GM48 #6 Submission – Ant Agonists

Last week I decided once and for all that I’m going to get into game development. I have a lot to learn, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a real fun thing to get into and I’m nearing the point where I have the skills to do it. My main problem is my art skills are lacking quite a bit at the moment. I’m concentrating on sprite creation for 2D games and modeling/texturing for 3D games. Monday of last week (April 8, 2013) I found out about Unity3D. I fell in love with it. Up until this point, I’ve been working with Java to make mini-games, as a learning experience, but I don’t really like mucking about with setting up Java. I dislike working with class paths, and I don’t particularly care for the distribution side of software that is created with Java. I may still venture into that but I want to turn out some actual games first.

Unity3D allows you to create your games in a GUI environment and it handles scripting quite well using your choice of C# and Javascript. It is actually quite nice. I was amazed that I could write some C# and the variables turned into interface options inside Unity itself. The problem for me at this point is that I don’t have great modeling skills, but I’ve started watching Blender tutorials to develop that skill. So for a couple of days I was working on Blender. Then I happened upon a post about Game Maker. I’ve always been interested in many types of games 2D as well as 3D, and I wanted to get my hands dirty with some 2D sprite making. It occurred to me that it would be a good idea to make a few 2D games before diving into 3D.

I tried out the free versions of both Unity3D and Game Maker Studio. At this point I should point out another feature of both of these products that really drives me toward utilizing them instead of hand-coding games from scratch. They both offer exporting to various platforms. With Game Maker you have to pay for the ability, but you can write your game once and export to Windows, Windows 8, Linux, Mac OSX, Android, and HTML5. With Unity3D you can export to a ton of things with the free version, including XBox360, Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS. However, there are some things you don’t get with the free version like some shaders. The cost of the non-free version of Unity3D is also $1500. For some reason I think that price point is a little high for their maximum profit. I could be wrong, but if Unity went for $200, I would have already bought it, and I’m sure there would be thousands of others who would fork over that much for it.

At any rate, after using Game Maker for a couple of hours I decided it is something I want to devote some time with, so I purchased the pro version on Thursday (April 11). The next day I found out that there was going to a 48 hour Game Maker competition on the /r/gamemaker subreddit. I entered it and after 48 hours of writing a game with a tool that I had just bought, this is what I came up with. I give you Ant Agonists.

How to Make a Game for Free

I’m completely floored by the quality of some free (as in beer) software these days. Some of it is open source, but I’m not concentrating on that in this post. I’ll be concentrating on how to save a ton of money and still create a high quality game. So if you are interested in making a game, and you don’t want to shell out a lot of money for the tools to do so, keep reading or start playing online casino games you can learn in https://funlinx.to/introduction-to-online-casino-match-bonus-offers/ everything about gambling.

Game development can be a tricky endeavor. Being able to write code and do simple math are definitely a prerequisite. However, some game developing environments and frameworks take a lot of the busy work out of the coding experience and let you focus on the game more directly. Perhaps the easiest language to start developing games with is Java. It’s also very powerful. Minecraft is a very successful Java game. There is, however, according to school playground markings company an easier way to make games, and for some reason I’m just now discovering it. It’s called Unity3D.

There are two versions of Unity3D: free and pro. The free version has all the features you need to create a game, but Pro does have its advantages. The pro version costs $1500, however, and that is not within the budget of most small independents. So, a good plan is to start with the free version, get really good with it, and create a game which sells well. From your profit you can purchase the pro version. I’ve been learning Unity3D for the last two days and I’m amazed at its features. I’ve developed small games in Java, so I’m not a terrible coder. I usually shy away from applications which try to make game development easier (for instance Dark Basic). I stay away from them for the same reasons that I don’t use a GUI interface to create web layouts, you end up being limited by the ease of use.

I was afraid that Unity3D fit into this stereotype, but I have to say that it’s a great piece of software. The GUI is smart. If you create a script for an object, the GUI automatically knows what to do with the object properties you create in the script. For instance, lets say you create a character object and add a script to control his movement. You may create a class variable like:

boolean isWalking = false;

If you save this change in your script and then go back to the Unity3D inspector you’ll see a new checkbox called Is Walking. It’s small little helper features like that which make it a joy to work with.

So, in case you didn’t catch on, my first piece of free software is Unity3D. Even if you are a game developing guru, this will make your life much easier. It also has the ability to export to Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, Mac, PS3, Xbox360, and Wii.

Unity3D doesn’t handle all your work though. You still need to create your assets in other programs or buy them from the Unity asset store. Personally, I want to make my own assets so I have full legal right to them and they aren’t just generic assets which others can have in their games as well. So, you need models, textures, and sounds. There may be other types of assets that you’ll need but these are the assets on which I want to focus.

Models can be created in Blender. Blender is comparable to high-dollar applications such as Maya and 3DSMax, except it’s completely free. I’ve never had any training on how to make models, but when a piece of software like this is available for free, I can’t help but want to dive in and learn how to use it. With Blender, you can create full length animated movies as well. Want to learn how to use it? Check out these Blender video tutorials. They are awesome and will help you master Blender in no time. Modeling is no simple task, especially if you are adding rigging and such, but it’s very rewarding. You can also create assets in Blender which can be sold on the Unity Asset Store.  So if your passion is not to make games but to make in game objects, you can profit from selling your work.

Textures are added to models to make them look like real world objects. These can be created with the Gimp, which is a free image manipulation application. Some people say that The Gimp is no where as powerful as Photoshop, but I tend to lean toward the side that says you can do anything you want with either, you just have to know your way around the tool that you are using. With the Gimp you can many things, but the two we are interested it is textures and spritesheet (in case you are making a 2D game).

Finally, you need sound effects and music. You could purchase both, but again I want to create all of my game content. So, I suggest looking at Audacity. It’s a great multi-track recording studio for audio. You could make music with it, but you’re looking at a higher investment when you have to purchase music gear. For sound effects, it is only limited by your imagination. I’ve not decided what I’m going to use for music yet. I have a decent midi controller, so I may create nice midi backing tracks using something like MultitrackStudio, which will do midi and audio. I just found it, so I’m not sure how good it is. It looks promising from the screen shots.

Final Fantasy VII Music

1997 was my favourite year in-game history, as that was the year I learnt to build my own computer for gaming and also majorly cause “The game I waited all summer to play was going to release”. Final Fantasy VII came out on the original Sony Playstation, and I remember all too distinctly getting some LNR Gaming Components to be one among the firsts to try the game. I remember seeing the trailers to that game with that famous opening scene with the train. Back then, that was some amazing graphics.

I had never played a Final Fantasy game up to that point. I have yet to play any other Final Fantasy game that even compares to it. I bought VIII when it came out, and I liked it, but it was missing something. After years of examining my fondnesss for Final Fantasy VII, I’ve come to the conclusion that what really makes Final Fantasy special is it’s confusing story and it’s wonderful music. As a side note, I bought FFVII on PSX, PC, and finally on PS3. I didn’t complete the game until I played it on PS3 in 2010/2011.

Final Fantasy has a good story, but it was completely confusing. I loved that. It made the game more interesting. FFVIII (which I never completed) also had a confusing plot. I really need to complete it next. Plot for plot, I think that FFVIII is just as good as FFVII. It’s hard to tell. One thing is for sure, however, FFVII has the best music. I would say that FFVII has the best music of any game ever. I’m listening to the Piano Collection version of the sound track and  it’s amazing. It brings back some great feelings from the game, but it also stands on its own as good quality composition.

I’ve recently commented that new movies aren’t even worth pirating these days. When I think of good movies, I think of movies that came out during the 80’s and early 90’s. I realize that a lot of this is my own bias, as I was growing up during that time period, but movies today are just terrible. The best movies today come from Pixar. They are about the only movies worth having in a movie collection. I spend most of my movie watching time viewing classics. There’s just nothing out there today that really grabs me.

I don’t think it’s the overuse of special effects or the concentration on 3D technology that makes the movies terrible though. I think it’s the lack of quality musical compositions. Think back to some of the best movies, or watch some of the movies that have awesome scores.

Superman 1 – 4 weren’t that great, but they had an amazing soundtrack. The original Star Wars trilogy was awesome, but think about the score that went along with it. ET, Jurassic Park, The Godfather, The Last of the Mohicans, Jaw, and many other movies benefited greatly from their music.

I think the same can be said about Final Fantasy VII. You know I read a review of Final Fantasy VII back when it first came out. They gave the music a very low rating. It’s funny. I don’t play FFVII anymore, but I still listen to the music.

BattleField 1942 in Windows 2008

I decided to play BF1942 today. I installed it and Battlefield Vietnam. These two games are about the only first person shooters I can play without getting simulator sickness. It had been a while since I played BF1942 so I wanted to try it first.

It should be noted at this point that I’ve been using Windows 2008 server as a desktop operating system for about three months now. Up until now everything pretty much worked out of the box, but once I tried to start up BF1942 I ran into a slight problem. It complained about having the wrong version of DirectX installed. It requires DirectX 6.0 or higher.

I knew I had a higher version of DirectX than this. So after digging around for a while I found out that there is a bug that causes this issue. The fix is a little strange. One person suggested that it was an issue with fullscreen mode. True enough, after changing one line of a config file for BF1942 to force it to start in windowed mode, there was no issues. The only problem is that windowed mode sucks.

So, searching further, I discovered that there is a fix that involves a patch for GTA2. Here are the instructions to execute this solution:
1.) Download this.
2.) Unzip
3.) Copy the dmusic.dll and dmusic.inf files to C:\Windows\System32
4.) Inside the system32 directory find dmusic.inf…right click on it and choose install.

BF1942 should now work in full screen mode.