Jason T Clark.net

More to come on this shortly…

Now that I’ve been added as a developer on the Legend of Mazzeroth project, I’ve been trying to familiarize myself with the client codebase.  It’s been quite some time since I played around with C++, but it’s coming back to me fairly quickly.  I pulled down the code from the Sourceforge SVN, and immediately loaded up the Visual Studio 9 project.  Code pulled in nicely, but the first issue I ran into was figuring out where the binary gets moved during the post-build process.  Once I figured that out, my next issue was supporting .dlls.  I can’t seem to get them “recognized” by the binary when I run the project.  Not sure what the problem is there, but when I figure it out, I’ll let you guys know.  My plan is to get familiar with the client code, and begin to fix bugs and add features that are listed on Mantis.  I’ve gotta start somewhere….

As I stated in my last post, I’ve been looking for a new indie game development project to learn from and contribute to.  I was hoping to find a team that was fairly established, but willing to take on a new member that’s eager to get cracking on the latest releases of the project.  After asking around, it’s looks like I’ve found a good one.  It’s called The Legend of Mazzeroth, which is an open-source 2D MMORPG.  The game client is going to be available across all platforms, which include Win32, MacOSX, Linux, and eventually a mobile client for the iPhone (which I think is L337!).  Shout out to Trevor Allen, one of the developers on the project, who asked me to get involved.

As the project wiki states:

“The Legend of Mazzeroth is a 2D MMORPG project dedicated to bringing the Open Source Community a high-quality game that hundreds of users can enjoy simultaneously. It includes both an end-user Client and Server software.”

I’m looking forward to keeping all my readers (all 6 of you) posted on the progress of the project.  Stay tuned!

Back from Labor Day weekend and now, I guess it’s time to do some more blogging. My last update was telling you guys that the Multiverse experiments are all “gone to November”, especially since the machine I was using to work on it was returned to work. And now that I’ve been putting my XBOX360 to good use, I’ve fallen upon the XNA Creator’s Club website, which shows us independents how we can leverage the XNA framework to create games for Windows, and compatible XBOX360 titles. Now be advised, the XNA framework won’t be used to create equivalent titles to Fallout 3 or Too Human, but it is a great way to develop somewhat content rich games for the XBOX360.

First things first, unless you have a fresh copy of Visual Studio 2005, you’ll need to download a copy of Visual Studio C# 2005 Express. It didn’t take that long for me, so in a matter of a few minutes, I was ready to go. Next download SP1 for it, then you can install the XNA Game Studio 2.0, which includes the XNA Framework, and a few project templates.

Now I’m up on C#- especially since it’s very very similar to Java. What I didn’t know was how to get things going using XNA. I must admit, the XNA website has lots of good tutorials and examples that will get you going quickly. The videos are especially good. What’s really nice is that once you understand how everything works, and how to use the project templates as a launching pad for you game projects, the rest is quite easy. I was able to even hook in one of my extra XBOX 360 controllers, and test out the my controller logic, making sure that my code was handling gamepad events properly. In subsequent posts, I will begin to flesh out a few examples to show just how XNA can be leveraged to create some really interesting applications.

OK, so I’m up REALLY early this morning, trying to work on some code that was really bothering me, and I happened to wander on to gamedev.net, seeing that there was announcement about the Havok Engine being provided for free in non-commercial PC applications. This is somewhat BIG news for homebrewers. I mean, Havok is one of the premiere physics engine out there - Half-life, CoH, Starcraft….quite a few big name titles use this engine. The download access doesn’t begin until May of this year, but still, I’m psyched….

Check out this link: http://www.havok.com/content/view/582/53/

For me, the XBOX 360 initially enticed me because of the Microsoft XNA Framework.  I especially like the idea of being able to do console development, which is why I now have one.  However, I’m glad the Epic Games has added the ability to mod UT3 for the PS3 platform.  According to an article posted yesterday on the PlanetUnreal website, the PS3 modding tools were released in beta form to the members of the UT3Mods mailing list.  I immediately signed up as a member to the mailing list, in hopes to see some additional activity around it.

So, among all the other things that I have going on, one thing I have been promising myself is that I would learn a game scripting language, starting with TorqueScript. Right now, I am wearing many hats- all simultaneously, and it’s sort of an expert juggling act that I’ve been mastering for quite some time. Tossing up the bowling ball, while catching the flaming torch, and remembering that a slippery tuna fish is in my other hand gets tiresome, true- but the love of all things related is why I attempt this act in the first place.

I picked up this book , 3d Game Programming: All-in-One, in an attempt to familiarize myself with the whole picture. The book includes a brief introduction, and sections on building, scripting, texturing, etc. And since we know that each of those topics can get very detailed, right now I need to just get a general sweep of everything as I expose myself to Game Development. The book comes with Torque, which is an independently licensable game engine- made especially for homebrew game developers and small game development startups. The book actually uses Torque in all of it’s examples, but of course the ideas are applicable in other areas.

I am just getting started with looking at Torque in depth, so if you have some tips, pass them along.