Braindump
I’ve had a number of thoughts floating around in my head for a while, and I’ve decided that rather than spam MystBlogs’ feed with what may end up being a dozen little blurbles, I’ll just lump them into one big stream-of-consciousness thing here.
First, on a note that’s related to my previous two blog entries, I continue to be impressed with the Unity3D engine and related development environment. It feels a lot like the descriptions of Plasma that have been coming out of Cyan for the past 6 years, it’s incredibly easy to just mess around with, it’s pretty well-documented, and I can leverage my existing JavaScript knowledge (not expertise, but knowledge ;)) against scripting actions for games, because Unity’s scripting environment is C#/JS. Perhaps the biggest testament to the engine’s ease-of-use is the fact that in 3 days, I’ve already managed to prototype a pretty good deal of Labyrinth’s mechanics. Scripting is done, as I noted before, with JavaScript (or C#, if one is so inclined), and scripts are attached to objects in the engine. Any public variables (for anything from integers to other object references) can be assigned dynamically by typing in numbers (for integers) or drag-and-dropping objects onto the relevant field in the script’s inspector (for enabling script-based control of an object).
It just continues to boggle my mind that in the space of 3 days (counting from Friday night to Monday night; unfortunately I’ve been busy the past couple of days and haven’t gotten much more done) I’ve managed to enable mouse-based control of the Labyrinth board, enable physics-based movement of the marble on the board, create a game timer, a re-spawn control should you fall through a hole in the board, and define win regions using the engine’s built-in physics-based collider/trigger system (see? more and more Plasma-like all the time. Now about those doors… ;)). Still on my to-do list before the end of the week is the development of placeholder “power-up” objects in MAX (really, just some spheres or cubes… the great thing about Unity is I can re-save a more advanced model later and after an asset refresh, any already-used instance of that object will be automatically updated with the new data) and the scripting necessary to control them. I’ll probably put most of the scripting on the marble itself, since that’ll be an easier, more centralized way of maintaining the entire gameplay system than having a dozen little scripts scattered all over the place. I also want to do some research into how to load a new level after you complete the current one, but that’ll come a bit later I think. I’ve got 20 days left, and lots of work to do, but I think it can be done. I may not hit 30-35 different game boards by the end, but I’ll probably be able to come damn close… board-making is a piece of cake, really.
On a game-related note, Oscy and I have been playing Tomb Raider: Anniversary together after downloading it from GameTap. We haven’t finished it yet, but I have to say that so far I’ve been pretty darn impressed. Admittedly, some of the twitchier and more prolonged jump/climb/jump/shimmy/swing/shimmy/jump/climb/climb/climb/jump/fall/die/repeat portions can get a bit tedious, but it’s a really fun game with some pretty clever puzzles, and I’m glad I succumbed to the hype train that GameTap has been conducting and played it. My last experience with Tomb Raider was in 2000 when my (much older) cousin let me poke around in the original Tomb Raider’s Croft Manor section while my mom, my brother, and I stayed at my great-aunt’s house in Florida on a trip to Kennedy Space Center, so Anniversary has been quite interesting to me (I’m still trying to figure out whether they built Croft Manor off of a real British manor for the games, or whether they built a wicked-sweet set for the movies).
Also, Sam & Max Season 2! w00t!
Continuing on the subject of gaming and Macs, Oscy and I had the pleasure of attending Urupalooza a couple of weekends ago. We managed to drag R-chan along with us, and she in turn decided to basically kidnap a friend of hers (Scott) from Gas Powered Games, and together we roamed around Seattle on Sunday. Part of our excursions took us to a local mall, because I was rather adamant about taking the opportunity to visit one of Seattle’s three Apple Retail stores, since Spokane has none. By the way, the one in the Alderwood Mall (in Lynwood) is really cramped compared to the one in Kenwood, Ohio. While I was there I managed to dink around with the new aluminum keyboard (I like… sure beats the hell out of the white one I’ve got; the keys are better suited to my style of typing) and mess with an iPhone for the second time in two days (Brian Fioca has one, it is sweet).
Somewhat tangentially, I picked up iLife ‘08 (planning on getting iWork ‘08 soon), and have spent a considerable amount of time re-reorganizing my photo library around the “events paradigm”. This, coupled with the recent acquisition of a full-fledged .Mac account (well, a full-fledged .Mac sub-account, because my brother can’t follow directions on not using the Family Pack activation key himself *grumble*), has resulted in Urupalooza photos being posted online in a shiny .Mac Web Gallery for all to see. So go see :).
Anyway, R-chan – as anyone who was at Mysterium 2006 likely knows – is the proud owner of a light green new-model VW Beetle (with the license plate “MT DEW”, of course). Because the alternative would have involved trying to cram the three of us into the cab of my (very small) S-10 pickup truck, we also hijacked her car for the trip. R-chan’s car is the only Beetle I’ve ever been in, and it’s quite nice. I actually made the off-hand comment on the way to Seattle that the Beetle was probably the closest thing to an Apple-branded car out there. Amusingly enough, on the way back R-chan started playing a CD, and I discovered that her CD player was located in the trunk. This is largely because it’s an after-market add-on developed by VW because the Beetle didn’t originally have a CD player option. Oddly enough, this served to cement my impression that it was basically the Macintosh of cars, because as much as I do like Apple’s products, they tend to have this one weird thing that totally throws you for a loop. Y’know, like the old one-button mice, the non-optical, un-cleanable ball in the Mighty Mouse scroll nipple, the fact that the Dashboard’s implementation doesn’t exactly match the definition of the actual English word, the fact that you can’t sync notes between the iPhone and your computer, or that the USB 2.0 ports on the aluminum keyboard apparently only have enough power to do stuff like charge iPods when attached to an aluminum iMac… these are all “CD player in the trunk” sort of oddities that, while not complete obstructions to usability, do kind of make you wonder what they were thinking.
And now Apple and VW are supposedly making a car together. If the CD player ends up in the trunk, I will laugh myself silly.
Also, Apple is likely going to be announcing new iPods on my birthday. Or at least something Apple-related. Best. Present. Ever. Now I just need money and an easily-accessible Apple Retail store, because I don’t think I’ll be able to wait for shipping if it’s as good as I think it’ll be (and no, Seattle is not “easily accessible” from Spokane). My 1st Gen mini is in desperate need of replacingment. I’m also thinking about seeing if the local authorized reseller has any aluminum keyboards available… if not, I may have to order one. As I mentioned, I really like the feel of the thing, and once I adjusted to the slightly wider-than-normal key spacing, I was typing at my regular speed (as a test, I banged out the intro to Myst in TextEdit… yes, I am a nerd).
On a (nerd-)related note, I correctly identified a font from a sample printout today. Granted it was Courier, which was easy for me to catch because the printout looked identical to a Notepad printout, and Notepad’s default font is Courier, but still… nerd-dom, here I come (or here I am… not sure).
Next week is my birthday, and it’s weird thinking that I’m already going to be 23. What doesn’t help is when people on dA post journals about getting glasses and turning 17 and how they feel really old all of a sudden. I seem to have started shouting “get off my lawn!” a lot at these types, and I can’t help but think that it’s hurting more than helping ;). Next week is also our second wedding anniversary (I can’t figure out a not-stupid-sounding way of making “Oscy and I” possessive), so whee :D. In two weeks we’ll also have been living on our own in Spokane for 9 months, so there’s something of a marginally-impressive milestone.
My braindump seems to be petering out now, so I’ll just go ahead and wrap this up for now, and hopefully be more coherent on a day when I’ve had more sleep and less brain overloading at work.