Last weekend Ludum Dare hosted their 18th competition and I went down to Cambridge with a couple friends to take part in a mini-jam for it.

For those who haven’t heard of Ludum Dare before, it’s a compatition which challenges game developers to create a full working game based on a given theme in just 48 hours, from conception to completion with entirely custom code and assets. Traditionally to take part you’ve had to work on your own, but recently they’ve added the option to submit your entry as a jam game, allowing you to work in a team, with more relaxed rules.

However jam games aren’t judged in the same competition as the single developer entries (or event judged at all for that matter).

I heard on the tigsource forums that some other UK game developers were all getting together for a mini-jam for Ludum Dare down in Cambridge. So I packed up my tent Read the rest of this entry »

Versioning is an important part of software development. Without it you’re missing out on some awesome functionality. It can save hours of frustration and make your life as a developer better. It’s free and really easy, so why not?!

I’m going to go through two versioning options, Subversion (SVN) and Dropbox (though there are many more) and point you towards a free service for SVN. But first, a little explanation of why you should be doing it.

Versioning for the lone wolf:

While versioning is fantastic for working in a team, it’s also essential if you’re working on your own. Picture this, you sit down to your computer at 6pm Friday and decide you’re going to totally rewrite your collision detection system, by 11pm Sunday you realise that you’ve messed up and that your original system worked much better. How do you get back to where you were on Friday? Easy, view the version history for the files you’ve changed and revert them back to exactly how they were. But what if on Saturday you wrote a cleaver friction calculation you want to keep also? No problem, revert that class/method/line back to how it was on Saturday and the rest back to Friday. All with the click of your mouse.

Versioning for the team player:

Versioning really comes into it’s own when you’re working on a team. It allows you to have a central repository where team members can checkout the files they’re working on, make changes then check them back in for the rest of the team to get. Team members can even work on the same files at the same time then merge their changes when they’re done.

There are many more benefits too which I’m not going to list here.

Ok so you’ve decided that you want to give versioning a go, what are your options? I’ll outline two but there are many more just a google search away. Read the rest of this entry »

TIGSource is running a competition, A Game By It’s Cover. The idea is to look at a fake box-art/game cartridge and make a game inspired by the picture. It’s already very popular and I thought I’d give it a go:

I chose the fake game cartridge, TWINS

The game I’m making is called Doppelganger: Yin vs Yang (working title). Read the rest of this entry »

On my old blog, CodieCode, I wrote a tutorial on how to set up an OpenGL, C++ and GLUT environment using the CodeBlocks IDE and MinGW compiler on a Windows XP and Vista machine. This was a popular post which seemed to help quite a few people. However time moves on, software updates and operating systems change. I’ve decided to update this tutorial with Windows 7 (though this should still work fine on XP and Vista) and the latest version of CodeBlocks and MinGW. Hope it helps

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If you’re interesting in coding in OpenGL and C++ a great way to  start is by using GLUT.  GLUT takes care of a lot of the difficulties in setting up an OpenGL project and lets you get started on your project quick and easily. In this tutorial I will guide you through installing and setting up the software you’ll need (CodeBlocks, MinGW and GLUT). Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re using Unity with C# you may be looking for a good messenger service for sending messages between game objects. Unity does come with a messenger service, but it’s limited and doesn’t really allow for a very good encapsulated approach.

Enter CSharpMessenger Extended to help out.

This messenger works by keeping track of messages broadcast and those objects which chose to listen for them. This way the object broadcasting the message need not worry about who needs the information. By doing this we can better keep the objects separate from each other, helping no end with development and maintenance.

I’ve created a small example game to illustrate how this works. This is a catcher game where boxes are spawned at a random position along the top of the screen and players must catch them before they fall off the bottom (I’m sure you’ve played many like it before). Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve recently started exploring Unity3D and it’s ace

For those that might not know, Unity3D is a full game engine that’s free for indie use, its a graphic driven development tool that’s really quite smart. If your interested, head over to Unity3D.com and check it out.

Unity3D gives some excellent tutorials, complete with full projects. Also Alec Holowka of Infinite Ammo has done some fantastic video tutorials which you can check out here.

One of the most appealing features of Unity3D is that’s it’s cross platform, allowing me to work on my Windows box (using Visual Studio 2008 Express for code editing) and my MacBook (with MonoDevelop) simultaneously.

I figured id need a real project to learn Unity as I go so have started to port Stabilize! over, the built-in PhysX engine makes this a really easy process and it’s coming along quite nicely.

Here’s some screenshot goodness: Read the rest of this entry »

If you like to make flash games and haven’t given Flixel a go, why not?

Flixel is a flash game engine for those of us who use the Flex SDK rather than the Flash editor to write games. It’s compatible with FlexBuilder, FlashDevelop and plain old MXML compiler, to find out more visit Flixel.org

I’ve created a template which gives the basic layout for a game. Read the rest of this entry »

Since joining the real world after finishing university, having a beautiful baby girl and getting my first proper programming job, my life has been pretty manic, leaving little time for making games. Well I’m glad to say I’m back in the flow. Read the rest of this entry »

I released Stabilize! a few months ago to a fairly good response, receiving around 60,000 impressions in the first 7 days. Since then it’s kinda taken off, after being placed on numerous physics games specific portals. It’s currently registering at around 650,000 impressions Read the rest of this entry »

The big new game I was working on has finally been fully released. The game is called Stabilize! and it’s a physics based puzzle game where you have to drop a series of pre-chosen boxes onto a series of different balances, making sure not to disrupt the balance or lose more than 3 boxes.

This is the first game I’ve made where I’ve had a sponsor, Read the rest of this entry »