Hello.

As many of you may know, I have decided to enter the 2011 Axe Summer of Coding contest, part 1. Therefore, I have decided to share what it is about, as you might imagine from my action of posting this thread

My entry is a calculator port/remix of the Uncharted series for the PS3 (highly acclaimed series with 2 entries, both with over 50 perfect ratings -- if you have a PS3, you usually have Uncharted 1/2 as well) that brings Nathan Drake to the beautiful world of graphing calculators! This story takes place years before the happenings of Uncharted I and II, when Nathan Drake was only a 21 year old guy with no worries about evading bounty hunters, discovering the treasures of Kublai Khan, or stopping evil dictator Russians from growing invincible. Instead, you were studying for college in Mongolia, when you were suddenly ambushed by ancient skeletons in Khan outfitting -- and that's all you remember happening. You find yourself a day or so later in a tundra that is perfectly white and flat as far as the eye can see, with only one thing in view -- a huge looming monastery filled with heavens-knows-what. Why are you here -- what did the skeleton men want? Why did they spare you, and why are you 1000 miles away from your ambush site in front of an ancient fortress? Find out by supporting and waiting for my contest entry, Uncharted TI, to be released!

Screenie with elements of the game I made during science class today:



As you can see, it has decent physics involved, but unlike most other physics games being entered, mine is more based on action -- pushing blocks around to hold cover and make barriers, shooting your pistol at [removed due to spoiler of plot], and moving along the monastery to find [removed for spoiler of plot]. There shall be explosive sap (a la Uncharted 2 style), Chinese Rockets, and more awesome eye-catching things, as well as actual-spreading fire, arrows, crossbows, smart-AI based enemies, endless hours of fun, and much more!

And, I made the physics engine myself with no other references to other's methods -- I no steal any code

Looks nice, especially the physics. Good luck with this.

Thanks, souvik it turns out 50% of the entries for the 2011 contest are physics-based. The main competitor I'll have is builderboy, who is already leagues ahead of me, with his explosions and wire-physics -- but if nothing else, I can try to beat him with superb action against enemies and beautifully-sprited bosses

EDIT: I'll start with titles screens:

comp size


real size


what do you think? ;D it took me ~45 minutes to make -- it's not near done, but the overarching theme is shown.

That's some great physics indeed! A general comment on contests: I'm not sure how sustainable in terms of number of entries a three-part contest is, but I'm sure the judges have planned them out well. I look forward to seeing some of the other projects as well. When is the deadline for this contest?

July 15th.

Whoa, two months for the first contest? That would imply that the latter two are much, much shorter if they're supposed to end by the time people start classes again. Anyway, Ashbad, nice title screens!

Now my friends, I have put in a lot of effort today in differentiating my game from the rest, so I have three new awesome features I need to share with you.


1. I now have bullet physics working pitch-perfect. You armed with only one pistol and... one bullet. You only have one shot, and you must make it perfect if you want to level up and beat levels. The catch is, you can pick it up and re-use it over and over again so, you better be a good shot or else you have to dodge fire and go pick it up again. And no, you can't pick up arrows, spears, and Chinese rockets and shoot them from your pistol Here is an example of me playing with the gun:




2. Secondly (this one isn't as awesome, though) I made boxes come in many different shapes and sizes, yet while adding no extra overhead. So far I have 3 types of boxes: the original one, a large hunk of metal, and a bullet barricade you can shoot bullets through, but enemies can't see you. Example of the three types so far:



A note, I still have 7 unused bytes per possible box that I'm not using, and I plan to use them to hold other attributes such as weight, if it can burn (which leads to number 3 also), if it can break, weight, and a few other goodies.


3. This one is a good one to end with for today's update: fully functioning fire. You see, fire can be started by detonating a chinese rocket or exploding blue tree sap (neither fully working yet), and falls until it hits the ground or gets blown out. It can spread rather quickly to surrounding areas, and later on will be able to burn wood, Drake (you) and enemies as well. For now, it just looks really cool ;D Here's an example of fire spreading across the room: (You'll see that I may run the program a few times, since the fire might blow out before it spreads much )



I think I made a decent amount of updates today ^-^ this is going quite well so far.


EDIT: and finalized title screen:



EDIT2: I just fixed some severe bugs, some seen somewhat here, some not.

It looks like the fire operates on some principle like (if random > some value), set a nearby tile to fire; (if random > some value), extinguish self? Looking great so far! I'd personally go with black text on that light gray background for the titlescreen, and use the dark gray to antialias the text, but that's up to you.

I tried that out, and on calc it looks too harsh -- especially since the light gray is lighter than in that and the dark gray is much darker.

Also,

You're in for a treat in about an hour -- I have chinese rockets fully functional, in 3 forms: Normal, Napalm, and tomohawk fireworks (of course the chinese in the early millenia were the first to have rockets!) and they look absolutely stunning. I plan on releasing a screeny in an hour showing them off. They make everything I posted before look wimpy and trivial. Stay tuned!

EDIT: and Kerm, it's kinda like that, but it doesn't operate by tiles

Where will I be able to find the entries?? I like the look of this program!

the entries are scattered throughout omnimaga (I think mine is the only one posted here out of 15+ entries x.x) and the topic saying who's in it is here:

http://ourl.ca/11039

and thanks

So, today's update of... the day. So, I have added chinese rockets, (I was not able to get the tomahawk missile working in time for the 3:00 PM screenie I'm about to post, but it can be posted later I guess) and they look particularly awesome, and quite explosive. Currently, they can only be triggered by a bullet shot, but it'll be easy to get them started by other things like explosive sap and fire later. There are currently two types (subject to increase in variety soon):

Normal -- these when shot are propelled forward at a decent speed, and when they explode they cause massive disturbance and may catch surrounding areas on fire. Screenie:




Incendiaries (napalm) rockets -- These are like the previous rockets, but much faster and cruise at much lower altitudes. These when activated will release a jet stream filled with 'napalm' on the enemy, incinerating everything in sight. These also end with a big bang. Screenie:



right now, it is allowed to support up to 4 rockets on screen at a time (more than you'll ever need) but through my tests I found it can hold up to ~30 with little to no lag.

more fun with rockets: (I fixed many bugs with the bullet activation and explosions, and now napalm spreads fire fairly evenly over the field)

Wow crazy insane cool update!

A triple-post in a 6-hour span is unacceptable, Ashbad. Perhaps Omnimaga has different rules, but here projects don't get exempted from the twelve-to-24 hour bump rule unless it's a world-shattering update like a warning that your program bricks calculators or something. With that said, I'm sure you'll follow the rules now that they've been clarified to you, and very nice updates! It's looking very cool.

sorry about that Kerm -- on omnimaga I got instant replies so it wasn't any consecutive posting, and I quickly rushed to post things over here as well without even checking consecutiveness sorry, won't happen again, I hope.

No different rules there, just my bad I wasn't paying attention.

Don't worry, ashbad. I did the same thing.

What exactly is the goal to this game, anyway?

Right now, there is none I have one planned, but I'm not far enough into the engine to really execute the planned development. I'm up to 7.5K and the engine is barely half finished >.> viva la flash app + 24K crabcaked program XD

Also:

well, I got a lot done today considering I was at my pool for the past 6 hours cleaning stuff up for my job Here's what I did in the last hour or so (no screenies quite yet, I'll say why in a moment):

- I finished all types of rockets, which now include the ultra-sonic ones (INSANELY fast and cool-looking), and fireworks (which goes straight up and emits explosions until it crashes)

- I got explosive sap working, in about 5 minutes of coding (easier than I thought ;D since it's based on the rocket engine anyways)

- I'm working on getting 8-segment ropes working, right now all you can do is grab onto them and fall off them I'm trying to theorize an idea of how I'll get it to swing -- hopefully by tonight. Once that's done, then you can haz the screenies.

Methinks that Ashbad should step back and do a bit of planning so he doesn't find himself with a very impressive but unfinished program come the deadline. Anyway, this is sounding great, and no problem about the accidental triple-post. We tend to value post quality over post quantity here, so I hope you don't mistake lack of knee-jerk "that looks cool" posts as an indication that people aren't reading your posts.

no, don't worry, I have plans, I'm just highly unable to use most of them at this point in the process