This things I believe

It has finally hit me like a 19.75 lb bag of bricks that I messed up my personal programming education. I zeroed in on a select few topics with such a mighty passion that I ignored a lot of fundamentals. There are so many things I don't know that I'm finding now are serious weakness that make me look like a fool.

I've been moping for a bit. I think I need to change that. So here is my list (this is really for me):

  • Algorithm Analysis
  • Sorting Algorithms
  • Unit Testing
  • Memory Manager - I've done this before...but it was so long ago
  • Data Structures for sorting operation
  • Multi-threading
These are things I need to start improving. I'll need to come up with plans!

Keeping a cool head

I've been doing a lot of outside work in the past 2 weeks. Its become a pretty crazy obsession. I've become obsesed with trying to make a game. I'm finding it easy to become so obsessed that I continually fin the results of my work "not good enough" and get depressed about being an unsuccesful wanna-be game programmer. When this occurs, I start to "blindly" fix things. I hack my way through my own code writing dirty, dirty systems that don't even produce the right results. Its times like these that I need to fight myself on a poweful level and tell myself to STOP and create short plan and then stick to that. If I don't, well bad things happen to my product and to my self-esteem.

So far the side project I'm developing has some intersting mechanics that may work out. Right now the game's "tools" have no purpose because the enemy isn't performing his basic duties. Unless the threat is present, who gives a crap if you have a gun?

ARZ Proto Update

I made a quick change to the prototype. This one is a bit more "advanced" (note the quotes).

Link!
http://www.naveennattam.com/ARZ_2/ARZ_Proto_00_01.zip

ARZ Proto

Hey folks,

Much later then promised here is the first Prototype for ARZ. Now this is not a full fledged demo or game. This is slightly above a tech demo with the purposes of getting some early feedback on how what direction to take the game.

Link!
http://www.naveennattam.com/ARZ_2/ARZ_Proto_00_00.zip

Controls:
Left / Right to rotate the Turret
Space to fire
1 - activate exploding ball
2 - activate gravity ball
3 - make the ball both exploding and gravity

While is there no way to lose or win, just try to keep the little blue things away from the big red P.

Things I'm looking for feedback on:
1) Did you just end up using one type of ball (1/2/3) and didn't need the others?
3) How was the speed of the game (movement of balls, etc)?

Hit me with your thoughts here or at my email (naveen.nattam@gmail.com).

Return to the Land of ARZ

First off, many a happy wishes to the mothers in the world (is that possibly..is that physically possible).

After working on a little iPhone Game for a friend of mine, I got this urge to get back into my windows-friendly side projects. I was, as I posted here a few times, working on a game called "Attack of the Robo Zombies" which was a small twist on a tower defense style game. I was originally making the game in 3d using Irrlicht as a rendering engine and Bullet for physics. While this was going well, I ended up getting frustrated dealing with certain aspects of the technology that I felt were getting WAY more complicated then needed. Around this time is when Ryan approached me to make the iPhone Game and it was then and there that I decided to take ARZ out back with a shotgun under my arm. However, this recent resurgance in good vibes towards wanting to make a game I can easily share with all my friends (iPhone = the big no on that factor), I decided to dust off ARZ and give it another go. This time I more or less started completly over. I removed all the Bullet Physics and stripped Irrlicht down to a simple 2d system. I grabbed old code wherever I could and brought it together to help me build my inital tech demo quickly. So far, its been an incredible success. The switch to 2D is allowing me to easily add my own assets and be able to salvage stuff much easier from the interwebs.

All the work on this project has really given me a new thirst of my hobbyist programming. I've really only completed one game on the side and I think it is high time I finally trying to push through and make another one. So ARZ is back baby. The game design is pretty much the same as before but this time I'm approaching development with a better head then before. My motto goes along the lines of "Plan what to do in advance but only work on what you planned. If something arrives while working on what you planned, don't jump ahead. Finish what you started." Its a simple thing and for the most part is pretty obvious but sometimes I need to remind myself to plan only in the short-term with a rough eye on the long-term.

As my friend Marc Hernadez constantly reminds me: People only give a shit for stuff thats done.

If all goes well and my Mr. Sulz doesn't bug the living hell out of me, I should be able to get a working turret with a projectile that has the gravity mod attached. As soon as I have that I will post a demo and start pushing for feedback. Hopefully you loyal readers will ablige a poor old indian programmer like myself and do just that.

Beat these Beats

My friend Alex has been doing this for a while since he moved to Chicago. His remix of Kanye West's "Love Lockdown" is dopest of the dope.

http://sparkletone.net/