This blog has been moved to franzgameblog.com
The new version is dedicated to game development tips and related topics.
For fatjumper related news check out fatjumper.com
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Still alive
This blog is still alive, but after a bit of research on blogging I've decided to transition to using Wordpress, and to do a few things to promote this blog to get more readers.
Wordpress isn't for the faint of heart, but it's right up my alley with my tech background. Thank you, blogger.com for making my first blog experiment easy and fun, but it's time to move on.
I hope to have the new blog up and running in a day or so.
-- fxl
Wordpress isn't for the faint of heart, but it's right up my alley with my tech background. Thank you, blogger.com for making my first blog experiment easy and fun, but it's time to move on.
I hope to have the new blog up and running in a day or so.
-- fxl
Monday, February 28, 2011
End of part 1
After taking a look at the stats of this blog I realize that too few people are reading it. Early on there were some hopeful signs and a steady increase in pageviews, but recently we're down to a small trickle. So it's time to rethink things.
I'm planning on splitting this blog into two separate blogs/websites, one about general game design topics and another one dedicated to fatjumper. I'll be posting links to the new blogs here when they're up and running, most likely sometime in March. Thank you for your continued interest and patience.
-- fxl
I'm planning on splitting this blog into two separate blogs/websites, one about general game design topics and another one dedicated to fatjumper. I'll be posting links to the new blogs here when they're up and running, most likely sometime in March. Thank you for your continued interest and patience.
-- fxl
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Days of Yore, GDC 2011
Next week is GDC week. That's the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco. This is a truly huge event with about 18,000 people in attendance in each of the past three years. I went for the first time in San Jose about 20 years ago, and 300 people attended then.
Back in those days is was Chris Crawford's event, having started in his living room. It was called the CGDC (computer game developer's conference). Some years later the "computer" was dropped since most video game development was happening for non-computers like Gameboys and SNESes. The weird thing is that the proper name should probably be VGDC (video game developer's conference) but then again, in a few years we might move on to holograms of direct brain manipulations, so the GDC is ready if and/or when that happens.
The good news is that Chris Crawford will again be at GDC this year. Here's an excerpt from Chris's description:
As part of the special lectures around the 25th GDC show, original CGDC founder and Balance Of Power creator Chris Crawford will present a session called 'In Days Of Yore', explaining how "the earliest days of computer games were times of technological swashbuckling, shoestring budgets, amateur designers, amateurish products, and wild experimentation. "
I disagree with that "amateurish" characterization of the products of that time. We were as professional for the standards of those days. At the same time we were furiously advancing the state of the art, hence the wild experimentation. Fortunately the spirit of those Days of Yore is still alive and well 25 years later.
--fxl
Back in those days is was Chris Crawford's event, having started in his living room. It was called the CGDC (computer game developer's conference). Some years later the "computer" was dropped since most video game development was happening for non-computers like Gameboys and SNESes. The weird thing is that the proper name should probably be VGDC (video game developer's conference) but then again, in a few years we might move on to holograms of direct brain manipulations, so the GDC is ready if and/or when that happens.
The good news is that Chris Crawford will again be at GDC this year. Here's an excerpt from Chris's description:
As part of the special lectures around the 25th GDC show, original CGDC founder and Balance Of Power creator Chris Crawford will present a session called 'In Days Of Yore', explaining how "the earliest days of computer games were times of technological swashbuckling, shoestring budgets, amateur designers, amateurish products, and wild experimentation. "
I disagree with that "amateurish" characterization of the products of that time. We were as professional for the standards of those days. At the same time we were furiously advancing the state of the art, hence the wild experimentation. Fortunately the spirit of those Days of Yore is still alive and well 25 years later.
--fxl
Friday, February 25, 2011
2 Levels
It's a good idea to make more than one level before diving into making a level editor. So here is the latest version with 2 levels: www.fatjumper.com
Click on the link for Version 19.
You'd think the game would be farther along when we're at version 19 already, but actually this is pretty typical. It can take literally thousands of versions to go from a simple prototype to a released commercial product.
Yes, I was able to get to the end of level 2. It's not all that hard, but you might need a few tries to do it. My best score is 1266.
The scoring is still provisional and the score resets after playing a level, which is very wrong, but OK for now.
Hey, it's Friday night, so what am I doing writing into this blog? Time to get back to my real life (yes, I have one).
-- fxl
Click on the link for Version 19.
You'd think the game would be farther along when we're at version 19 already, but actually this is pretty typical. It can take literally thousands of versions to go from a simple prototype to a released commercial product.
Yes, I was able to get to the end of level 2. It's not all that hard, but you might need a few tries to do it. My best score is 1266.
The scoring is still provisional and the score resets after playing a level, which is very wrong, but OK for now.
Hey, it's Friday night, so what am I doing writing into this blog? Time to get back to my real life (yes, I have one).
-- fxl
Thursday, February 24, 2011
raining cake
No new release today, just a screenshot from today's progress.
 |
| It's raining cake Those are pieces of chocolate cake raining from the sky. Kind of like that movie about meatballs. Notice how our unnamed fat hero has gotten kind of fat from all that cake. I also finally have a frame counter working (though you can't see it in this screenshot. Amazingly, at 640x480 resolution I'm getting 2000 frames per second. Even at 1080p I'm getting 300 fps, and that's on a 2.8 GHz quadcore PC with a $100 graphics card. Looks like I'll have to make high-res models for the consoles and PC, and low-res models for the phones. I've put off testing on a 3GS iPhone long enough, but that'll have to be done very soon so I can get a feel for the touch controls and the framerate on that device. |
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Zooming
Well, to do a level editor we need zooming. And to do zooming it was necessary to change the background to something much bigger. It was also time to put in some original sounds effects. The result is version 18 which you can try out here: www.fatjumper.com
Oh yes, I also started making the fatjumper website, though for now it just shows the logo and a link to the latest version (and a link to the main company website).
On touch devices the zooming will be done using pinch controls, on devices with keyboards it'll be a couple of keys, and on consoles it'll be one of the joysticks (or a couple of buttons).
-- fxl
Oh yes, I also started making the fatjumper website, though for now it just shows the logo and a link to the latest version (and a link to the main company website).
On touch devices the zooming will be done using pinch controls, on devices with keyboards it'll be a couple of keys, and on consoles it'll be one of the joysticks (or a couple of buttons).
-- fxl
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