Svea

Posted on by

Development work on SvR and other is halted. Working full time with software related stuff all day makes me not really in the mood for more of that when I get home. To be able to resume working on these projects I will probably need to work part time on my day job.

Anyway, on request from a nice user I have made a quick’n'dirty hack for you all to be able to access Svea Flora with a browser, available at http://ramnorok.se/sf/.
The layout is intended for a mobile browser so you might want to resize your browser to half its regular width to get it more endurable.

Posted on by
Reply

Things have been still now for a while with the Ramnorok projects. Have begun working with audio and also some more on the level editor to make level editor able to create a complete exportable level set (AKA World).

Since I am no longer able to work more than a couple hours per week on this, the new plan is to release SvR without the server side community support. I plan to release it for free under an open source license. Will probably release for desktop browsers first, then port to mobile.

Whats left before release 1 is:
Sound effects and Music
Fix remaining functionality with level editor.
Some more graphics needed for ingame objects.
A bunch of levels
30-40h of miscellaneous.

Preliminary release date: Will be ready when it is ready.

/Kasper

(updated 20130212)

Yeah

Posted on by
Reply

Still working on SvR. I now have a pretty neat level editor, some more in-game objects, and all ui stuff is html+css instead of js+canvas. no public demo yet, if you are following this and would like to help test or design levels please let me know.

Some game screens:

Level Editor:

Gameplay

 

SvR ref*ctoring

Posted on by
Reply

These past couple of days I have been refactoring Sven vs Robots by dividing code into a set of ApplicationScreens.

An ApplicationScreen can be a title menu, an options menu, actual game screen etc, and essentially has a show() and a hide() method. An ApplicationScreen maintains it’s own state and also keeps a list of inputs to listen to and their corresponding action.Essentially it is a JavaScript interpretation of using the Game and Screen interfaces from the Libgdx api. So far working good, it is a natural way to divide the game into modules.

Also recently realised that creating UI controls with low level Canvas calls might not be such a good idea. In Sven vs Robots there will be a lot of focus on community-parts, like discussions, level editors, user stats and so on. So a lot of UI focus needed. There are not that many Canvas specific UI toolkits. The only one decent one I could find at time of writing is Zebra, which is GPL for non-academic use and I wish to keep my source closed, at least initially.

After browsing around on the topic I realised that the solution to not wanting to create your own low level UI Canvas toolkit is to put HTML controls within the canvas itself. You do this for example with CSS and absolute positioning. For some more info on this check HTML5 Canvas Essentials by David Geary. Currently considering using this for UI components, and also rewriting my existing UI stuff like main and level selection menus, control panel etc with HTML controls.

/Kasper

 

 

 

Sven vs Robots

Posted on by
Reply

Yeah that will be the name of the new game!

SvR is progressing well and I think it will be appreciated once it is released. Currently working on the main menu system; title screen, selecting levels etc. To really learn the under-the-hood stuff I choose to write this from scratch without relying on any 3rd party JS libraries or code. So as a result I’m constructing my own utility library, mostly for canvas stuff, but also some Ajax etc. Something I will hopefully find useful for future projects, might also release to the community when it gets mature enough.

I have switched from portrait view to landscape view btw. Makes more sense since the game is aimed just as much for desktop browsers as a mobile game.

Currently the project is at 1560 lines of JS.

1. WebStorm 2. ??? 3. Profit

Posted on by
Reply

I have until now been using Eclipse + JSDT for JavaScript development. What you get with this is some syntax validation, a hierarchical view of the structure of your program, auto indentation, and (in my opinion poor and seemingly random) code completion, (there’s probably more but that’s what I ended up using). Also it would turn sluggish on my system when something like 500 lines of code was reached. Ended up more and more frustrated, so it was time for change…

I have now been trying an evaluation version of the WebStorm IDE from JetBrains for two days and it is like working with JavaScript’s hot cousin who happens to also be a very good worker! Everything is so far just smooth and good and automatic, check out the features 8-). The only drawback I guess is that it’s not completely free. $49 for personal license and $99 for business. A small and very reasonable price to pay if you spend hours every day in it.

Turn based robot puzzle status

Posted on by
Reply

The project name for my new turn based puzzle game is: Discrete Escape.
Will need to come up with a better name before release!

Development is progressing well. Currently working on the control panel.
Done so far:

  • A set of intro/tutorial levels. Fully playable.
  • A level parser.
  • Objects: 2 different evil Robots, a Switch that can open and close a Door, Wall, Player, A Box that can be moved, A hole which player and Robots die if entering, but can be filled with a Box.
  • Received, and integrated, some real nice pixel art from Mattias Guhl; for robots, player, wall and some other stuff!
  • Player moveable through touch (tapping edges of screen), and keyboard.

The game is tested mostly on desktop (Firefox, Chrome) also seems to work in Android (2.3.7) browser.
I will try to make it work for most popular desktop browsers before release, and make it a native app via Phonegap for mobile platforms.

Currently clocking in at 769 Lines of JavaScript (not including whitespace and comments).

Here is a screenshot of level 1. Note that it is still in early draft mode, controls especially. Behold!
BR
Kasper

Svea Flora iOS update

Posted on by
Reply

I got a 2nd rejection on Svea Flora for Apple App store.

Reason:
- loaded, refreshed, ran, and/or responded very slowly
– did not integrate with app content and/or iOS features

This is frustrating but a good learning experience for writing apps with a nice UI. I can definitely improve some things for Svea Flora on the above points. It will take some work though.
Some things on the top of my head:

  • Swipe support for navigation. I have experimented with this earlier but was struck by a bug on Android where scroll and swipe events where intermittently not registered if registered for swipe events. This issue. So I will experiment with adding it for the platforms where the bug is not occurring, i.e. iOS.
  • I can use tap events instead of click events for buttons. A click event is 300ms slower, because it waits to check if is not a double click before proceeding.There are some problems with tap event firing twice, which is the reason I was not using it already, called Ghost Clicks. So will need to add the suggested workaround.
  • Start using animated page transitions on iOS and Android 3+. It looks cooler and should add to the overall impression of the responsiveness. I disabled it because it is not supported on Android 2.x.

Don’t think those items are enough though so will consult the guidelines and try to find other areas to improve.

/Kasper

Soon…

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve started on a prototype for a new game. It is a turn based puzzle game where the player must reach the goal in each level by outsmarting the evil robots guarding it. Think of it as training for a post Skynet scenario!
It is developed as a HTML+CSS+JavaScript application, using canvas for drawing to screen.

It will be released with a level editor. I’m aiming for creating the possibility to share, rate and play user levels via a game server. Perhaps also compete somehow.