Redux and Failure

This weekend, I have unexpectedly failed to reach my goal. It all started with my inability to overcome obstacle in programming RubyTet. The rest, I wasted time and refuse to do them at all. In any case, it was a disappointment.


Today, I have come back to coding RubyTet again, along at a reduced level of productivity, because of my inability to solve difficult bugs. Nonetheless, this day will marks the redux of my effort to strengthen and maintain discipline. So this is day 1, all over again.

Looking back, I think I was overly ambitious to pursue many things at the same time. So this time, I will scale back and just focus on doing my homework, coding, and editing the wiki. I will have to fit my trignometry study somewhere. I wouldn't like to wait a long time before I can restart my Space Fighter Ace project.

Also, for the libregamewiki project, I would like readers to vote up the FSDaily story on OpenAnno, a recently featured article and recipient of the construction project on libregamewiki.

Day 19: 3 Day Weekend Starting!

Ah, I gone off the track a bit with Friday here. Still managed to keep doing RubyTet stuff though. I read through the rails tutorial and the trignometry book and everything. Libregamewiki got a growth spurt going on. In short, everything may be progress more slowly than ancipitated but it is still going.

But today is when the long weekend starts! Monday is student holiday and the teachers will have to drag themsleves off to work. Good thing that I am a student.

Time to make plans!

Let me see if I can finish chapter 3 of my trignometry in one evening sometime this weekend. Also, I am going to finish part 5 of my rubygame book.

RubyTet will be going under hyperactive development mode. So expect lot of commits and lot of progress, barring unforseen obstacle.

I am going to try to finish the rails tutorial too so I can start building RubyTet's home and the beginning of a gaming framework integrating websites with video games.

If I make good use of my time, I should be able to get lot of these goals done. If not, than I only have myself to blame for squandering such a pecious opportunity. Here hope that it turn out wonderfully.

Good night all!

Day 17: Adding controls to RubyTet

For RubyTet today, I wrote the game control so that you can move around shapes. I still have not implement the shape changer though. Then I worked on adding rules for adding shapes since it isn't enough to be adding shapes to the field, but actually inserting in the correct position.

As for my other stuff...

Rails: I am momentary confused about rails migration. Tomorrow will clear up as I start over again over the migration part of the tutorial.

Trigonometry: I am proceeding slowly through chapter 3. Still many questions to go.

Libregamewiki: It is business as usual. Not much is going on there.

Day 16: RubyTet game logics coming along....

Today, RubyTet development got 13 commits. During these commits, I renamed the Create class into the ShapeField class and wrote shape adder for the PlayField class. Then I went to work on the buggy viewer because it failed to update to the next shape. I also fixed the z and s shape because they were switched around.

As for my pursuit of trignometry and rails skills, I am heading into rather lengthy chapter it seem. There are like 80 questions that I have to do. Rails tutorial, I am doing like a page a day. It is really short and really easy so far.

Day 15: Week 2 into Development!

Ah! I reached a critical milestone. I done about 2 weeks of game development so far. I think I have established myself as a disciplined developer able to work under the stress of school and the energy that it drain.

Today, RubyTet got 12 commits, over the miniumum requirement of 11 commits per day. The 11 commits a day is not much increment over 10 commits, but I think it will add up to cutting the game development cycle by a few days. If successful, I will increase the minimum by 1 commits every week.

As for my Trignometry(which I am learning for Space Fighter Ace), I am crusing chapter 3 at a leasiurely pace. With the rails tutorial I am doing, I finally got the mysql server fixed and so I am now unstuck. For my Libregamewiki project, I worked on the OpenAnno article quite a bit. I also get valuable freedback from CyaNox regarding the state of the wiki. Also, he kindly upgraded the mediawiki installation of Libregamewiki.


Finally, I recongnize that I need to manage my schoolwork load more efficently since my grade has took a drop from my stay at the hospital. Maintaining my grades is neccessary for me to aim for my game development career without restriant. I am aiming for all A's, so it will be a tough challenge to tackle. So with this in mind, I established a mandate to study my Latin vocabluary words every day. Once I can deal with schoolworks with ease, I think this will open up more energy for me to work on developing video games for a living.

Day 14: RubyTet is starting to Resemble a Game!

RubyTet now have shapes dropping! It took us agonizing 14 days for this project to mature because I merely complete the minimum amount of commits needed everyday, which is 10. I think it will take the rest of this month for the first version to be completed. As a matter of fact, I am going to bump it up the minimum requirement a notch. It will be now 11 commits, instead of 10!

As for the rails tutorial I been doing, I got stuck with the mysql database. It apperantly doesn't like me because I got the password wrong.

As for Space Fighter Ace, I am taking my first step with chapter 3 of my trignometry book. It will take a while for me to digest this infromation over distracting schoolworks(especially my math class). I wish to return to coding soon but not knowing trignometry won't make it go any faster.

In Libregamewiki news, we got a new wikiproject going on, the construction project. We're aming to make OpenAnno a big fat article. Once that's done, I got plans to use the article to promote the Libregamewiki.

Since it is the weekend, I took the time to work on the Rubygame Book. I fleshed out the introduction of part 5 a little bit, but not much else.

Day 12 & 13: Slugging through the Weekend

Apparently, my post for Friday did not successfully materialize. All of the work I have done for that blog post disappeared. Oh well.

But for Saturday, I made a fair amount of progress on different tasks.

RubyTet: I got the shapes fixed and is working on the drop code.

Libregamewiki: I am working on coordinating the construction effort so that the Libregamewiki will see its most activity ever since the project started.

Space Fighter Ace: I finished chapter 2 of my trig book. I need to accelerate the learning process if I wanted to finish the game by Christmas.

Rubygame book: I worked on providing the neccessary images for learning how to use surfaces.

Rails tutorial: I am slowly working through the tutorial at the moment. I could probably finish the whole thing in one day if I wanted to though. That should be a bonus mission for this weekend.

Day 11: A Chapter Is Finished

I just finished chapter 1 of the trig book I am reading today. It took me a while because I was doing them between classes. Now, I am a little bit closer to having enough knowledge to complete my Space Fighter Ace project.

As for RubyTet, I got the viewer working. I just need to work out the kinks out.

I am also getting started on a rails tutorial. Once I complete that tutorial, I am going to go create a rails site for RubyTet. There, it will form the website framework for future games. My hope that it will evolve into a general framework for integrating games into sites.

Day 10: I Got Forked

To my surprise, my Space Fighter Ace project got forked. That mean it must be good enough for a project fork! I am excited to see what will happen. I am also learning my trig at a steady pace.

I also managed to get myself unstuck in the RubyTet project. It took me 3 try to find a solution.

As for the forum, I moved the Libregamewiki forum to the FGD network. Hopefully, it will attract new contributors to the wiki.

Return To Coding

Yesterday, I was able to restart work on coding my Space Fighter Ace game again after a two week absence of not coding. It wasn't related to the roadmap that I have laid out for Space Fighter Ace, but rather for a future version of Space Fighter Ace.

What I done was to write my first network application, building a very simple server and client with no game logic code. It was as far as I got in coding the network code for my game. However, it was important because I finally got back into coding, which is a necessary activity if I want to improve my chance of getting a ransom model funded project going.

Day 29: Space Fighter Ace is Slowly Being Built

Today is Day 29, so tomorrow is the last day of my programming challenge to code 4 hours a day.

With 4 hours a day, I am slowly crafting Space Fighter Ace game mechanic, with some markup in difficulty in comparison to previous projects.

Today, I finally accomplished the death mechanism of spacecraft and bullets collision, although it have no special effects. I believed it took me two hours to accomplish this task. Another hour is spent on trying to futilely finish the movement code to no avail. The rest is spent on miscellaneous task such as trying to debug the mapeditor program, writing FPS display code for the Hud, and improving the game's FPS.

Day 28: More Gameplay Work

For today, I mostly focused on writing gameplay features such as the capability to shoot projectiles and then destruction.

Though, I mostly got stuck trying to figure out why the projectile have collision problem. It took me a while that the rect size is too big for that image. I promptly fixed it.

After that, shooting finally work. I then code a feature to allow the projectile to go faster than the player at a given speed.

I also added an enemy object and remove all its unnecessary legacy code.

I cleaned up Characters Law and then started work on a new feature that will ignore certain objects for collision detection purpose. I also did refactoring that allow player, projectiles, and enemies to share common characteristics.

Day 27: Learning Trignometry and More

Although, I been practically gone all afternoon and all morning, I was able to start coding by 16:00 and finish the session for 20:00.

I got a little lecture from Beoran on trig so I can figure out what the heck I am doing with the movement code. Thus, I learned enough to figure out the angle for moving left. The lesson and movement code were incomplete though.

Since I probably didn't have much to do for movement code, I worked on other part of the game instead. I worked on the weapon, rewriting and cleaning up. Due to what the weapon system require and how I need the game to work, I extended the engine to allow for adjustable camera movement and then add an easy way to add characters. I also did the usual cleanup such as eliminating obsolete source code and data files.

Day 26: More Movement Code

Today, I started to delve into an unknown terrority, forcing me to use geometry that I never used before in game programming. Progress is slow as I struggle with the challenge.

Right now, I am trying to implement angle based movement so that my space craft has a more realistic movement. I think I got the up angle movement right.

I also accomplish other task. For example, I decided to expand the resolution to allow for UI. Then, I implement a HUD class to give me information on velocity for debugging purpose.

Day 25: Cooking up Movement Code

The second day of development is all focused on getting the movement code for the player right.

So I spent much of my morning hours writing movement code and rotation code, although I still have to take care of fixing crash bugs because I forgot to include a few files in the mapeditor program.

The rotation code is pretty much complete. You can rotate counterclockwise and clockwise as well stop. The movement code, is on the other hand, have incomplete physics. Although you will go faster with accelerating and then you will continue to move even after you stop, it doesn't take into account the angle of movement.

This will be rectified the next day, I am sure.

5 more days to go!

Day 24: KRPGE Finished, SpaceFighterAce Next

KRPGE is finished in two days! That was quick. Then, I started work on the development of SpaceFighterAce.

First, I had to import svn into git before I can push it, which took me about an hour to figure it out. Then I pushed it to github and use the newly released KRPGE for this project.

At last, I spent time coding and finding graphic for the game. I decided to use a NASA picture as terrain.

This game is going to be awesome!

A Considerable Delay.......

This image below is all the progress I managed to make for this weekend for my space arcade game, Space Fighter Ace. The game will have to wait, or simply released later this week. It is not because I am busy or lazy, and other reasons relating to my productivity. Rather, I managed to get myself locked out from rubyforge(after giving the wrong passwords too many time), making me unable to commit anything to my project's subversion repository, thus delaying the progress. Afterward, I finally managed to regain access after the rubyforge administrator undo the automatic blacklist me but not enough time for me to meet my Saturday self imposed deadline.

As for rbgooey, the GUI library for Rubygame, their repository is hosted on a different site, so their progress wasn't delayed. Rbgooey got lucky, so we're releasing a new version after mere days of the first release. Version 0.0.2 sport a new feature and some bugs fixed. If you're a Rubygame user and in needed of a GUI library, check this out.

Tomorrow will be the start of a new project, Rubyemon. We'll chronicle this project's progress the whole week starting on Sunday. This project will enjoys one long hackathon.

By the way, we will be putting up donation links for those who enjoy our incoming and future games, and also somehow generous enough to donate some cash. We will also mention a donation request in new games coming soon like Space Fighter Ace, and as well Rubyemon. If I somehow managed to get enough money from donations to pay for web hosting for a year or two, I'll use that money to get a dirt cheap web host somewhere on the internet and get out of this place.

Good night and happy hacking,

Kiba

If you have any suggestions, opinions, ideas, etc, you're welcome to contact me at wikipediankiba_________gmail__________com. You can also comment on this blog post too.