J McCormack - Programming Blog

Sticky: Welcome to my Blog!

Jonathan McCormack — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:35:08 +0000

Welcome readers to my blog!

This post is just here as a heads up on where to go and how to see all my work. First of all there’s the posts below that I try to update as often as I can, and then finally the main resource I like to use are the pages.

The pages can be found going across the top of the screen, or to the left of the screen. Each pages holds information about previous projects, assignments and modules, as well as some work I’ve been doing in my own time.

I hope you can find your way around my blog, and I hope you enjoy reading about my projects as much as I enjoyed creating them.

/ Jonny McCormack

Current Reading Material (10/08)

Jonathan McCormack — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:26:56 +0000

This week I began looking into Lua scripting, and I’ve been working through the book ‘World of Warcraft Programming’ (See left) and ‘Programming in Lua’ by Roberto Ierusalimschy. Lua scripting is always something I’ve wanted to try and I think creating tools for World of Warcraft players gives me a massive audience for my work, which is a real motivator to get something amazing and creative done.

In addition, I’ve also been reading ‘Introduction to 3D Game Programming with Direct X 9.0c – A Shader Approach’ by Frank D. Luna, hoping to hone my 3D programming skills and learning more about advanced 3d rendering techniques.

Current Reading Material (12/03)

Jonathan McCormack — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:14:41 +0000

Being a programmer who’s always preferred an actual book to read and reference from rather than a PDF, I’m quite the fan of borrowing from our University’s library.

Text’s I’m currently studying:

Design Patterns – By Gamma Johnson & Helm Vlisside

I believe the patterns discussed in this book are assential reading for any programmer wanting to turn professional, I believe that knowing and understanding these Design Patterns makes you far more communicative with collegues and experienced programmers. Additionally following the patterns makes my programming cleaner, smarter and more understandable.

Introduction to 3D Game Programming with Direct X 9.0 – By Frank D. Luna

An amazing text to refer to when I program with Direct X and using it has greatly enhanced my understanding of DirectX. In addition to that I’ve worked through his tutorials which are very well documented and very informative.

iPhone Development: Game Proposal

Jonathan McCormack — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:24:07 +0000

Proposal

Pong, originally released in 1972 – an instant success in the arcades with its addictive, competitive and simple game play. Pong pitted two players against each other in a simple 2D game of tennis. Each player had their own bat and the ball would bounce between each side and too and from the sides of the playing field. This inclusion of physics was almost never seen before and added to the games fun and success.

70s nostalgia coming at yah!

It is my hope to take this game mechanic from its dated 2D shell and move it into 3D for Apples iPhone. The games control, in previous remakes of this title, was often its limiting factor due to the hardware it was produced for, players would struggle to accurately move their bat across the screen to their desired position. The iPhone however gives us this new form of control with its touch screen and motion sensitive controls.

The Grey bat at the front of the screen would be controlled by the user’s finger, whereas the darker grey bat at the rear of the screen would be controlled by either an AI or another player.

It is my intension for the player to control of the position of their baton with their finger, giving them full quick movement across their entire 3D environment. In addition to the touch sensitive controls, I’ll also allow users to shake their iPhone during game play – this would allow users to speed up their ball whilst it is in mid motion.

The game would feature a competitive scoring system, an addition to the original games. Though this will include the normal scoring system of who’s scored more goals, that sort of score is difficult to compare with peers and record, so the game will also include a integer score, the game will reward the player with a score bonus for scoring (Which would increase if the shot was quicker than normal speed) and also reduce your score for letting a goal in (That penalty would decrease as the ball gained speed). This would allow us to store leader board statistics within the iPhone’s record memory. The game will also support the ability to send your top scores across Bluetooth so you can see your friends and peers scores on your leader board.

That isn’t the only feature planned for Bluetooth however, the game will also support local over Bluetooth multiplayer, where the AI is replaced with a player connected via Bluetooth.

Complications

During this games production, I can foresee a few problems that might come up with development, the main problem that needs to be addressed straight away is that Apple products cannot be developed for in a Windows Environment, after discussing this problem with my lecturer Gui Gasser we’ve concluded that using some emulation software would solve this problem as it is possible to replicate the OS X environment in Windows – I’ll be using the freeware software PearPC to emulated Mac OS X 10.3. With that OS I can then download and use the iPhones freely available SDK from the internet.

Additional complications arise from the games vector and collision mechanics, however it’s not incredibly complicated but I believe that I should aim to develop and test those mechanics as soon as possible.

One final complication is the Bluetooth connectivity – however I’m lucky enough to have access to the wide documentation on Java development at my University’s library. I currently have Micro Java Game Development by David Fox and Roman Verhovsek and Beginning J2ME From Novice to Professional by Sing Li which both cover Bluetooth connection and multiplayer gaming.

Development Milestones

1. Gaining access to a Mac Environment, be that from PearPC or the Apple Macs in our University.

2. Study the Apple SDK and go through the tutorials online to better educate myself on iPhone development.

3. Prototype the Vector collision in the game.

4. Prototype the movement on the game via touch screen and by shaking the iPhone.

5. Add sounds and graphics to the game.

6. Create a stable game from those prototypes that incorporates score and leader board support.

7. Begin Bluetooth development for multiplayer gaming.

8. Create an attractive UI and environment for my game to be played in.

Welcome to My Blog :)

Jonathan McCormack — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:55:28 +0000

Hello Readers!

Welcome to my blogspace; this is generally where I’ll be keeping an up-to-date log of my work across the second year of my studies (Computer Games Programming).

The main ‘tags’ or categories of my posts will be:

My modules at University:

Console Development

Interactive 3D Programming

Applied Game Development

Mobile Devices

Personal and Professional Development

And of course any personal projects I embark on,

In addition to the posts I’ll be adding in the future, I’ll also be adding an archive of my old posts from journal that covered my progress from the first half of this year, as well as a release version and video documentation of my work done in that first 6 months of this semester.

I hope you enjoy my blog and continue reading, and I’d love to hear and answer from/to any comments or questions about myself or my work.