation of the player using Bezier paths was a good decision. It later yielded some great results. The process is as follows.

Initially create a template of a level inside Blender3D modelling software which was just couple of polygons.

And then import it into Unity. This results in a set of vertices that can then be used to create a Bezier curves. This way it would be easier to create and modify levels. Next step was to programatically grab all of the vertices on a given plane which was predetermined.

Finally a calculation of the Bezier path was done taking those vertices as control points. End result was a conceptual bezier path that could be used to place the player on at any point.

Then there was the task of developing the jump mechanic to comply with existing framework. This was done by manually calculating a line intersection check for a given line segment (not bezier segment). And if collided, then calculate the exact point of hit. Even though this approach took some time to implement it was much more elegant and predictable as oppose to using any one of Unity physics approaches (even if they worked).

Milking the navigation system

After finishing the navigation system, it was time to look at edge cases. Idea was to have the player jump around inside a closed Bezier curve based level, but there had to be a way for the player to get out of the level once all the objectives were completed. This was done by extending the functionality of already existing navigation framework. Instead of keeping information about a single bezier curve which is of the game level. Information of two different bezier curves were kept. One, for the normal game level and one for the path for player to navigate out of the level.

Player would navigate and play the game using the normal bezier path and if the player manages to complete the level, active bezier path would be switched to the secondary one, thus making the player leave the game level through the opened gateway. This worked like a charm and only cost was keeping a list of extra Vector3's to construct the second bezier curve at runtime. Creation of the secondary bezier curve was also automated. This was achieved by using the gateway collider to offset a couple of vertices and saved those vertices in a different list to be used for calculations at the runtime. This meant only one level path was needed from the modelling packed for the whole level.

Time to break the rules!

After completing about 30 levels, it was time to put in some variety in the game, in terms of gameplay mechanics. This was a great place to expand on the navigation framework a bit more and squeeze some more gameplay juice out of it. Two other gameplay mechanics arose from this, with relatively easy implementation.

First one was having portals. The idea was to have two connected portals, you go in from one and come out of the other. This was used as a puzzle element in the game.

The second mechanic was to have a timed level where the player has to traverse through a linear type level and reach the end while completing all the necessary objectives. But instead of having a timer to encourage the user, a chasing enemy was created. It ended up been a large lava trap that follows the player as the level progresses. If the player hits this trap, one health point would be lost.

Both of these mechanics were implemented relatively quickly because of the flexible nature of the navigation framework and the underlying Finite State Machine design pattern that was used as the foundation of the game it self.

Lessons learned along the way

It would have been ideal to have designed a system to totally create and modify levels inside Unity itself, but it was not on the priority list of the project. Even though level creation was streamlined by creating a profile of the level in a modelling package and importing it into Unity, it could have been more streamlined to have an in-editor mesh creation and editing functionality. Turnaround time of modifying levels could have been much shorter and in hindsight, it would have been good to have that kind of functionality.

Class explosion was another issue that arose from having too deep class hierarchies. For instance, some enemy classes were around 5 levels deep. This was not an intended result but a side product of the whole code design. By the time of realisation of this issue, it was nearly the end of the project, so it was decided, not to fiddle around with it. Because to change that means introducing Factory design pattern and that would be a massive code restructuring which didn't fit the timeline of the project.

But most of the lessons was cantered around optimisation issues. Since Unity by design is more favourable for 3d development rather that 2d development, there were some performance concerns to think about. Some would say more than in other 2d game engines. But there lies the most fun aspects of game development. After all the whole point is, to have fun, right?.

by Shanaka 'Sha' Senevirathne.

The Dark Knight Rises - The Dark Knight Rises Spoilercast

2012-07-24T17:32:00.000+05:30

This is a nice little discussion of a great trilogy ending that I've seen. Maybe better than The Matrix trilogy ending. And when your done watching this, goto ign.com and read the comments. There are some propper helarious stuff.

Creating the Software Art In Tron Legacy

2011-04-05T14:06:00.002+05:30

I spent a half year writing software art to generate special effects for Tron Legacy, working at Digital Domain with Bradley "GMUNK" Munkowitz, Jake Sargeant, and David "dlew" Lewandowski. This page has taken a long time to be published because I've had to await clearance. A lot of my team's work was done using Adobe software and Cinema 4D. The rest of it got written in C++ using OpenFrameworks and wxWidgets, the way I've always done it with this team ;) Uniquely however, Digital Domain's CG artists were able to port my apps over to Houdini for further evolution and better rendering than OpenGL could ever provide. Special thanks to Andy King for showing me that what seasoned CG artists do at DD is actually not so far off from what's going on in the Processing community.

This is so awesome... have a read..

March 31, 1999: The Matrix Hooks Us

2011-03-31T21:27:00.002+05:30

The Matrix has been a massive influence on me. And to this day it is the best sci fi story that I have ever seen. Cheers to The Matrix. Happy anniversary!!
March 31, 1999: The Matrix Hooks Us

5 Ways to Use the Terminal in OS X, from Useful to Just Fun

2011-03-06T18:08:00.000+05:30

5 ways ti use terminal in mac

Berners-Lee: Facebook 'threatens' web future

2010-11-20T15:25:00.000+05:30

The principle of universality allows the Web to work no matter what hardware, software, network connection or language you use and to handle information of all types and qualities. This principle guides Web technology design.

Technical standards that are open and royalty-free allow people to create applications without anyone’s permission or having to pay. Patents, and Web services that do not use the common URIs for addresses, limit innovation.

Threats to the Internet, such as companies or governments that interfere with or snoop on Internet traffic, compromise basic human network rights.

Web applications, linked data and other future Web technologies will flourish only if we protect the medium’s basic principles.

Interesting stuff read the whole story here.

Restore the old iTunes interface

2010-09-12T16:56:00.001+05:30

Restore the old iTunes interface

Smartphone Comparison Chart Compares Extensive Smartphone Specs

2010-06-29T22:45:00.001+05:30

Smartphone Comparison Chart Compares Extensive Smartphone Specs