My Once a Year Update

I don't know why I can't keep this blogging thing up. I usually manage to make one post a year so here's my yearly update.

XO Football got derailed because... life... work... and Java. I just didn't feel like screwing with Java anymore. I also felt I needed to understand what goes on in game engines down to the OpenGL level. It felt like I was doing too much guessing at what various game engines allowed me to do without really understanding.

So in the last half year or so I've worked on learning OpenGL and I've been using Go (golang) to build a rendering engine. Its been a good combination for the most part. Go being a simple language mostly stays out of the way (I do have to convert from C/C++ tutorials to Go bindings and run into quirks) and most of my problems deal with understanding OpenGL. Anton's OpenGL 4 Tutorials by Anton Gerdelan helped me get over a lot of hurdles that had me bogged down. It was a good fit for my mindset, stressing the use of C for simplicity and learning without trying to encapsulate everything immediately. So far I've been testing what I've learned by working towards a Minecraft like block builder. I'm not working on game features but just basic rendering, texturing, block placement and how to wrap that up in my own framework.

Will I ever get back to the XO idea? I'd like to and probably will tinker with it again once I've got an understanding of a 2D layer that I can add to my framework. However I'm also into the idea of Minecraft like spaceship building after playing some StarMade. I'd like to tinker with that idea as well since I'm already doing block building work. But first let's see if I can make more than one post this year. One step at a time.

XO Football: Because its Really About the X's and O's

At least that's what I tell myself to feel better about developing an American football game with no game graphics skills. That doesn't mean I shouldn't take this opportunity to exercise my skills, learn some things and have fun problem solving right?

So the goal is to chip away at a fully functioning football game that thanks to Libgdx should be playable on mobile, desktop and web. The long term dream is to build something that supports seasons, online play, player stats and attributes and just about everything else you'd come to expect in a modern football title. But currently I'm breaking down the game of football into small puzzles and solving them step by step. That's a nice way of saying I'm a long way from the dream goal.

I'm only going to focus on graphics to the extent of making the game playable. It will be more like building a football game engine. I'm more concerned with how receivers run routes, how players block or shed blocks, how a defensive back handles zone coverage etc. I also think it would be slick to have a game that was heavy on skill and strategy with a simple graphical representation. I'm envisioning a simple and clean style with some way of incorporating teams and their colors into the X's and O's. Yes half of it really is just me psyching myself up to accept the graphics. But I'm also do believe in the purists part of it and hope that if I finish others might find value in it too.

My work on the project is already under way as a part of my year of getting more done. So far starting from New Year's Day I've gotten up to reading formations and plays from a file, receiver route running and being able to throw the ball to a chosen receiver.  I'm going to try to document my progress and learning here starting with a backtrack over what I've already done. Hopefully I'll be doing this all the way through a launch on Google Play. Wish me luck.

OK Blogger Here I Am

I'm going to move my blog (as if I really keep up with it) here to Blogger from WordPress and cross my fingers that Google doesn't take the axe to it. Maybe I'll keep up with it this time since its a new toy. :-)