Game Dev

Twice each month, I interview independent developers in the gaming industry. I felt that there was a niche not being served, in that I wanted the inside scoop behind many of the developers I interact without over the years. This 30 minute show is a casual conversation between a developer and myself, where he or she illustrates how they got their start, what their current and previous projects are, and some of their favorite tools, languages, and frameworks are. ...

Click here to play Super Rawr-Type Redux Source Code: https://github.com/DaveVoyles/Super-Rawr-Type-Redux I’ve spent the last 3 months working on the follow up to my previous game, Super Rawr-Type. It was a simple side scrolling 2D shmup, which I wrote in JavaScript and also ported to Windows 8. One bug prevents me from getting it into the store, and I’m not able to replicate it, so who knows if it will ever be released there. ...

Loading Super Rawr-Type within the Win8 touch simulator For the last two weeks or so I’ve been working out bugs in Super Rawr-Type and integrating touch controls for the Windows 8 port. This is the first time I’ve ever created touch controls, so it took a bit to understand how they work, specifically with toggling the joystick for movement and stationary buttons for shooting, switching weapons, and activating powerups. What proved most difficult for me really was not having a machine to test my controls on. I’ve had to rely on the simulator thus far, which basically runs a virtual machine on your desktop, wrapped a shell that appears like a Win8 tablet. The buttons on the right hand side emulate figure gestures, so you can view and understand how your own touches will affect the game. ...

When building my Win8 port of Super Rawr-Type, I ran into all sorts of performance issues, due to lack of optimization. This was to be expected, as I on gave myself 1 month to complete the base game, then I would take the second and final month to port it to different platforms and worry about optimization. The design of my levels is where most of my issues came from. I explain it pretty well in this post here. The gist of it is this: When the map loads, it is filled with ~150 enemies, which are constantly being updated. Obviously this comes with quite a bit of overhead. The browser version played well, but on a dedicated OS it chugs. ...

[UPDATE] Clarified that I have two classes for my bullet. One which uses pooling, and another that does not use pooling. So my object pooling optimizations don’t seem to be working. I thought I would have seen some improvements in terms of my performance, but I’m just not seeing it. I think one issue is due to the fact that with more objects lying around, the garbage collector takes longer to run. Essentially, the pooling reduces how often the collector runs, but makes those runs more noticeable. ...

So I’m quickly progressing in my newest game, Super Rawr-Typeand am just about to put the finishing touches on it. I’ve given myself one month (30 days) to work on this bad boy. GDC and PAX took up quite a bit of time recently, so I’ve got a few days left to go. It’s far from perfect, but it’ll do. Next month, I’ll focus on publishing to The Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 Stores, as well as wrapping the code in the iOS wrapper. ...

I’ve just finished creating a tutorial on programming pickups for vehicles in UDK. This covers both ammo and health. I noticed that it was something that I felt wasn’t covered in depth when I needed to learn how to do it for Death Sentence, so I figured I would save others the time. At the end of the tutorial you’ll find the .uc code for both items, and instructions on how to implement it into your game. What are you waiting for? Check it out! And be sure to let me know what you think of it as well.