Tag Archive for 'experiment'

Game tiles experiment

Published on March 25, 2008 in ActionScript, Graphics and Power-up Media. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

justGREAT! I start off designing some tiles just for practice and one day later I end up with a neat experiment :D

I was inspired by the graphics of Dofus Arena and decided to try and create some similar tiles… Spending half a day fooling around with Fireworks I ended up with this image:

game tiles

Another half a day later I turned the graphics into an animated terrain generator: http://labs.justgreat.nl/exp080302.htm

The terrain is generated according to three small bitmaps (see top left corner). The first one determines the type of the tile. The second one is like a bumpmap and determines the elevation of eacht tile. The third bitmap determines where objects (plants, rocks, gold, etc.) should be placed.
In the future I might create an editor which can write the bitmaps.

Once I designed more versions of each tile-type (4 or 5 different grass tiles for example) the generator will be able to pick a random version of that tile. This way repetition in the structure should be avoided (at the moment the tiles are just mirrored at random).

Bubbling creatures

Published on December 11, 2007 in ActionScript and Power-up Media. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Isn’t this justGREAT! Today I created a game engine in about 4 hours :D

The engine is based on a game called “Jawbreaker” which is a real fun and addicting game.

The final game needs a nice scoreboard and a menu and of course some nice sounds, tweens and animations to spice it up…

For the time being I added the result as an experiment to the lab:
http://labs.justgreat.nl/exp071204.htm

Go check it out and let me know what you think of it…

Space Invaders getting physical

Published on December 3, 2007 in ActionScript and Power-up Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Today I created my first experiment using the first two classes from my physics engine and they work just great! (hmmm, well… they just work ok :P )

This summer I bought a book about game physics (check http://blog.justgreat.nl/2007/07/09/game-physics-here-i-come for more details) and here is the first result:
http://labs.justgreat.nl/exp071201.htm

I started with the engine because last week I decided I want to build a game-like portfolio site (check http://www.justgreat.nl/ for progress…). Because every item on the site is gonna have some kind of physics applied to it, it seemed like a good idea to combine the creating of my physics engine with the creating of this portfolio site.

At the moment the engine only contains a Vector3D- and a Particle-class but I’m going to expand it the coming week(s).
To make the testing of the engine a bit more fun I added a little code to generate 5×5 pixel invaders as particles. (For the space invader-generation part I was inspired by one of Jared Tarbell’s experiments where he created little 3×3 invaders.)

labs.justgreat.nl :: now with 100% more experiments!

Published on November 20, 2007 in ActionScript and Power-up Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Isn’t this just great! I moved my experiments tot the “labs”-domain of justGREAT.nl and I added all of my old experiments (at least the ones that are worth mentioning).

It took me a while to regain the creation-dates, make all experiments ready for displaying and creating the thumbnails, but finally I’m finished :D

Check out the new labs-section here: http://labs.justgreat.nl/
Put it in your favorites because I’m going to post at least one experiment a week (really!).

Drop a line if you like them…

Game Physics here I come…

Published on July 9, 2007 in Check this! and Power-up Media. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

Just great! After years I finally found the book I was looking for all the time…

Game Physics – Engine Development

I’m not really a book person, but when I tried to create a physics engine a while back I ran into a couple of major problems which stopped me from going on with it. I tried it a couple of times ever since but I always found myself stuck on the same problems (complicated collision detection etc.). Back then I searched for decent books to help me but there wern’t any. Either they were way too easy (coming with all kinds of crappy solutions) or way too hard (most of them all about theoretical physics).

I ran into this book by accident as I was actually looking for an all picture book with cool and stylish web design (Web design index by content).

I haven’t read any of it yet, but looking at the pics inside it is exactly what I needed :D .
I tend to read it in my vacation so you might expect some nice experiments in the near future.

For those of you who are interested:

Game Physics – Engine Development by Ian Millington
isbn: 978-0-12-369471-3

Web design index by content
isbn: 90-5768-069-6 | http://webdesignindex.org

PS: I saw this Ian dude also has a book on AI which sounds interesting too, but that something for the future. (God, where am I gonna find the time…)