Waterstone Productions

The updated faces of evil!

2010-03-08T19:09:00.000-05:00

Howdy!

Well I finally got around to updating the site. Instead of moving the main page to google apps, I decided to keep it on the blog, but trimmed it a lot and tried out some new themes. This looks a lot better than the last one I think. I'm glad that Blogger finally lets you have static pages, it helps a lot. The site finally has a more professional focus, soley about our games and projects.

Also, like previously said, we're definitely still open if anyone wants to join up and help the cause :) I'm doing this completely by myself, so I know I could use some help. It's unpaid for now, but if we get things going that could change. We can still have nerf war fights around our virtual office though :)

Ok, lots of other stuff in the works, but I won't spoil anything now. Peace!

Projects and developments

2010-02-12T15:11:00.002-05:00

Hola!

Hey I guess it's been a while ;) Well, I took an extended break to deal with a few things and try to get a job in my field, but still nothing conclusive yet. In the meantime, I've gone back trying to get more development into Silence Unmasked. I still have hopes of making it more professional and modern so I can sell it on the iphone (and now ipad :P). Going to take some work, and maybe even some searching for a good artist to help out, but it's possible. The next project is still going to be that rpg, and at least with that there is plenty of nice looking placeholder art out there I can use.

I'm also considering updating the website again, into a more regular site (versus a blog as it is now). I guess some people are actually visiting the site somehow, so it's probably time to get something a little better. Google Apps for sites looks promising, but I'm not entirely sure. If the website suddenly becomes dead, then it's because of that, just so you know :) With that, I could separate my personal stuff into a subdomain/subsite (along with subsites for the game projects).

Gamestone itself is still on the table, as I try to improve things to be easier for the games I'm making. I'd like some particle effects for SU so that's something I am looking into, along with other planned features and structuring (and bugfixing). I guess this is implied (by being open source and all), but if there's any programmers out there who'd like to help out, let me know, it's not always easy working on all this by oneself :P

Okies, well gotta go for now. See ya later!

Some programmer art, enjoy!

2009-12-01T15:46:00.008-05:00

Hola,
I'm not dead, but I was just busy with post graduation stuff and job searching, as well as just some personal time off since it was such a stressful October :) Anyway, I thought I'd post up some screens from Silence Unmasked, at least pertaining to the version I posted for class.

Not the greatest artwork, but enough for a student project made in 4 weeks anyway :) The newer version I'm hopefully going to get onto the iphone will have much better artwork, but I've decided to also keep a lite, or free, version of my games using the free/testing assets. That way I can still keep using the excellent googlecode for projects :D

Lots of updates in the works for GS and the game too, hopefully I can keep up with postings here, though SVN also keeps a record of my activity. One specific thing to mention is that I upgraded a lot of the libraries, including boost so that I could finally use Py3K instead of the older python. There was some trouble getting it working, but I figured out most of the kinks I think. I will try to get out a release build soon, as soon as I'm done testing a few things.

That, and I hope I can correct my sleep schedule, which has been pretty messed up lately :P

New release soon... hopefully :)

2009-10-10T20:33:00.004-04:00

Hi all,
I'm sorry I've been kinda sparse in posts. School has been really busy... but hey, I got to use the gamestone engine in my class project. You can view the project to the right, under "Silence Unmasked". I've been updating the engine a lot, just not a lot of time to post at the moment. Almost graduated though, so hopefully soon I'll have more free time. And I'll package up the new version of GS soon enough too :)
Peace!

New release

2009-08-27T23:15:00.005-04:00

Hola,
I put a release online for 0.1.0. It's still in beta status, so it might have issues. But there it is, a fresh tarball. Use subversion though if you want to get the latest in bugfixes, features. I'm collecting and documenting additions, fixes, etc in a changelog, and I started using the issue tracker. I started some work today on serialization support, so that one could load all the resources needed, serialize them, and then unserialize them as they are needed. Should be pretty cool once it's done. Anyway, later!

Documentation ahoy!

2009-08-18T21:39:00.010-04:00

Hola,
Somewhat sparse in posts lately, but not in what I've been doing. Besides nearing graduation, I've been doing lots of stuff with Gamestone. The biggest thing is trying to get the whole system more documented.

I found a way to get autogenerated NaturalDocs files visible from within the svn repository, so now there are API reference docs :) Yay for technology. In addition to simply documenting the classes, I'm trying to include appropriate usage notes (such as how to create a gamestate, use the application, create cameras, use controllers, etc). I also started a website for general purpose documentation, such as goals, tasks, more detailed examples, etc. Since my experience with my resume/portfolio site, I've really gotten to like Google Sites.

I'm also finally creating regular source releases (and maybe binary too) to post up as downloads (since I found CPack as part of CMake). Now I just have to figure out some version numbering for the project. It's not 1.0 status now, but certainly usable for games. Maybe something like 0.1.1? Major numbers for significant status changes, and minor/revision numbers for regular additions (0.1.0->0.1.9->0.2.0->etc).

Anyway, I'm trying to make the project more standardized so that more people know about it and can use it.

Ah, but the extra life...

2009-08-06T18:11:00.005-04:00

Hey folks,
Sorry it's been a bit slow in updating here. I have been working on things, just not a ton of visual updates. For one, I've been designing a general event system that any kind of game could use. It's like going to be using a python script/xml system. Not to mention I'm slowly working over all the base objects to be read from xml instead of lua.

Ever since I found out a super easy way to read XML into python (which has since been superseded by xmlParser -- ed), I've had a lot better experiences with data configs. Concurrently, the existing demo is not yet ported over (the one that had a protobattle system), but I put in a demo that I could use for my event system testing.

Also, due to my event system research, I stumbled upon a bug that I hadn't noticed before with the view frustum. It took me quite a while (thinking it was anything from my custom matrix stack to the ExtractFrustum that I used--in which I consequently learned a lot more about these frustum tests) to find out why an object could be off the screen sometimes and not be clipped, but then be clipped on the other side. It turns out it was an incredibly stupid bug on my part. Go figure :P Anyway, now tiled backgrounds are much more efficient now that clipping is fixed.

I've been still busy with homework and such too. I graduate in a couple months, so I'm a bit nervous about it all, whether I'll be good enough to get a job at these places. But you only really know once you try, right? I did finally get a custom site up for my resume and portfolio. They are not finished, but at least I have a nice starting point thanks to Google Sites.

Anyway, sorry again for the lack of updates (to whoever reads this :P). Later!

RPG Goodiness part 2

2009-07-06T17:42:00.011-04:00

Well, I added a music and sound system into the engine finally, and it works for the most part. Not sure yet about it's usability on the iPhone (since I'm less familiar with sound stuff), but I would imagine so. Anyway, just thought I'd offer an update on that. I also got a couple other things in there, along with advancing the battle demo. Almost to the point where, after selections are made, that allies can attack enemies and vice versa. Not easy going, but I'm making definite progress.

In other news, I'm starting school again this week... so it's going to be a split between attentions, but I think I'll still have enough time to work on things. Still have 3 more classes and 4 months left and then I'm out and graduated, a second time.

In any case, lots of stress and time crunches and gamestone updates to come :P

RPG goodiness

2009-06-27T04:35:00.009-04:00

Hiya there,
I've been doing a lot of work trying to design this rpg engine from the ground up... not just battles, but things that will be used in maps, menus, boot screens, etc, etc. Although this screenshot doesn't show it, I've finally started getting some of the battle data into the battle system:

And don't those guys look happy in the green fields? I'm sure it's just they never got any fresh air or anything that they turned evil :P

Now, that I can read from the data (or am starting to), I hope things will continue to progress smoothly. The toughest thing is I'm trying to design the mechanics of this by memory or rote of playing so many games. There's sooo much to think about, but it's not bad. Just time consuming :) I'm still sticking with an easy phase based approach for battles.

I figure, this is the first full game from start to engine that I'm creating, so simplicity is good. Everything is going to be somewhat basic at the start, and maybe I can tweak things up if I learn more about how it all comes together and have time. Nothing too complicated UI wise, mechanics wise, etc, until I've gotten my feet wet more :P My ultimate RPG goal is something akin to Star Ocean for the SNES (that game rocked!), so maybe in a sequel or future game I can figure that stuff out :)

Alrighty, it's sleep time now...zzz

Where UI ideas go to die

2009-06-24T03:35:00.009-04:00

Hey,
I'm finally out of classes, and have 2 weeks (well now less..) to put towards the engine, so I hope to get a lot done. Here's the latest demo (and beginning of my battle prototype):

I got a Window class in, that can use textures to decorate the borders and body, as well as some UI classes in (for Icons and Windows, as well as a battle UI). I'm including the NES controller since I want to make sure that I allocate some space for the virtual D-Pad (not to mention making the demo resolution the same as the iphones). Not a permanent thing I want, but for now it'll do for simplicity.

I hope I get over this cold sometime soon, I hate wasting my vacation time... :P

Quickie part 2

2009-06-18T22:17:00.007-04:00

Hi,
I changed the font system for the better. Now, thanks to FTGL and freetype, we can have stuff like this:

Yes, that's ~~Japanese~~ Chinese (yes, that's what you get for not knowing the difference when copying in asian characters from random sources; But even so, the font in use does have Japanese characters--and Korean, and others--so it's more of the fault of what I typed into the string :P). I have no idea what I wrote, but it's probably something like, "I are l00ser" (but we'll just pass it off on Hidon for now) :P Anyway, now we can use TTFs instead of a proprietary font format. Didn't take that long to get in, plus it helped me fix a few longstanding bugs/annoyances about the coordinate system.

Quickie

2009-06-17T15:38:00.004-04:00

Howdy!
I've been doing numerous things lately (also trying to finish up a semester), but here's a screenshot to tide you over from the latest demo.

I got box primitives working again, as well as did some more work on designing the first battle system. And I figured, what the heck, have a little fun :P

Progress report

2009-06-08T22:54:00.006-04:00

Hey there folks,
I just submitted the changes to GS that make animation working again. Here's a screenshot:

The current demo moves the "player" sprite around (along with the camera) the "world". It is pretty smooth even with 511 other sprites all animating at the same time. So, now I'm moving onto getting collision working again. I also cleaned up some of the resource management, so that it's easier to know how much memory a game will use and to set what textures/tiles/glyphs/etc go into it (probably could be explained better, but basically you have more direct control over memory management, but it's not complicated as it sounds).

SoM finished!

2009-06-04T13:22:00.005-04:00

Hi folks,
I was a bit away while I moved into my new place and started transferring things over. Been a busy week, and more hw is on the way.. :P Anyway, just thought I'd give an update.

I finished Secret of Mana, and it was quite a nice experience :) Now, onto getting GS updated again, see ya soon!

Secret of Mana Mix

2009-05-20T15:15:00.004-04:00

Not done yet, but just felt like getting a screeny up here for all to enjoy. I really like the game, it's hard to imagine why I avoided it for a while. Not at all complicated (with dozens of hidden items, one-shots etc), and very enjoyable.

I got myself an Xbox 360 controller and surprisingly it works very nicely for snes games (though I got the gamestop version).

One of the best remixes ever

2009-05-10T21:43:00.007-04:00

Nuff said :)

Stress test

2009-05-10T18:58:00.005-04:00

Hey there again!
Not a large update, but wanted to throw up the latest things for GS. I haven't coded on it much in the last week or so (for previously stated reasons), but I figured it would be good to post up some screens on the last stuff I was doing (aside from porting to different platforms). The new sprite system has a set number of slots that can be defined in, meaning that each platform it's compiled for could have a different sprite limit that fits with how many could be used before slowdown (the same thing is possible with bgs too). Here's 512 sprites:

And, here's 4000 sprites:

There was some slowdown, but it wasn't super slow, so I think some of the optimizations I was doing really paid off! Anyway, I'm going to continue work again officially tonight (after I finish the hw which I've been procrastinating on :P). More updates later this week.

Flash carts

2009-05-10T18:31:00.008-04:00

One of the best inventions for a console is definitely the flash cart :D I decided to test out my new camera and show you all a portion of my game hardware stash so far ;)

I didn't realize it, but I only seem to have Nintendo related hardware (the Donkey kong cart is the snes flash and I consider the SD Media Launcher somewhat of a flash cart since you can use SDBoot, etc)... hmmm. I should rectify that. I'm thinking about getting myself either a turbografx cart next (along with an RGB modded system) or a genesis cart. Both systems have great games, though I've never really played on a TG16/PCE before. For TG16/PCE, we have this (which seems to be the best option--USB instead of parallel port!), and for Genesis, this, though it is Parallel based, but still very awesome (64 MB storage space, sweet!). Generally, I wouldn't buy from Neoflash, but their TG16 cart looks great! But for game gear, master system, etc I'll stick with tototek. I love video game technology :D

P.S. Yes, that is indeed a virtual boy flash cart. As soon as they started shipping I snagged one up, since I really do like my virtual boy (pics for that sometime later). Now I get to play all those obscure games, esp the rare japanese ones!

7th Saga

2009-05-10T17:58:00.007-04:00

Well, I finally beat it. All I have to say is... great game :D And, what is this supposed to be?

Hehe, I know it's a crab, but such a strange picture!

Anyway, I've decided I'm going to try to make the site more picture friendly, to hopefully get more people to come here and such. I'll get more into a review of this later, but I highly recommend it!

Also, when playing you may want to play the version that was modified from the Japanese version's stats. It makes the game a lot more fair.

P.S. By the way, I love those filter options, this one is using Super Eagle I think. Don't they look great?

New beginnings

2009-05-06T17:48:00.005-04:00

Hi,
I'm back from another hiatus :) Yeah, I just had to use a bad Friday the 13th pun :)

Lately, lots of stuff, blah blah blah. Anyway, so I'm still working on GS, but lately (in the last couple weeks), I took a break from all the serious work to just play some games. I mean, if you can't enjoy some games on your own time, what are you doing in the game biz? :P

Anyway, I reorganized my RPG quest, so it's now in all one list like the horror one. I know no one likes to go to my forums or even comment here (wink wink), but I'll be trying to get a few of these snes RPGs done that I've been meaning to get to. So, given that I reorganized and started alphabetically, I started 7th Saga. And although it's a real bitch in terms of difficulty, it's fun. There's a patched rom that makes it more like the JP one so it's been much easier and I'm at the end now. I'm also renovating my reviews and saves and such, to get myself better organized. I just posted up a review of a game I did a while back, Dual Orb 2.

In terms of gamestone, I did make it more efficient and more portable to different systems, but I still have a lot of work to do. Bringing collision back in after the refactoring, adding an audio system, things like that. Let's hope I even have time for everything in the coming months :P

Porting to windows and beyond

2009-04-07T01:32:00.003-04:00

Hola again,
Yeah, I've been... busy I guess. School, work, stress, the whole 11 yards. Anyway, I'm trying to deal with the stress in productive ways, so I've been working a lot on gamestone. For starters, I managed to make the python moved over engine sources faster by putting core functionality into OpenGL wrappers. Also, I decided to wrap all the OpenGL functions that are used thinly, so that I could put in profiling data, as well as in the future for when I need to replace fixed function calls with shader calls. This way it remains transparent to the end user.

Also, I finally got the engine working via Windows! It took a few tries, but I got it building via MinGW/MSYS. Instructions are on the wiki for anyone who is curious. For some reason it's slower to run, but at least it runs :) I had to take out a few modules in order to get both versions working, but they weren't that necessary (socket, crypt, etc). I also took out thread, but really you can still do multithreaded programming via "weightless threads" or similar things. So it's not a big loss.

Coming up, I'm still trying to bring all the basic functionality together again (font, collisions, animations, etc), and try to bring it back in even better ways. I think I could probably get it all up to speed in a month or so. If it seems slow at times, I'm doing this while I'm in school so I don't often have a ton of time. Anyway, I'd write more about my personal life, but not much really has changed. Still dealing with depression and all that jazz, but I'll be ok I think.

Oh yeah, new IDGA meeting coming up, I'm looking forward to that. Ok, see you later then!

Late night thoughts

2009-03-14T05:19:00.005-04:00

Okay, it's super late, and I should be in bed, but I'm obviously not (or am I sleep typing? hmmm...). Anyway, just a small update and then I'm off for sleep.

So, GS is getting a slight overhaul. Nothing's really changing functionality wise, it's just that I'm reorganizing and moving a lot of the engine classes to Python. I'm doing this because basically, it's been getting annoying to deal with some C++ stuff and writing them in Python will (and already has been) much easier. It will probably be a bit slower, but the tradeoff is that the design and coding will be faster. And in the end for speed, I can always convert them to C code with Pyrex and compile them in. I've tested it and it's definitely doable, so that's something that I don't have to worry about in the end. Anyway, right now the default build is working (though I changed dirs in svn by moving up), but it doesn't do much since I'm moving over all the classes (Application works for the most part). But exposing OpenGL, SFML, and other useful libraries has been peachy keen with boost so there's no real problems.

IDGA meeting was fun as always. It's been a while since I went there, and boy was it busy as heck. But I had a good time and am looking forward to next month. I realized I still need to polish up the site a bit, and fill in my portfolio, resume, and all that. I still need to upload the Ulesia project, and figure out a way to host the super large Silence Unmasked project (for an unfinished demo, it sure is big). And I'm working on replacing the screenshots too (though for the Diego game, I still need to actually get a copy of that... hopefully it still is purchasable... :P).

So basically, my goal still is to have the real Ulesia game finished by the time I graduate or at least by the end of the year, and I have a couple people who are willing to help a bit with writing and such. Aside from getting bogged down with schoolwork, I've been working to get the engine done as quickly as possible. If luck holds, in a month or so I can start working on fixing up the battle and town systems and start writing it all up. Anyway, I won't ramble on that any more right now.

Okies, so that's it, thanks for listening (to whoever actually is :P). Night!

/dev/random + 1

2009-03-04T02:34:00.005-05:00

Hi there,

Haven't been that updatey lately, but that's because I was going through heck trying to get our class project finished and get an A for that course. It was frustrating dealing with that whole class, but I came out of it with a nice project that's finished (which will soon be in the portfolio), and a new friend to talk to who is interested in working on games professionally with me. I'm hoping I can get something doable and completed by the time I graduate, so that it could be something to sell on the App Store and all that fun jazz, so we'll see how that goes. I'm thinking a small scale RPG, with a similar story to Ulesia and a much better battle system. Anyway, I'm going to hopefully attend this month's IDGA meeting, which means I need to print up business cards and get my resume/etc online soon.

As far as GS updates, there are lots of things coming in, most importantly collision that works great and is pretty efficient. It's limited in design, but the idea is that if you need really complex collision, there's the box2d system already in there which is much more adequate. The standalone collision stuff is mainly for things that don't need any advanced physics.

Also, I just found out that my financial aid situation was FINALLY straightened out, so it looks like I'll be able to cover my expenses for school and be able to get some new equipment (these computers are so ancient they probably have Arabic glyphs on the inside...). And an ipod touch so I can start dev testing for that too. I also am going to try to get a part time job with customer service emails which should be easier to do, and I found out that I do have a deposit on this... apartment, so when I move out in June I'll get May's money back. I'm basically looking at a roommate thing to try to save on money till Oct... I may not like it, but at least it will be easier to manage I guess. Oh well, I won't get too much into that, but it's sort of a good news day for me. And on top of that I'll be able to start laser soon :D So, yay for that :)

My new classes are hopefully going to be less annoying than the last (one of them is team based again but it's just papers/essays so I think it'll be less stressful). I have to work with Torque again (yes, that bastard engine that everyone at DeVry seems enamored with for some inane reason....). Why don't they choose a much better engine, like Panda3D or something? That's actually been used in other schools pretty well, and it's something that seems a lot more stable. Oh well, I guess I'll have to learn about *snicker* good 3D engine design while looking at Torque :)

Anyway, I guess that's all for now. I'm glad I'm starting to make some more friends and getting out more, though it's still pretty limited I guess. Not that I have a ton of time, but it would be nice to have someone within walking distance to hang out with on a regular basis. Well, I'm going to get in some game time before I hit the hay (currently playing Extermination). I'm trying to fit more game time into my schedule since I've been kinda stressed out (and I put a lot of time into GS on a daily basis trying to get it finished/usable asap), and it's good to get back to my quest every once in a while :D

Later folks! Thanks for listening to WLRW, all ramble, all the time!

Gamestone update - 02-14-2009

2009-02-14T18:19:00.004-05:00

Happy Valentines Day!
In honor of the day, here's a Gamestone update! (Actually, it's just a coincidence :P)

I finally got Python embedded into the engine, so that it's going to be a constant Python 2.6.1 for everyone. I'm still working out the details, including the standard library, PYTHONPATH, etc, but the demo works fine. There's more updates as well, so read on if you're interested!

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Gamestone update - 02-03-2009

2009-02-03T20:47:00.004-05:00

Howdy!
I recently added a bunch of cool new things to the engine, though the biggest thing actually game-wise would be scrollable NPCs. It was not hard at all to add it (I was a bit worried about how I would do it). I also made some additions to the library in the source tree, particularly embedding Boost.Python and replacing SDL with SFML. Read on to see the rest of the update.

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