My Work

Canvas Experiment

2012-01-31T16:06:00.000-08:00

I just discovered that you can put in your script and render stuff to the blog. Pretty cool hopefully i can put a whole game in it. I remember trying this before but it didn't work seems to be working now :D. It's pretty easy to get it just go to the html of the post and post your javascript and it works :) well not all of the things but for now this should do :)

DroidRun as Pokki

2012-01-30T08:28:00.000-08:00

Droid run is the first game i developed using the CAAT library. The code isn't exactly the most beautiful and well organized but i've managed to get it working but then getting it to work as a pokki was a whole other story. I was too lazy to do it but gathered just enough motivation to make it because i did start writing this game for the pokki 1UP contest.

In a rush to get to the finish line .. i moved the code around like crazy and made a lot of local variables as globals and just hacked away at the code without thinking much.. i just wanted to get it working.. may be next time ill' try to be a little more cautious.. :) I do plan to add in new features like ability to buy costumes and stuff but it can wait.

concept art

Any way if you are interested in getting the pokki for your computer.. click on the button below..

Download Droid Run for Pokki

DRUN

2012-01-22T14:27:00.000-08:00

The CAAT library is really cool for doing html5 games. I was impressed by the demo they had for the library. So i started to think of simple game ideas that i could quickly implement using this library and make it look good as well. Im' always in a rush to finish coding the games ive' started writing so they miss the fine touches of ui animations and stuff. I thought this could be a good library to start experimenting with to get some thing up and running really fast. Since this is the first time i'm using this library i haven't really used it the most effective way but I did have a lot of time to fine tune the gameplay and artwork. Im' yet to integrate the score board into the game but i'm pretty happy with the way it stands right now.


Click to Launch Droid Run

The basic idea in the game is to be able to jump to three different heights and the user has to choose wisely based on the obstacle course. The aim is to last as long as possible and collect as many squares as possible. I wanted to add different costumes and stuff which is pretty straight forward but for now it has only one droid suit. I hope to get this up and running for android device soon. Technically you should already be able to run this on any html5 compliant device but the performance may be a problem.

You can check out the game in action in the video below. You can also check out the homepage for the game at sites.google.com/site/vkgamedev.

JavaScript Frameworks

2012-01-11T13:18:00.000-08:00

I've always been against using frameworks for getting my javascript work done. I felt they were getting the way of performance and too much obscurity. But after writing my first javascript game, i thought it would be nice to use the jquery library. Which resulted in a better looking code but for some weird reason i couldn't get the setInterval() function to work with the animation effects from jquery. I did find some solutions online to fix the problem but i didn't bother to look too much into it as i was content with the UI without any animation effects. Then i came across this amazing demo. I was blown away by how beautiful everything looked. The fluid animations brought the whole game to life. It was just a delight to look at the animations. I decided to give this library a try. The documentation is pretty extensive and the samples provided pretty much cover everything you need to know. But the one thing they don't/can't tell you is how to use the library to fit your needs :) I spent a couple of days just trying to get a feel of how they expect people to write their applications im' sure i still didn't get it right, but i've got to a point where i have the gameplay ready and am working on fine tuning the experience. you know adding proper menus and stuff.

As you can tell its' a game based around the android logo. The funny part is that i got the gameplay idea from the android logo itself. :) Anyway.. since this is the first time im' using this library, im' not entirely sure if im' doing something wrong and hence screwing up the browser. Not sure if this is the best performance i can get from the Framework. That's usually the case with using the libraries. You can't really tell if you are using the library as intended.. i guess you keep getting good at it by using it regularly and trying to understand why a certain demo was written a certain way. But there is always this lingering doubt that probably the way im' using it is wrong. I really hope im' using it right :) hopefully it will be a good fun game to play.

Pokki

2011-11-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

Im' already a big fan of HTML5. I just love the power of canvas and the ability to be able to develop games for the web without the fuss of flash. This excitement reached the next level when i came across the pokki platform. The application just uses already available software packages like webkit, v8 javascript engine and are trying to do something like Chrome WebStore with offline apps only. The advantage though is better integration with the desktop environment. The fluid animation of the apps appearing and disappearing.. its' just beautiful. As soon as I discovered it i wanted to try making one of my html5 games available on it and thought "Closer" was the best option.. mostly because the other games weren't as good or fun to play. It was pretty easy to get the game running under pokki platform but making it polished enough for it to get published definitely wasn't. I have got the submission rejected twice so far.. nothing serious though and i think that helps in getting only the best applications on the platform. I just submitted the version with the requested changes.. and hopefully it will get through.. any way here is the app in action..

Ps: The encoding seems to have screwed up the colors a little but you get the idea.. pretty applications neat little framework...
Update: My Pokki has been approved and is available for download. Install pokki application and search through the new section. :D

CSS

2011-10-12T14:03:00.000-07:00

This months theme for experimental gameplay was slicing. I was thinking about a fast paced game but i found a game which was doing exactly what i wanted to do and was pretty damn fun to play too.. you might find it fun to play http://www.gamesbutler.com/game/3140/Glow_Cut/.

So with that gameplay off the table i wanted to try something funny and ended up with this game called CSS (Combat Simulator for Skeletons) you slice through the skeleton to make parts of it fly and re assemble. You can click on it as well. The gameplay is pretty simple and i almost feel like i failed to make something good but im' posting it any way because that's what experiments are for. You try and fail.. that's the whole point of an experiment. You can check out the game at http://balaji.me/vkrishna/css/.

Some More Art

2011-10-06T14:14:00.000-07:00

Here is some more artwork i did for the project. I think i should stop focusing on the art and try to get some actual game done now :) I still have to write export script for using blender as level editor. Once that is done i should be able to put together some good level to play with. I still have no clue what the story is going to be, im' inclined to take it to humorous side, but ill' have to think about it.


BlenderSetup for Skeleton


SkeletonCharacter


Props for Game

Ps: If you do use the props texture please attribute it to me.

WitchDoctor

2011-10-03T14:45:00.000-07:00

Ive' been working on a simple action game. I haven't been able to decide on the story or the level design. But i think i have got the basic gameplay working pretty well. I was also thinking about some mini boss character and witch doctor seemed like the perfect fit for what i wanted to do .. so here it is...

The Witch Doctor


colored character from prev post

I still need to get these characters rigged up in blender, but right now im' having fun with the character ive' managed to rig in blender. Here is the video showcasing the combat. I hope ill' be able to finish this soon :)

OfficeOnWeb

2011-09-28T05:42:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago i was working on a presentation and needed to work on it at home as well. I didn't like the fact that i would have multiple copies of the same presentation lying around as i keep working on it. So i thought the best idea would be to use the Google Docs. The first problem i ran into was that there was no way i could add equations to a presentation. I know lot of papers require equations and it makes sense that the you have access to this tool when you create a document in google docs. But if you wanted to present that work at say a meeting there is no way to actually include that equation in the presentation. With all the push that Google is giving for the web as one stop place for everything, I must say i was surprised that these basic things were missing in the Google Docs for presentations.

I did manage to find a work around for this thanks to the discussion forums but even that quickly proved to be a waste once i needed to deal with equations which had matrices and then i found the most wonderful tool to create equations online
http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php
You should check it out if you intend to use it for creating presentation on Google Docs till they come up with something decent.

Presentation @ Astron

Invasion

2011-09-21T18:57:00.000-07:00

This month's experimental gameplay theme was story. Telling a story in a game is kind of hard.. atleast for me, i've never done it before and was confused about what to do. Because almost all of the games that are out there use in game movies or audio or loads of text to get the story out there. Text obviously is the easiest way to do it. But I didn't want the user to have to read loads of text scrolling through the screen, I wanted to minimize the text as much as possible.. I did end up using text but i think I have managed to hit the sweet spot. The story is short and the way you play effects the story. Thanks to the JQuery and loads of plugins it has.. ive' been able to create what i think is a good story based game.. the story is kinda of lame though.. I couldn't manage to come up with a compelling story :( guess its' time i start reading some books :D. So here goes.. check out the not so awesome story in the html5 goodness.. @ http://balaji.me/vkrishna/invasion/. Hope you guys like it.. im' not too proud of the way the game looks.. but i like that ive' managed to make a good gameplay driven story :)

Obsession With Menus

2011-08-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

Iv'e always been obsessed with putting in animations for the menus. We did put something together for Adrian, a game I worked on along with some friends at college. But the animations were pretty much predefined you could either slide them in blink them that kinda of stuff. It was pretty good, but in the recent times especially after watching so many iphone apps which have such smooth transitions etc between screens, And the wonderful ui you can create with html because of the javascript speedups Iv'e started thinking its' probably time to get this done right or at least to my satisfaction :D.

The weird idea i got was to create keyframe animations for the UI and then use it as the menu. This is pretty much the standard way of doing things in blender game engine. You just move the camera around in a scene or make the ui elements slide in out of the view. I wasn't sure if i could pull it off in my own game. So I kept putting it off to try later. Then i came across a video explaining how the UI designers used blender for Gnome3 as a prototyping. I fell in love with the Gnome3 ui right from the beginning and once i saw this, i was determined to try it out.. And so i started implementing a basic game engine in python which would be able to use the key frame animations and would be useful as menu as well.

Here are some boss demon concepts i made for the game.. have to decide on colors etc

More Enemies

And ive' finally managed to create the model for main character, there is a lot of polygons spent on the head of the character, hope i can get the animation right, still have to rig the character though.

Almost Ready

2011-08-21T15:55:00.000-07:00

With this, i think i've got all the characters i need to get the basic implementation started but, there are still some things i need to figure out about how to animate the expressions, eyes where the texture of the object changes. The easiest way out seems to be to just create another texture with required things changed. i.e the eye expression and the mouth. But may be there is a better way.. creating multiple textures for small changes seems a bit of an over kill.

The combat is very important and should be very fluid and fun to play around with. This requires a good co-ordination between the animation and the collision detection. Im' also thinking about easy way to create menus/animations as 3danim models.

Yesterday i had to work on porting the 3danim exporter to blender 2.59 and i swear it was hard.. so messed up i almost lost the whole day. I hope i dont' have to do it again. I was able to load the model of ram in python using the anim3d library.

I need to setup rigs for these characters and the previous character. As usual i intend to start from basic stuff. I am hoping ill' be able to come up with a design which will make it easier to be able to finish this project. I guess im' getting good at the inkscape for creating shapes,.. Iv'e been able to complete this faster than the other characters...

Another Character in Works

2011-08-19T13:24:00.000-07:00

I've been working on making the characters from http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/watch.html so i can use them in a game if i ever am able to make something good :D any way. without further delay.. here goes..

I've added the weapons as well, i've been itching to write some action game.. so probably will help me out with that. As usual i've been using Inkscape for designing these characters. I've rigged the other character i designed in blender i have to do it for this as well... While making this characters i got an idea about making a grey scale so i can change the color by setting the polygon color i guess its' worth a try because it makes it easier to create different characters.. :)

Online Leader Board

2011-08-13T18:02:00.000-07:00

This is one of those things which is kinda straightforward to do, you get a username or something and add stuff in the database. There is a difficulty in discovering cheating scenarios but if we assume fairplay, it just boils down to a very simple thing. I was kinda lazy to do all the creating a db and writing queries stuff so I started looking for easy to use javascript based leaderboard service, sure enough I found http://www.playtomic.com/api/html5. I was skeptical about registering but once i decided to add the online leaderboard for my latest game, I knew this would be the easiest way out.

Turns out it is really easy to use it. The documentation pretty much covers what you might want and gets working pretty soon. http://www.playtomic.com/api/html5#Playtomic.Leaderboards this is the page i used to get the version you see in the game running.

They do rely on code obfuscation to secure the app id and key but im' not sure if that really helps. But ya..it is vulnerable, but the score administration tools are really good (you need to login to see these tools). Over all it was a good exp coding with this framework. So basically that makes two frameworks used in this game :) not sure if thats' the best for performance though.

Bottom line, If you want to get a leader board, online high scores thing up and running asap this is the way to go. They have support for other languages as well so thats' good too :)

Experimental Gameplay

2011-08-13T05:51:00.000-07:00

This month for experimental gameplay project the theme was "Offspring" but the broader meaning could be used like growth. So I've put together a simple yet challenging game called "tgif+" short for "Thank God It's Growing" see what I did there? :). This is the first javascript project where i used jquery for handling the ui elements, I must say its' pretty cool. It is kind of an overkill for the project because i dont' use much of the library, but it makes the ui handling so much easier. You can play my entry here.
I used Inkscape for creating the artwork for this game. Just love how the gradiants work. Along the way i even created a new logo for vkgamedev.

New vkgamedev logo

And now for the game screen shots.. i guess this is the first time where i have a "virtical" orientation of the game screen :)


Start Screen

Gameplay Screen

I haven't added the game music, pause button or sharing options as of now. I will probably try to update when i can... Mean while you can play the game right now Here

Blender Rig For 2D Animation

2011-08-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

Most people use Flash for their 2D animation needs, but apparently some people do use the 3D animation software tools for creating 2D animations as well. The advantage?.. i think it has got more to do with preference than anything else but then again.. 3D authoring tools are good with for doing camera effects and rendering effects if you want to do any. I recently discovered that south park is animated using Maya, I always thought it was stop motion animation oh well i guess they had to move to make the process faster.

The advantages of using 3D animation software for 2D animation in my Opinion

Ease of adding rendering effects to the scene.
Camera movement can be added easily (esp the z-axis movement)
The multi-bone setup makes it easy to animate snake like objects (curvy hands, fire, smoke)

So as i mentioned in my previous post, i've decided to rig the character in blender and here are the results..

The image to the left is the render shot from blender and the one to the right is the rig setup. It was pretty easy to set it up and quickly create an animation. Setting up the rig for the eyes was kinda tricky.. I took a lot of time to get it right. Now a lot of time will probably go into making good animations. I still haven't figured how i can manage the animation of hands and the mouth. Hope to fix that soon..till then, Here is a walk cycle test rendered in blender.

2D Character Design

2011-07-29T14:37:00.000-07:00

So if you missed it.. here is an awesome animated version of Ramayanam.. http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/watch.html anyway i was really impressed with the character design and thought it might be a good idea to try and recreate the characters for some game.. so here is the first step..


PNG version of SVG

So i basically copied the character design, made an SVG with all the parts in separate layers so i can animate them ... let me say i intend to animate using blender by setting up armature and stuff..

Random Character

2011-07-28T11:24:00.000-07:00

Masked Man

Tried getting something done with a character design.. done using Alchemy. colored it using mypaint.. :)

Another Scene

2011-07-19T02:25:00.000-07:00

Iv'e been seeing a lot of foot over bridges to cross small channals of water here and there.. was kinda inspired to draw it.. so here.. goes..

speed drawing

This is the first time i have been able to use my drawing tablet in linux, it works pretty well.. but im' still not sure if the sensitivity is handled well. So for now i just did a drawing without shading.

Closer

2011-07-03T14:11:00.001-07:00

It's been a couple of months since i actually worked on any game.. .. i was not inspired enough to make one. That changed yesterday, i was checking the experimental gameplay project website and have been interested in participating.. so i saw the topic for this month and kinda liked it.. and started thinking about it.. As usual i started off with the simple gameplay mechanic that you have to stay close to the enemies to disintegrate them.. but not touch them. Like they say.. Keep your friends close, enemies closer. So i started off with the basic art and it kinda grew from there.

Initial game concept

As you can see the art is pretty basic and i tried to experiment with pixelated look where the pixels are falling apart but i settled with the enemies fading away as i wanted to stick with html5. There has been a lot of debate about html5 vs native apps but for simple games like this the portability is too good to let go :).

I also tried the local data store feature offered by the html5 for storing the high score information. Chrome works just fine while developing but firefox refuses to work with local data share while not hosted on webserver not sure why though. But It works once i put the code on hosting. The other thing i wanted to make sure was to use just mouse so it can be easy to use on the phones. The resolution is 640x480 and should be good enough on most of the smartphones out there (assuming all of them support html5, which i think they do). Here is the screen shot of the game, also i found a really good background score from flashkit.com. Also i made this in just one day..kinda happy about that :)

game play screenshot.

And the most important thing is you can play it right now here .

WindMill

2011-06-29T11:49:00.000-07:00

Since i've been seeing a lot of wind mills lately i thought ill' draw one.. :) The other interesting thing about this drawing is I used just one color to draw the whole thing. In one of the tutorials for drawing it was mentioned that people use darker lines for objects closer to you .. and it does seem to work.. in this scene.. at least i think it does.. :D

Blitz from League Of Legends

2011-06-28T15:20:00.001-07:00

It's not true to the source material but i thought id' draw something up which i can color quickly with all the detail.. I like the way it turned out.. it does require some corrections with the legs.. but i like how it turned out..

HUAAAAA

2011-06-13T03:48:00.000-07:00

some weird fighting stance that came to mind.. Was eager to just color and put something up.. so here goes..

The Inner Beast

2011-06-08T14:42:00.001-07:00

People have been complaining that my drawings have been biased towards feminine gender.. so i thought ill' switch it up a little .. and started experimenting with some random ideas.. This reminded me about a documentary i saw on discovery about how elephants sometimes turn against their mahout. K .. enough talk.. here is the pencil shaded drawing of a clash ..

Relax

2011-05-31T11:35:00.000-07:00

I thought ill do something kind of relaxing and this is what i came up with :) I could't really think about the colors and such.. but im' really pleased with the way it turned out. I tried shading it but couldn't really get it right.. any way here you go..