however, now, i was left with the more difficult part, namely, coming up with a game idea… i read an artice HERE about what defines an addictive and simple game, and it mostly agrees with what i thought of in the first place…

i need a simple game with:

• Cheerful graphics & colour palette
• funny looking main character
• simple objective (maybe try & transport something somewhere or collect something to shoot the baddies and clear the room “read: level”)
• very small number of actions (i was thinking front, back, strafe left, strafe right, turn with mouse look, shoot and jump) that way, we can cut down the keys to a bare minimum (4 movement + 1 jump + 1 mouse click shoot) which is one of the rules stated in the Dave Koele website, that i think make sense

ok… so what i’m thinking right now is broadly:

STORY: a small toy robot (some 10cm tall) is left in the room of some random geek *wink*wink* who goes for some pizza, and then some weird machine or electricity glitch causes a machine to generate small robots that are going crazy mad, trying to destroy our little bot…

OBJECTIVE: now our bot has only two objectives: survive and try to destroy all the nasty bots. When all the bots in a certain area are destroyed, a portal opens up that takes the bot to the next level…

ACTIONS: destroying the bots is done by bashing the bots, or collecting ammo which powers a gun that is fired from our bots arm, other than that, the bot can only move around and jump… trying to keep it simple as possible

LEVEL ADVANCEMENT:
- higher levels mean more bots, and even maybe some machines that produce more bots…
- also, higher levels mean more powerful bots, more aggressive ones and maybe even ones that can shoot something, etc

OPTIONALS:
- there can be pick-ups, like health, armour and weapon upgrades, but that can take a lower priority for the time being
- there can also be a bit of puzzles (try to control an R/C heli to turn a switch on, etc)
- possibly add a “BOSS” figure every few levels
- cell shaded? that might be cool to learn and try

so, thats about it for now, more on the details later… as always, comments are more than welcome

As a result, i decided i wanna lay down the ground rules to what this project is all about, and what i actually want from it… so here is the ground work about how the project will be used and how it will work:

1. the users will be presented with two things, an API (basically some shared libs that are linked in the code) and an app that runs the simulation
2. the app can be run in full mode (simulate match and render events) or in just AI mode (simulate match and present a script of what happened) or just a renderer (read a script and animate what happened)
3. the arena must be VERY moddable, ie: players can create their own:
   • Levels (ie: terrain + objectives)
   • Game types (ie: king of the hill, last man standing, allows buildings or not & rules)
   • Models and textures for the units in the game
4. the players must have the option to code as little as they want of their bots (only the top strategy for the team they are playing) or could get down and dirty to replace everything about the engine itself (ie: even the aiming, shooting and pathfinding algorithms)
5. coders submit their inventions in source code format, that is formatted in a certain way (packaging system) in order to be available for other coders and easily added (everything from custom unit models & animations to AI strategies and algorithms to even Gfx engine and physics engines)
6. perhaps provide a python (or lua?) scripting interface for quickly testing code or algorithms

As for the game itself, i wanna try and make it scalable, from a VERY simple grade (just a number of teams, each team with one bot shooting each other, last one wins) to a VERY complete and complex grade (think full RTS but AI code instead of players, with resources, buildings, walls, transports, siege, etc)

thats all for now folks… the design is not complete and in no way coherent yet, but atleast now i have a starting ground… i will try to tackle these points one at a time, but generally it is clear that the main point will be to think of making the engine highly moddable as possible…

as always, any comments are more than welcome… keep you posted

what comes next, though, is the actual choice of engines to use… i will most likely use the Ogre3D engine for the graphics… as for the physics, i am looking into the Bullet physics engine vs OPAL / ODE engine… will have to read more about them later…

still don’t know if there is even such a thing as a SOUND engine, and if there is, i will look into finding an OS one to use too…

one more thing, i will most likely try to look into references in order to facilitate the building of the API (ie: i will try to look at how Project Hoshimi used to work) and i will try to build the arena to be as close as possible to a complete RTS game (building, gathering, healing, objectives, etc)

thats mostly it for now… stay tuned for more on the OpenAIArena project later…

ps: the exile game has to be pushed back now to later when i am more experienced and have more time…Technorati Tags: openaiarena

SO, for the OpenAIArena, i will likely develop my own Gfx, Physics, Sound & Input engines, in order to grasp what goes in to the development of such engines and try to pick up a bit of knowledge on the way… later on, i will prob replace these engines with some Opensource engines (prime candidates include Ogre3D, OpenDynamicsEngine, etc) to focus on the AI and overall engine handling and benefit form the advances in these engines..
As for the Exiles project, i will probably opt to using ready opensource engines from the get-go, so as to decrease the game dev time and focus on the game itself… i might even look into using some free editions of a complete game engine, (crystal space, or torque) as opposed to gluing different engines together… currently, Crystal Space seems to be the best candidate (free, integrates with ODE, has CELayer, many plug-in modules, etc)

For some other news, i have had another programmer contacted about maybe joining work on the OpenAIArena project… this will be great, since i could really use the extra hand… i was also thinking that once i get the general description of the project up and posted on SourceForge, i could post the project announcement on a few sites (like digg, gamedev.net, etc so that it can attract developers…)

thats it for now… till the next time…

1- Game Concept A: The Exile: you can think about this game as the sims, meets fallout… game story in short is, group of friends go camping… then for some reason, they go back to the city and find there is no one else in the country except them (as far as they know)… you govern the group of friends (10 for starters) through their basic needs and start with simple tasks such as building shelter, gathering food, water and protecting the group from animals etc… then you progress the skills of all your party members and progress through the game through different small objectives…

2- Game Concept B: OpenAIArena: not really a game, but would require most of the same general knowledge and programming guides… it is meant to be an open source AI programming arena, similar to Imagine Cup’s Project Hoshimi… players will provide DLLs to be loaded by the game engine for bots to battle each other out in different types of games (Deathmatch, CTF, team deathmatch, etc)…

3- What Next? well, basically, i thought that i need to mostly read more about programming games than i currently know… while programming tutorials are nice and give you a good insight, i do believe i get the best info to stick into my head by reading a book… so i went off to Amazon, and i picked for starters the book The C++ Programming Language… and until it arrives, ill be formalizing the design and the concepts, so i can start laying out the design into classes and modules when im done with the book…

well, thats mostly it for now… hopefully next time, i will have something more interesting to say

till then, cheers

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so, i guess… after the introductions, i should state two points… where i currently stand, and where i hope i will be after this “quest” is over…

1. Where i currently stand: i am a computer engineer, i have been programming for mostly something around 6 or 7 years now… i have worked mostly in java… i have a semi-good memory of what c++ is like and how it works, but not enough to power up a game… i also tried some basic OpenGL tutorials, but nothing past the basic rendering and transformation examples… as for the creative side, i have two ideas for “games” (more on this in a later post) that i would like to experiment with…
2. Where i hope to be: i hope that during the coming year or so, i will be able to put into reality a complete game (one of the aforementioned two) into playable status… i doubt it will ever be in competitive market quality, but maybe it will be enough to get me an honourable mention somewhere, or enough to boost up my resume to get me that great dream job ive always been wanting…

so… what next i may hear you ask? well, currently im in the process of waiting for a few books to be shipped from amazon… over the time, i will try to jot down here the ideas i get, the knowledge i gain, bits & pieces of code i may think up is cool enough, etc… this blog will mainly be just my journal and a place for me to think out loud (and actually remember what i thought of later on