terrains

When i first needed a terrain editor for a 2D game i though that it was something that didn't existed, or that only game development companies had for their own games. After some time googling i found a lot of terrain editors. Some good, some bad, some cheaper, some more expensive. I thought for a while and then i bought T.E.D. I like this terrain editor, but didn't outperformed my expectations. My real intention was to use it with the Dark Basic game engine, but seems no one could help me doing that on the Dark Basic forums and there is no documentation for that matter (at least by the time i was trying to do it). But, besides that its a very good terrain editor. I still use it today and its my favorit for game development, even when used in other programming languages, like actionscript. I use it even for 2D games.this last semester at college i learned to use another terrain editor: TERRAGENIt has a lot of features that can be used for a lot of things, including for video previews for games. Its very easy to control the clouds, watter, sun luminosity, to raise and lower the land,... and that camera navegation, is "brutal", absolutly amazing. You can make move on the terrain with a camera view, controling the camera as you wish and need. The version i used wasn't very useful for 3d rendering but for 2d it was great. Because it was a very old version, i guess the new ones might be a lot better on creating 3d. I recommend it for sure.

Here are more previews of the 2d

Swift 3D

How cool could it be to model in 3D?

Swift 3D is a great tool. No, sorry, excelent tool !!!

Swift 3D allows to easily create 3D content. It's very easy to work with, even if you're not a 3D professional, and it's great to create games and videos for games (or whatever you need)!!!

Game Engine and Tools

Making games is a lot of fun, no doubts about it, but going to the core of the games, by creating the game engine is a very interesting task, to say the least!!!
When creating the game engine and the level editor, new ideas just pop up, even when all the previous fazes prior to coding have been done, all the "mental work". The game i'm creating has potential for continuity and the ideas are just more than a lot!
It's incredible how amazing it is to create something from the beginning and "fill" it with new ideas. Of course, my experience tells me that after some time we should be thinking of something like "oh, ok, i should had taken this approach instead". Nothings perfect!
I'm also creating the level editor for the game. I can already define a stage and visually insert objects, and i can also load levels already build, but some things are missing. It's not yet possible to delete objects by clicking on them and press delete and its not possible to move objects that have already been inserted.
I believe that creating level editors lets us know more about the reality of our game, because when we are coding we expect that things work in a certain way, that sometimes, due to bad coding or whatever, they just don't work that way. Making the level editor, lets us know where everything should be and behave, depending how good is the level editor.
Both game engines and level editors are sometimes avoid by developers that wish to find someone to make it for them, but believe me, the control that is gained over the game, not only of its capacities but also for future upgrades

What's GAME4TRESS

GAME STUDIO

What's GAME4TRESS? Well, if you been reading my blog then you know that i work and study, so there's not much time left for anything else. Once i did some work extra for two companies, and after that i sayd to myself that until i graduate i wouldn't work again "outside the company". It's very hard as it is, sometimes just sleeping 3 or 4 hours maximum and having a little time on the weekend for myself besides all the "must do". Doing "extra work" means not having weekends and if necessary, not sleep. If there is a commitment with a company then i follow that commitment. A certain job has to be done, and so it is, so i started thinking on doing something besides the company where i work an besides college. Something that i want to do (games) and something that didn't meant for me to have a commitment. I was able to work, for myself, learn at my own pace, considering my time, of course, and try to earn money in mediam term, and so GAME4TRESS was born. Initially with a lot of ideas in mind. It was intended not just for games but also to make "things" for virtual worlds, like coding and 3d artwork, or even creating game engines that i could sell. Although i didn't left these ideas behind, i know i have to change the web page design and forget them, for now, and maybe, when i create enough content i can bring back those ideas to life. For now, GAME4TRESS is just a place where i'll show the games i create, because that's my only task these days, considering GAME4TRESS.
So as a conclusion, we (meaning i) intend GAME4TRESS to be a game studio where we'll try to create the best games ever!!! Because time is a problem, we aren't interested in making fast money, our only intention is to create games that are "amazing" and that hold the player to the game. We base ourselfs on quality, not on quantity.

Time,... error,... time,... error

Don't you just hate when you have a development task in mind, that you think it will be easy and it just isn't? What about having made something that once worked and after a couple of changes in your code, that had nothing to do with anything else, the "thing" you did just stops working?
Well, it's good to learn, and we usually learn more with our mistakes, but then the most significant problem comes,... time,... and then you start asking yourself why, why did it stop working, why an easy task transformed itself in such an hard thing to do? Why are you loosing all that precious time? Even after working as a programmer all these years, these days come more often than what you might think. Yesterday i faced one situation like these,... "Ok, i'll get home, start coding, and when my tank hits in a specific object, i'll desplay a message on the right place and a certain character will talk to the player". Well, i do it in 2 minuts, i though. It took me 3 and a half hours to understant why the character didn't want to talk with the player and why my tank just stoped when it hitted the object, when i never told it to stop. Of course that all this means i gained more experience, although it doesn't mean that you won't make the same mistake twice (in another far, far away time of your life, i hope). So, something that was supposed to be done in 2 minuts was made in 3 hours and a half because something stoped working. All the other plans went down for that day (yesterday). Well, rise and shine, another day, another task to be made,... hope that it doesn't take that long

GAME4TRESS

http://www.game4tress.com

When i started "IClick" i confess that developing in an IDE, different than Microsoft Visual Studio came as a problem to me.
I see many people blaming Microsoft for everything, but honestly, i'm Microsoft fan number 1, not just because of Visual Studio, but everything else also. Ok, blame me, but there's no other software like Microsoft's,... Everything in the tip of your fingers,... absolute control of what's happening in your code. Ok, i don't work for Microsoft, but i really respect their work and i believe they are serious on what they do (that's very important, specially these days).
Like i was saying,... it's hard to change from and IDE to another specially when certain tools that i used to use does not exist in the other IDE. This slowed down my game development process, really hard, but even though i loved the final result, the final task, that was the finished game.
In the Game4tress web page
http://www.game4tress.com
i announced that a new game would be finished at the end of November 2009. You can see the reason why this didn't happen in the Game4tress blog
http://game4tress.blogspot.com/
but the lack of experience with the IDE and AS3 were also important in this matter. As the time went by, i started knowing the best practices and sollutions, the correct way of doing things. That brought me to nowadays, where what was once a simple game is now something elaborated and specially engaging.
Why all this explanation when the title of this post is the name of the web site? Well, not only to e xplain the reason why the announced game, in the web site, wasn't finished, but also to explain why http://www.game4tress.com hasn't been updated.
Working 8 hours a day, more 6 hours a day for colledge, studying, making games (whenever possible) , makes my life very difficult to do anything else. Making food, cleaning the house, socializing and house shooping makes also a weekend seem like a flash. Trying to run against the clock or making more than one thing at a time defines my life.
Of course that i have enough content to fill the web site, of course that i have plenty of ideas to implement in the web site, but,... no time left. First of all, making games, after all, its what Game4tress is all about. I'll update the web site asasp, but when ill it be? hope asasp,...
At least i've created the blog
http://game4tress.blogspot.com/
that i'll update with every news and hoppefully, at least once a week!!! remain alert!!!

3D Studio Max animation

When i start making a game i start with a basic concept. Right now i'm thinking on a game whose idea came from a simple flag. Meanwhile i made the flag in 3D Studio Max. I'll have to improve the animation for its purpose, but i couldn't help it just to start playing with the 3D, so here is the 1143 portuguese flag (you may guess the game will have something to do with history)

3D for a magazine

So, after learning something in 3D Studio Max i had to make a magazine with Adobe InDesign as a project for college. The most interesting part, for me, was that this magazine had to have a 3D object on the cover, so i made the 3D has you can see in the image above. I've inserted 3 white lines on the image for copyright protection. The letters are easy to make, but the hand took some time and for my secound 3D creation i can just say i that, in the end, i was proud of the overall work.

My First 3D

College is greate. There's a lot of things to learn. From the first time i saw a 3d artwork that i want to learn 3d. That doesn't mean i'm quitting programming, no,... no way, programming is a passion beyond any other, in terms of professional life. But, i have to confess that i have a crush on 3d. So this semester i learned 3D Studio Max and Maya on college. I can just say that is absolutly beautifull. For the first time you open a software like 3D Studio Max or Maya, its intimidating because you don't know where to start. A lot of things, like icons, menu options, whatever on screen that just make you think "what do i have in front of my eyes?" and "What do i do with this?". Ok, so drawing some objects may be easy for a newbye but transforming those objects is not that intuitive. So learning to operate these tools was a great deal for me.

After reading some books i came with something, in 3D Studio Max 2009, like the image you can see here. It's an easy thing to do, but it's a start.

I Allways knew that i wanted to be a programmer, and what i wanted to do exactly on my professional life as a programmer. I wanted to work on medicine and to make computer games. Those where the two areas of my interest. Why? Well, computer games are a passion. I guess i don't have to say much about this. For you, when reading this, you can understand that video games are very interesting. Interesting for some, a passion for others. I've been since kid playing them and thinking what i could do to change the game if i were able to do it. Medicine, well,... i've been seing a lot of people suffering because of health problem, unfortunatly, who hasn't? that gives me strenght to want to make something in that area. Fortunatly, i've found a job, has a programmer, that allows me to work on medicine. Of course that working is not charity. We are stuck to making business, or else we won't make money, the company goes down, and we with it. That's why things move so slow on healthcare, but we can't do things other way. This is the painfull truth, and as much as we don't like, we have to accept it, it's common logic. The world isn't so difficult to understand, we just have to follow the stream. But, hey,... i'm very happy to work on healthcare. I'm not programming the next machine that will kill cancer or make people imune to diseases, but i'm creating healthcare applications. Games? no, i did not forget about games. Actually, when i went to college, i my game programming "wanna be" came to top. I was trying to came up with a team, and i needed two more members to join with me to go two a competition, i guess it was in corea. I had an idea for a web site, that i didn't knew if it wasn't going to win, but i was certain it would reach corea, so I needed another .Net programmer, like me, and a good designer. I thought of some guys in my class. One was a good designer and the other a crazy lad allways trying to make computer games. That was it, computer games,... and this is where i consider to be the "Part II" of my "programmer's life". Rejecting, both of my colleagues, the idea to to fly to Corea and participate on the competition, i knew i had no time or chance to participate alone. So i gave up that idea. But,... my crazy colleague with likes for game programming, taught me some things about this world. Some of the "game engines" we could buy, some of the programming languages that where most used,... and "Voilá", i loved it. Once again, like before when i tried to learn computer programming on Commodore 64, this person just disappeared. He left college. So, i tried to do my own searches. For some reason i believe in destiny. Things happen, people talk, you gain knowledge and that knowledge will be usefull for your future? If you've read my previous post, you know i started programming because of a friend of mine that after some time left town. Now, has you can see, i started looking, again, at game programming, because a colleague of mine taught me some things and after that he left school. Is it destiny? honestly, i believe so!!!

So here i am now, 3 years later, looking at some code in AS3, on a game i'm developing and that i hope to sell!!! I already have a game developed, "Iclick". It was my first game in AS3. We have to start somewhere and that was my starting point. Judge me if you like,... too few levels, maybe there more things to work on the game, well, yes, but it was my first game, and i wanted to keep it simple. I wanted to know if i was able to do it and post it. I was, Lets now do some "Kung Fu". Just like before (if you read my previous post).

The Internet brought us a lot of new things, specially about the way people comunicate with each others. Although my idea of Internet is not the one we all have nowadays (something more like secoundlife, but more connected to making business), i have to accept the idea that bloggs help people to know more about people with which we are related, somehow, professionaly or with other interest on the personal life. That is good, in my opinion,... its an experience that we can use in the future,...

So, that might be the best reason for me to create this blog - Sharing. Of course i'm not interested on sharing everything, but, i'm interested to share my professional life. Why? well, because in my personal life i've been looking for chances, although knowing exactly what i want, its more difficult to reach the objective. You are lucky, or you aren't. If you are, then you must grab the change when it's time, but you are not lucky, well, there's no change you can grab the chance, because there will be none. Professionaly, you can keep trying. Everything resumes to chances, of couse, or as i keep saying to myself, the will of God. You can't keep away from His will, but you can try doing your best to be what you want to be, and be the best to do it. That takes time, money, patient, and most of all WILL, which, in my opinion is the keyword.

From the first day that i saw a computer i just said "WOW", but when i saw a videogame running on that computer, and i remember the day, i sayd, "amazing, i love this,... how can i make videogames?". Back then, here, in Portugal, there wasn't a lot of documentation on programming languages. I guess the books wouldn't sell on the book stores. A friend of mine, that had programming in school, taught me a little about programming on commodore 64. I was amazed with what was possible to do. I was able to buy 3 books on "basic programming", i have them today. Computers evolved,... On the following years i was always trying to know more about programming, but there were no books to buy or anyone else to talk to, once my friend went to live to another place. Some time after,... a long time after i say a "C programming" book on a store. Useless to say that i bought it. Then a problem came. What do i do with this? I have the book, i have the knowledge, but where do i program? back them i did not knew what a compiler was or a linker, or what ever. After i got that information, the problem came to be "how do i get the compiler?". No one had ever heard about that.

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Can't know the exact year. Was it 1996? Don't know exactly, but i got my first Visual Basic 4 Compiler. Great!!! happiness. And what about my first book on Visual Basic? on sale? "OH YEAH". I was able to make "Kung Fu". I had all that i takes to do it. That was when i knew what i wanted to be for the rest of my life: "PROGRAMMER". I was able to do it.

In the following years, programming books started to sell on book stores, i got my first visual studio 6 package and i was able to program in all those languages. When i started working, i started taking programming courses on those languages in Visual Studio. To this day, i haven't stopped doing it,... i just love it. Take control of the machine, tell it what to do, and be very happy when it does what i tell it what to do, after fighting hard and telling me that its crashing because this and that. It's like conquering the world, but in this case, conquering the machine. that is fighting against us. Of course that after all these years more challenges came, and conquering the machine is just not enought. We must conquer even our own knowledge,... Mathematics, phisics, calculus, whatever comes in our way.

So, this was the begginning,... the start of it all,...