Day 378 – INCOMING!

I’m not dead! I’m still surviving. Just about. Click for the full-sized image 😛
Anddd I have some great news to share! 🙂

But first sorry. Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I have been ridiculously busy with my degree. Plus I don’t really want this blog to be about my personal life, which is something the last update basically was. If there is no real news to tell, why tell anything at all?

Let’s jump straight in with the fabulous art that’s been created since the last update! ^-^

 

Art

 

Top left going right and downwards: Nemesis, Phantom, Puncture, Rogue, Shredder, sketch of Blaze (fire elemental) and the Uber Blaster, sketch of Boomer, Caster, Obliterator, Hawkeye, Ticker, Worker, and Extendo Cannon, Spitfire (three munition for the three attacks per round), Stun Gun, Ticker sketch, Caster, CMFR, Energy Blade, and finally Flamethrower!

Still got your breath? 😛

There’s been so much done and I honestly am so lucky to have such wonderful artists working with me.

And we’ve also had a couple of very special pieces! (remember to click for full size!)

Top: Early CCS(O) banner! We were throwing around ideas and this is the result. Maybe not the final design, but this one sums up the game nicely. In the foreground are two players (either side) looking at the same central player but both see an enemy, while really he’s on one of their teams. In the background are a small collection of the hundreds of components in CC Survival.

Bottom: Map tiles! Why? Well, why not? Ok seriously, tiles allow the rapid creation of colourful maps with minimal effort. With several biomes going to be created there should be a huge variety for players to create custom map designs in CCS to share with other players and create campaigns with. Permission has also been granted to use these tiles in any future games I make, and so there is a huge amount of potential in these simple mosaics.

Our collection of artwork is enormous now. It’s just one of those things I look back on and browse through like oh wow. I will have to set up some kind of gallery where it can all be viewed 😀 Maybe add a description to each image too.

 

Music

Another great track has been released by Harmless!

CCS Track 4 – Unsettling Darkness v0.5

Pretty creepy! I want to see more like this hehe. What do you guys think? Apparently this isn’t even the final version 😮

 

Progress Begins Today

Oh yes. Today I start practicing and using Bootstrap to design a new site. Progress will be slow initially as this will begin with a learning phase. But I’m sure I’ll pick it up soon enough.

From now on updates are only going to be every two weeks. I recall mentioning this in passing before. It’s because weekly is too challenging to keep up with if you have a particularly busy week.

And finally, for those interested in what my future could hold (and hence how CCSO progress could change in the future) and who still remember the last post. I was so torn between the two options: PhD and EngD. In the end I leaned more towards the EngD and took it. As long as I pass my exams I’ll be in Scotland from September ^.^ One of the most beautiful and friendly countries in the world! And where a small portion of my blood originates from 😉

But whether or not I actually pass my exams is another question. I’m certainly not holding my breath, but even if I fail I can resit in August and even though the Scotland position will almost certainly be gone, I don’t doubt that I’ll have any trouble finding another job. I’m trying not to get too excited over the EngD in case I have actually messed up an exam. These final ones were killers and I think everyone’s averages are going to be pulled down a lot. My grade is high enough that even if I just scrape passes in all these exams I still get the grade needed for the EngD, so the actual marks don’t matter. It’s just pass/fail as far as I’m concerned. Results day is three and a half weeks away. Fingers crossed!

 

See you all in two weeks with hopefully an entire barrel full of exciting news as I brush the dust off the gears and put them into action again! 😀

Ahhh, it’s great to be back!

Day 273 – Food running low, water from sky no come, made some nice sandcastles though

MY GOD, AN UPDATE! Looks like I’m not the only one becoming delusional 😉

So Much Uni Work…

It was weird skimming through this sheet and seeing what appeared at first to be a mirror embedded in the sheet (click the image to make it bigger) … but then my eyes focused and yeah, I quickly realised that I needed to get away from this work.

I think that pretty much sums up how things are going right now haha.

May Lose Another 9 Months…

Let’s start of this time with all the bad news. I know I usually end with the bad stuff, but the element of surprise is key to victory in CCS, so is probably the key to an interesting blog too. #keylogic2015

In a few short months I will be holding my Master’s and that basically means I need to go on to become a Doctor, because you know, who spends so long studying for a Master’s just to get a job?

The traditional choice for getting a doctorate is the PhD. They are 3 years, pay about $21 000 per year tax-free (which isn’t very much) and are based on you doing research and writing a thesis at the end.

Seem pretty good, don’t they?

For a STEM graduate however, there is another path open, known as the EngD or Engineering Doctorate. These are equivalent to a PhD at the end but take 4 years to complete. They pay around $30 000 per year tax-free (a modest pay for someone my age) and involve one year of taught lectures, followed by three years working for a research company.

EngDs give an edge to someone wanting to go into industry, while PhDs give an edge to someone wanting to go into academia (i.e. becoming a professor). Now, becoming a professor could be quite cool and I know that if I don’t pick a PhD my chance of becoming one ever will be ~0, but if you look at the stats, only about 1% of PhD students go on to become professors anyway as there just aren’t any spare spaces for them. You basically have to wait for one to die or retire and then take their place.

I spoke to some professors at my uni about which out of academia and industry is best and the general feedback I got was this:

Academia Advantage: You get complete freedom to research whatever you want.

Industry Advantage: You know what you are making will directly change the world.

The professors all said the thing they felt they were missing out on the most was knowing that their inventions and discoveries were unlikely to ever make any significant contribution to the world. This seems like something that would be particularly bad for me. I really want to use my skills to change the world and make it a better place. Following a career that risks this seems like a poor choice. PhDs open the path to industry as well as academia though.

Last year I worked in industry on my research year. I actually found there was a fair degree of freedom. It wasn’t a boss telling me exactly what to do most of the time, instead I was given a large problem and asked to solve it in whatever way I wanted as part of a team. There was plenty of opportunity for me to plan things out, setup my own experiments, do my own research to gain a vaster understanding of the physics before working on the problem. Science careers are one of the most independent and free careers in the world. I know some jobs just involve you sitting in an office all day while your boss sends you work to do. Those kinds of jobs – commonly called monkey jobs – don’t really sound appealing to me. I need room to intellectually express myself and develop as a person in my workplace.

Getting back to EngDs they have 1 year taught courses and 3 years in industry, but for one week out of each industry year they have an intensive course in business/management. EngDs are really for training people up to be leaders in the workplace. To be the people who will form the next generation of bosses and management.

In CCSO I have really loved the whole organising and keeping track of the team. I am always looking for opportunities to expand, and I really think my natural position is in a lead place. Let’s even go to my history on the CC alone, I run two games and have done for many years, while in a number of other groups I have taken high positions. Even back in school I ran as a prefect and was the deputy head for my house (my school had four houses, a bit like Harry Potter). Leadership appears to be something that is rooted deep in me. I’m quite shocked how I never realised sooner.

“You’ve Changed”

This week I presented my research work in the form of a short (15 minute) presentation in this daunting lecture theatre full of other students in my year, all the second year students (who were about to decide what research placements they wanted), a whole load of university professors, and all these researchers from companies around the world who sponsor students to go on research placements.

I was first up.

In the past public speaking has not been my strong point. I always got those leg shakes and spoke very fast and messed up and didn’t make eye contact. I’m sure you all know what it is like…

But this time it was different.

I stood confidently, I wasn’t shaking – although I was a little nervous inside after seeing some of my research team in the crowd –  I felt in control. I noted when I went up that many of the second years hadn’t arrived yet, so I began the presentation with a joke about how such a huge number have come to see my presentation. I was animate throughout the talk and kept the jokes coming, I paused at places to let the audience calm down or study the slides. I put loads of images in all my slides to have it a highly visual experience, while the wordy explanations were left to me as the speaker.

It was invigorating. I actually enjoyed it. The adrenaline, the attention, the action. This is not like me.

The presentation ended with a huge applause that may have been the largest of the day, and when I climbed the stairs back up to my seat all my friends were just shocked. They said they didn’t want to present after such a great presentation because it would make theirs look terrible. I brushed off their comments because friends always complement each others, so their remarks were fairly null in my book.

In the lunch break students and researchers kept coming up to me to congratulate me on my talk. It was really surprising. People were jokingly asking me to teach them my amazing skills. The following day the head of the physics society approached me and said my talk was the best one. I hadn’t seen him in the audience, but that was an honour of kinds.

“You’ve changed…” my friend Tim said to me after the presentations. A good change of course. But they remember me from before the placement year when I was almost a nervous wreck in front of an audience. I have changed. A lot. I know what to say, how to act, I can read the audience now. I swear I’m one step away from being a psychopath. I don’t feel the nerves like before. I even look forward to the next time I have to present.

One change at a time I am becoming a strong and independent character. I really wonder what my future holds. All my weaknesses just seem to be disappearing one by one, meanwhile my strengths continue to put me one step ahead of the general crowd.

Because of this I’m thinking an EngD will be more suitable for me than a PhD. The skills I gain from the business courses on an EngD could actually aid CCSO developments. It comes at the cost of another slow 9 months of progress on CCSO though :S But maybe I’ll be able to find more time this time around. And the EngD won’t start until September anyway, so I’ll have all summer to work on it.

Back to current works…

Music

Harmless has been working away with the music production ^^ Three new pieces have been produced!

CCS Track 3 – At Long Last
A calming track for the early game. Also nice to listen to if you’re feeling a little stressed ^^

CCS Special – Victory
CCS Special – Defeat
Do I need to explain these? 😛 When winning or losing a battle one of these will be played.

All these pieces are still in an early stage and are expected to change slightly over the coming week or so. Also, if you haven’t heard the other tracks, do check them out because they are awesomeeee 😉

CCS Track 1 – Light Urgency
CCS Track 2 – One Shot at Victory
CCS Track 2 – One Shot at Victory (Extended) (my favourite ^^)

Art

Twinwing, Ballista Impact, Destroyer, Bunkerbuster, and Hydro. Let me know if I forgot one :S Chassis by ElD and weapons by Shoop. Lau is still a little busy. I really like these, but some are a little different to normal. First, what do you think of Bunkerbuster? The angle makes the missile look huge. I’m wondering if it could be drawn from a different view or if it is fine as it is.

And Ballista Impact looks amazing, doesn’t it? The first version had no spikes on but then it was suggested to add spikes to the bow. Shoop actually misread this and added spikes to the missile head instead. *facepalm* But it actually turned out pretty nice, so I suggested to keep them. Spikes everywhere… imagine looking into that in battle. It is sleek yet deadly.

Twinwing captures the decrepit state of the biplane really nicely 😛 Good job on the paintwork! The smoke is a really cool feature too! Hydro is awesome as well ^^ Was wondering if the water tanks should start more full or not. What are your thoughts?

And finally, Destroyer. A huge cannon. It is exactly what it is. A destroyer.

Thanks ElD and Shoop! I know I can always count on you for epic art!! You guys provide such a driving force for me to develop CCSO. I actually feel pretty guilty not being able to code much xD But…

Bootstrapping!

I’m not sure if I mentioned this in a previous blog way back or not, but there is a framework called Bootstrap that is designed to speed up website design and make sites more compatible with mobile and tablet devices. I have been learning this and playing around. It is fairly simple but takes a bit of getting used to. It is however very powerful o.O I can create such a nice site with this. I’m thinking about creating a simple site to show off the capabilities of Bootstrap at some point so you can all see how the next version of the CCSO site could look.

I don’t know when this will be out, but hopefully not too long from now.

A long update to make up for the lack of them 😉 There may be another break before the next one, but we’ll see. The future is not written yet 🙂

Week 36 – The End of CCSO :(

Today is the last update.

But we’ll get back to that in a bit.

 

I’ve been playing around with the upgrade system for abilities. It’s been frustrating this week and I’ve not managed to get nearly as much done as I had hoped. Even the simplest of things take a long time sometimes. This hurts me a lot more than it pains you as I have this huge project laid out in front of me and if I spend so long doing one tiny part of it, it is going to take forever to finish. Really demotivational.

But that is what has been happening since the start. There have been fast and slow parts, and usually it is the parts that should be fast that take the longest and the long parts that end up getting done pretty quickly.

For now though I have added a basic system for when you upgrade an ability the main arena page shows the upgrades above the ability text. Yes, it is crude. I was just trying it out to see how it would work. In the future these upgrades will be listed more compactly and the text will update to reflect these purchases.

Try it out and tell me if anything weird happens ^^

 

Art!

These look a lot better on the alpha site 😉 Thanks Shoopadoo for Magma Missiles and Tempest! I have long since exhausted my vocabularly of positive words. So yeah… these are very, very, very, good. That will have to do for this week 😛

 

Anyway, now what you have all been thinking about…

CCSO Shutdown

CCSO isn’t completely over don’t worry. I’ve just been using strong language to keep you engaged here. I’m as sly as ever.

But CCSO is going to pause now until the summer (about 4 months). I have classes at uni again and may not be able to keep up with weekly updates. I know my aim for today was to have a working playable game. And yes, in many ways I have done that, but we have fallen massively short. My inexperience has really shown over the past few weeks. This is more complicated than I first believed it to be and has required a much greater amount of work.

It’s all a good learning experience, but it isn’t the best production experience.

But Some Good News

I actually seem to have much fewer lectures this semester than I thought. I may actually be able to devote quite a bit of time to CCSO still. This doesn’t mean regular updates though so shhhh.

I have had enough of playing around with the core game for now. I really need a break from it to keep my motivation up. I have a new plan for the coming months, see what you think:

• Massively reduced update frequency.
• Focus on redesigning the site for the Beta version.
• Addition of all the sections in the final game (although some will be blank) and a working forum.
• Brand new unit creator based on the sketch I put a few weeks back.

The redesign of the site will use all my new skills from the past few months and will make it compatible with mobile devices, tablets, and all screen resolutions. You may notice at the moment that on a screen with high-resolution there are empty regions down the right and left of the alpha site, and the site isn’t mobile friendly at all.

Wait, do all you Americans call mobile sites cell phone sites? I have never actually thought of this before. Since you don’t call mobiles as mobiles, you also don’t call mobile sites as mobile sites? Hmm, get back to me on this one. I’m pretty curious.

Anyway, yes, this new site will be carefully designed to work on all devices. I have those skills.

I am going to make the site actually look good. The current core game may have some minor updates as I already know now that I’m too addicted to actually get away from it completely. But it isn’t going to be the focus of work. Of course, if things go really well and I have time left after everything else before summer, I will get back to it.

I’ll be sure to post the odd major update here and there as I make progress. Probably in the form of videos. And I’ll keep our artists and musician making stuff when they can and will showcase it perhaps weekly still.

I won’t be able to tell you the exact date that I’ll be back to normal work on CCSO, but it is right near the start of summer.

 

A Reflection – in FAQ style.

Should I do the same as you and jump straight into a many-year project using languages I don’t even know?

No. lol. It has been fun, I’ll admit that. But the only reason I am still doing this is because of you guys. If you don’t have a hell of a lot of willpower yourself and a supportive community behind you, then you will fail. No other way. Just don’t follow in my footsteps.

Instead start with smaller projects and build up your skills before trying something so big. I guess in some ways I regret my decision, but in other ways I’m glad I took this challenge on. But definitely, this has been the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. It has stretched my skills to their very limits and changed me as a person.

How does it feel to be a game developer?

It feels really awesome. I, like a lot of young men, was struggling before to find my place in life and actually give my life meaning. It just kind of felt like I was going along with the flow of everything without ever achieving anything. Many of you are still too young to experience this, but once you have spent a few years living independently with the whole world as your playground, you soon start to feel very small.

Everyone needs some kind of meaning to their life, something they are proud of and can focus their time and energy into. CCSO is it for me. If you are reading this and feel like your life has just stagnated completely, try a personal project. It will really help. I actually think a lot of people go through this phase. I know it is particularly common in young men, but probably most people will experience it at some point.

Game development itself it pretty cool. It is so rewarding to see people playing your game, even if they only send you bug reports. I wouldn’t give this up for anything 🙂

 

Eh, those are the only questions I can think of right now. But I still have much more to talk about.

Weekly updates. Yes, no. My work between weeks has been inconsistent in terms of what you see. I think in the future I may knock it down to every two weeks for updates so that the updates are larger and more consistent between weeks. It can also be stressful on busy weeks to still get content to you guys.

And er… apparently I didn’t have much more to talk about. Hm. I think getting away from this project and focusing on other things for a while will actually do me a lot of good. Breaks are good.

 

TL;DR

What are you playing at? My blogs are awesome. Read them.

• Fewer game updates for ~4 months.

• Not focusing on CCSO for ~4 months.

• Will still be working on it though. CCSO isn’t ending 😛

• Huge update in summer featuring redesigned site with full features.

See you all… soon.

 

Week 35 – (-.-) but POTATO SHOOTER!

Amazon Web Services is the second biggest load of bull I have ever seen, coming just behind an actual field of bulls. They are the most horrible host I have ever had. Their customer services is slow (took like 4 days for a single reply) and they don’t tell you anything useful. Erg -.- But I guess you get what you pay for: Amazon hosting is by far the cheapest.

After a long struggle and a lot of lost time, I have finally managed to get CCSO back online. Some recent data would have been lost and I don’t know exactly how much. My best guess is it could be up to a month of lost data. This doesn’t affect the code (which I have backed up all the time) but will affect things such as accounts, unit submissions, and games. If you can’t log in it may mean your account was lost. Terribly sorry, but I didn’t think Amazon could mess this up so badly.

I believe the problem was with one of the storage sites, which I have since shut down and I am now using a different storage method. I was using the original storage since the very beginning of CCSO and never had a problem with it. I just don’t get why in the middle of the night it started to play up.

I’ll try to backup CCSO on a weekly basis now until I can figure out how to do it automatically. In the meantime, I’m going to continue with Amazon, but if they really mess up this much again I will be switching to another provider.

tl;dr Amazon Web Services sucks but is cheap; CCSO is back up.

Upgrades Done

Despite the lost time this week, I have completed the base upgrade function of abilities. Abilities still can’t be used yet. Check out the upgrade button under abilities within a game. On the upgrade screen the number left of the upgrade checkbox is the number of times you have purchased that upgrade. Checkbox will become an X when the upgrade limit is reached – this is one for most upgrades. You can purchase multiple upgrades for one ability at a time.

UP are subtracted with upgrades but you can go below 0 UP. This is intentionally and not a bug. It makes it easier to test while we search for bugs. I’ll add in a 0 limit next week.

Awesome Art

Yep, the Potato Shooter is literally you throwing a potato at someone. That explains why it is free 😛

Punypuncher top right. Just look at that detail though 😛 It is just… amazing xD Part of me thinks it may fit better as the Ol’ Reliable, but I guess we wait and see how things turn out. It isn’t hard to swap pieces around.

Central is Smoke both with and without the CCSO background. Simple but effective. These four named pieces are by Shoopadoo.

Lower left is Ice Core by Eldromedario with a black background added to make it look just that much cooler. (cooler, geddit?). It will be in CCSO tomorrow ^^

And finally, Laura isn’t dead! Lolwut, such surprise, much doge, clap. She has made a comeback with what is simply a masterpiece of work. It looks kind of like one of those pieces you find hanging up in an art gallery ^^.

Shoop has been doing a bit of everything, but has told me she plans to focus mostly on weapons in the future to avoid clashes with Eld and Lau.

The Team

Programming and Coordination: Keyholefixed
Weapon (mostly) Artwork: Shoopadoo
Chassis Artwork: Eldromedario
Ability Artwork: Laurasnake
Music: Harmless

And let us not forget the works of the players, contributors, and community that form CCS. If you have ever sketched a single component – or even six pages of them – or have ever suggested an idea, or have played a game, or have created a unit to share with others, or even posted a single message in CCS, then you are part of the story and part of the reason why we have been so successful up to here.

There exists many challenges in our way, and there probably will always be, but in a year from now I want to read these old blog posts and say “yes, we have moved on so far since that day.” I want the game to be non-recognisable compared to the current version. Superior in every way.

We have a long way to go; but we are making a lot of progress.

Passed 700 Views!

Yes, we are well on our way to 1000 ^^ Also, check out the side menu of this blog (that thing on the right) I have added a view counter to the top and about halfway down is a slideshow of some select art pieces.

For this slideshow the controls overlap the art and cover it up. I have no idea who designed this but they didn’t test it enough. There is plenty of room for the controls under or above the art, and I guess that is where they are supposed to be. Not too sure if the controls cover the art by design or not. I cannot control the layout of it.

 

Futureee

Even when my university semester starts again, I am going to make time where I can for CCSO. Updates will slow down to a near standstill, but I hope to gradually build up something much more developed that I can release once my exams are finished. In fact, I’m hoping the game will move into ‘late alpha’ by early this summer, and probably into Beta by mid Autumn/Fall.

I have been thinking about it, once the gameplay is finally working, all remaining projects are smaller. I really think this gameplay is the toughest part in terms of functioning code, but other sections such as creating a fully working single player campaign is going to have its own challenges even if the core game is fully working.

Once the core game is working, CCSO coding is going to become a lot more fun. In many ways I am getting a little tired of tinkering with the play mechanics continuously, but you know, if everyone gave up when things became slightly boring, nothing would ever get done.

I’ll figure it out 😛

 

See you next week!

And you’re welcome for getting CCSO back up ^^

Week 34 – A Real Update (FINALLY): Upgrades and Art’plosion!

I call this one a real update because it actually involves new content rather than redesigning the old or showing off future concepts.

I have been unusually busy this week But I worked hard and finished off installing the new code for the gameplay and I have also begun to add a new feature: an upgrade system for the abilities. I haven’t quite finished it yet, but so far it:

1. Gives an upgrade screen for each abilities which can be reached from an upgrade button below each ability in game.
2. Lets you select as many upgrades as you want and then purchase them.
3. Stores purchased upgrades and prevents purchasing when you have upgraded a certain upgrade to its limit (i.e. most upgrades can only be purchased once and the game will limit your max purchases to one for these; same for other limits.).

The code for limits is actually pretty intelligent. There are no values in the database showing how many times an ability can be upgraded. That would just be extra maintenance. Instead the code reads the upgrade and understands how many times it can actually be upgraded. I literally mean it reads it like a human does and interprets it like a human. Nothing too advanced but it means no extra maintenance at the cost of a bit more code.

What I still have left to do is subtracting UP as you spend it (easy job) and updating the ability text and displaying upgrades purchased (harder…). It is still quite a big job left to do, but I hope to get it done by the middle of this coming week.

The online version hasn’t been updated yet but will be when it is ready and I’ll send a message around when it is done.

New Home

Once again I am living in a new home. Moving around is just second nature to me. I can’t even remember how many times I have done it over the past years, but I know that I am just months from the end now. Then I can finally settle somewhere and eh, work and stuff.

Talking about work, I was reading online that freelance web developers earn about $100/hour. That isn’t bad pay. Of course, I am not even close to that standard, but in the future, a few years down the line, I could maybe give it a go. Not for my main job, but if I do a project or two in my spare time a month, that could be a nice income (1000+ dollars per month? ^^) I could flow directly to CCSO. Imagine the advertising I could get with that sort of money.

New Art!

Top: Speedy and Stealthy. Perfection. Thanks ElDromedario!

Bottom: Flare. It looks best on a dark background, hence the screenshot from the game. Thank you Shoopadoo. Wait what?! Who the hell is Shoopadoo?

New Artist! o.O

Yes, somehow another artist has been Pulled into the Vortex of CCS! (you see what I did there?). Her name is Shoopadoo and we’ve actually known each other for a while but never really talked properly before. She’s a friend of Laura’s too. I never knew before but it turns out that Shoop is really amazing at art and is interested in helping us out o.O I’m not sure if I’m just really unconsciously charming or what, but girls seem desperate to please me. (totally true)

Anyway, here is another piece she finished literally just now as I was writing this section:

The Phoenix rises from the ashes! Grand and deadly, Blaze lives on.

Talent in one of its rawest forms.

Another Arter!

WOAH, STAPH KEY! THIS IS TOO MUCH FOR POOR MEE TO HANDAL! D:

Everyone say hi to Melarec! Someone who unfortunately has little time to devote to CCSO but who has been extremely generous and sketched out some components to inspire our other artists.

Now, when I was told by him that there were going to be a few sketches on the way I thought it would be like 2-3 sketches. Instead I got…

ALMOST SIX FULL PAGES OF SKETCHES! 😐

I never expected someone to draw so many… It is like.. wow… like a literal wow. I was smiling for the rest of the day after receiving these. It was such a pain because everyone stared at me like wut you doing bro? stop smiling so much gosh.

And like I tried to talk back but it was hard to form coherent words with my face stuck in smile mode.

Long story short, OH MY GOD THANKS FOR SO MANY SKETCHES! I really hope some of these are turned directly into art. Some are quite humorous 😛 Look at Decoy, Spawn Wall and Spike Pit 😛

Click them to enlarge. They are worth viewing fullscreen 😀

Really, if you have read this far and haven’t admired the sketches yet, go back and click them all. They are just mind-blowing. How someone can make something look so good with no more than a few rough pen strokes is beyond me 😮

THANK YOUUUU, MELAREC! ^.^

What about Laura?

She has been bogged down with loads of school work recently. School. That one thing that lets you achieve your dreams while simultaneously preventing you from carrying your dreams out. Most OP paradox ever.

But I’m sure we’ll hear more from her soon!

Site Redesign

Sudden plot twist! Also known as jumping around in literature because the author is too lazy to think of a link up.

When semester starts for me in a couple weeks, I’m not going to have time for regular updates. There still may be some, but way slower than currently. But I have been studying a bit of Bootstrap. This is like a development um, framework I guess? It lets you create really nice looking websites with little effort.

I’m thinking about downloading the bootstrap code, customising it a bit, and then creating what will eventually form the Beta site with it. It may look like a fairly generic website, but it will look cool 😛 It will also be responsive (like it responds to different sized viewing ports by expanding/shrinking/collapsing as needed). The current alpha site is a fixed shape. It is basically outdated as times have moved on since days of rigid web designs, but it is easier to learn and code when you don’t have to worry about how your site looks on a mobile (cell phone for all you Americans) or tablet or on a really wide monitor. Bootstrap will take care of all of that for me.

From there I don’t know if I’ll customise bootstrap further or go full pro and make a fully independently coded site for the final release. I guess it really depends on so many factors and I can’t say anything for certain right now.

Anyway, yeah, before I rambled a bit, when I make a comeback in early summer after exams I will bring with me a fully redesigned site that will really get things going again 😛

But this is still a couple of weeks away and in the meantime I am still working hard to get the gameplay working fully. soon

Seriously, expect something big next week. Going to really work at it this week as I don’t have too much else planned.

See you all then!

Week 33 – Future Plans

It has been a long week for me. A lot of stuff came up in my personal life that needed to be sorted out urgently. I’ve spent much of this week on the other side of the country chasing people for many different reasons. I lost 5 days this week due to that and when I finally got back I had all my usual stuff to catch up on, causing further delays.

This was all unexpected and I couldn’t have prepared for it, but I am sorry for these delays anyway. I am all too aware that my university course is going to start again soon and I know I need to get a lot of CCSO done before then. Everything IRL is sorted out now and my life is back to normal. I do have some interesting stories to tell though 😛

More Players!

On my travels I came across an old friend, a computer scientist. Back in early 2013 we spent a few months as friends and played games together. Our lives diverged after that due to our placement years and we haven’t spoken to each other for about a year and a half, yet when we met this week we acted as if we were best friends and had always been together. It was really weird…

Anyway, I told him all about CCSO and he was impressed, especially by the artists. He is a game developer himself and still uses circles and rectangles for his graphics. I have always wondered if our artists, Laura and Eld, are aware of just how awesome they are. While I have them, 99% of other developers have no one… It’s a sadly competitive world out there and I’ve only managed to get a leg-up by having this wonderful community of a multiplayer game as a startup.

Do any of you really realise how important you are to CCSO?

He liked CCSO a lot and is interested in trying it out. Told him it wasn’t ready yet but the forum version is playable and he wants me to get back in contact when a new game goes up. Lovely, another new player and another skilled user in the community… probably. He is a huge fan of games such as Mafia/Werewolf and The Resistance, so he will love CCS I’m sure.

Perhaps he will like the game enough that he will be willing to join us in the CCSO project? Like me, he graduates from uni this summer and will be looking for something to focus his time on. In terms of programming skill and experience, he is above me, but we can have a technical conversation without me getting lost, so in many ways we are on the same base level.

But even if he doesn’t want to join us, we both share friends with a number of other computer scientists and I’m certain we’ll be able to convince some others to play the game. Hopefully one or more of them will wish to join the CCSO team ^^

People say I’m too optimistic and that my ideas sometimes walk the border between reality and dream, but this attitude has gotten me this far already so I’m not changing 😛

New Concepts

Over the past few days, many new ideas have come to me, some my own creation and some from the devs I talked to.

1. Limited Game Mode

To make the multiplayer game more accessible to new players without them first playing the single player campaign, the number of components available can be greatly reduced. In Limited mode, the game is as normal except there are only a handful of chassis and weapons to choose from, and a digestible number of abilities to browse. Components will be chosen for their simplicity, unambiguous descriptions, and uniqueness. This will allow players to still experience much of the variety of CCS and learn the core game without being put off by the large number of components in the full game.

2. Component Statistics Neatness and Additions

The component stats page where it lists all components and ranks them in terms of damage per gold, range per gold, health per gold etc., could be setup in a large table with each column sortable. This would be a nicer display and allow a more interactive experience.

Additionally, a distribution for some statistics would be a great feature. Such as a range distribution for weapons, e.g. the number of weapons with 0 range, 1 range, 2 range, etc. Could help with players who create components, so they don’t make ones with insane stats.

Also could add the number of weapons that have less than x range. That way if you are say 4 range from an enemy, you can see how many weapons have 4+ range and so the chance of them being able to attack you.

Do this for all weapons and chassis for a variety of stats, and maybe something for abilities too (such as number of upgrades, average cost of an upgrade, damage per shot per round for offensive-type abilities and so on).

3. New Unit Creator Layout

I have never been happy with the way the unit creator has been. It is acceptable, but could be so much more manageable and fancy. Here is a possible future redesign of it:
(click image for full-sized version)

What you can see is at the top the components selected so far (Saboteur + B. Impact + Feint + Slot 2 + Slot 3), and the total gold cost is right of them. In the game there will be two buttons next to the gold, one for enhancements, and another to submit your unit. There will be a further button on the left of the top bar (left of Saboteur) that will let you view your unit’s stats. These buttons aren’t show in this picture.

On the left you can see a list of components. This is a scrollable list containing every component in the game, under headings. Components are highlighted red when incompatible (e.g. cost too much, or are air only and your unit is ground, etc.) and blue when selected [but the colours didn’t come out amazingly in the scan 😦 ]. Selecting a component puts it up in full in the right panel. The art and full text is displayed along with a button to select the component. If it can’t be selected, a message next to the button will tell you why and the button will be greyed out.

There will be a search feature somewhere on the page which will highlight components matching a search query in the list. This will provide a nicer experience and offer more choices for searching than the current system.

The words are only capitalised to make them readable on the page – my normal handwriting is pretty much unreadable – they will be written normally in the game.

Powered components are shown alongside the normal components. I know I missed out Mortar+, but you can see how it looks for Missile+ and Nitro+.

Clicking an equipped component at the top will display it in the right panel where you have the option of removing it from your unit.

Feedback welcome! 😀

The current unit creator was chosen because it was simple to code and that was where my skills were at during that time. It is actually very poorly coded and really isn’t that stable, although it does work. Since then I have gained so many skills and want to try something more advanced; but this will have to be in the future – right now I remain focused on getting the gameplay working…

Falcon Art

Just look at that contrast between the engines and the wings! Pretty awesome 😛 Thanks ElDromedario!

Speedy is also on its way and you can see a draft of it in the Concept Art section of the alpha site. Also done my best to reduce the loading time of images on that page (total file size reduced by a whoping 99.5%), although the very first time you load the page it will be a little slow.

More art is always on the way!

Finally

Turns out I am moving house again in a week’s time. (gosh Key, y u move so mush? Because I am going back to University. Being at Uni means moving a lot.) So yeah, I need to pack and organise stuff this week, but I will have time to get back on CCSO and hopefully bring you some real content next week! 😀

See you then!

Week 32 – Going for 100%!

The database is rewritten. Now the table containing all the game data has about 2.7k columns. Such a high level of redundancy to prepare for any reasonable situation (hopefully).

I’m loving this new table already. It was a lot of work but is going to save me so much time in the future. It is much easier to work with and much more powerful.

This may be the last major update needed to the backend. Another could be required, but first let’s test the limits of this one.

New target:

By the end of this month (3 weeks away) I want the core game to be ~100% complete.

It seems like a large target, but I am confident this new system will be able rapidly add new components.

Modular Design

In previous programming I have always just coded in a way where everything is linked together in the code in such a way that removing one line would break the entire program. Now, there is nothing wrong with this way of programming, but I will not be writing this new design in this way.

One of the issues I faced with the old system is that all the code for components was heavily tangled together. When a new component had to be added or an old one updated a massive amount of work was required to understand the code I have written and then even more to make the changes without breaking everything else. It just wasn’t practical.

This time around I am coding with modules. That means I am writing sections of independent code (modules) that together form the whole program. The idea is to keep components completely isolated from each other so that adding a new component doesn’t require any major modifications to existing code. Also when I come to update a component I can easily find and edit the code related to it.

Faster Additions

Pretty soon this style of code should come into its own, with new components being added at a much faster rate than before.

The code is almost hooked up. Just need to do a bit more before I can start adding components.

Game Broken

The alpha game now uses the new system instead of the old one for new games. Unfortunately, the new system isn’t fully functional yet, so don’t try to test it quite yet :S

Old games will be directed towards the new code, but will not work with it. To play in an old game you must change the web address of the game screen from play2.php to play.php.

New games will not work with the old code.

This is basically a soft update to roll out the new code instead of my original plan of completely wiping the old stuff and starting fresh. Although I am sorry to mention that I did something stupid when updating the game and a few games were lost into the void of nothingness Sorry if your game is missing!

Player Initialisation

What you will see when you view a new game (when a game is full and before any other player views it) is a screen telling about initialising players. This is a second stage of game creation used to simply simplify the code and reduce the load time of the game when signing up to a match. Tell me if any errors are displayed during this initialisation phase. As new components are added, the initialisation will become more advanced, so there is a higher risk of errors the more components that get added.

Once players are initialised you can refresh the page and the game will be there. Only the first player to view a game will see the initialisation phase and if it all goes well, they will only see it once.

In Other News…

Abilities page in the unit creator now massively sped up. Abilities load after the page loads. I will do this with the chassis and weapons at some point too.

Also, chassis display fixed. Artwork displays properly.

And talking about art…

Thirteen New Art Pieces!

I’ve figured out Laura’s weakness and have been using it to get her to draw loads of art! I even got her to draw one of the chassis ^^ (the rest are yours, Eld!)

From the top left, over to the right and then down:
Grenade+
Shield+
AP Shells+
Sight+
Missile+
Blur+ (such gold wow)
Blink+
Nitro+
Saucy Chassis
Nitro
Self-Destruct
Abduct
Thunderstorm

Be sure to thank Laura when you next see her!

The component pages are now starting to look quite filled in 😛 This hard work is finally beginning to pay off, guys!

This Week’s Plans

Finish off the new system’s core code.
See if new components can be added as easily as I want.

Should it turn out that new components can’t once again be easily added then I will have to accept defeat 😦 I have no other ideas for how to make it any easier or more possible right now, so instead I will turn my attention to creating the forum system while I try to figure out how I could make the game work.

But I don’t think that will happen 😛

See you next week!

Week 31 – Expanding

Thanks so much for all the testing and feedback! Together we have identified many more bugs to add to my hitlist. The power of community is immense. We’re not huge, but the amount of help you have been together is enourmous! I’m glad to have you all onboard 😀

In the component status display, you can see I have added a new section at the bottom representing completeness. This takes into account the art, so will only be 100% once all components are both blue-listed and have art for them. As you can see, we are coming up to 20% done. We have 23 blue-listed components and 21 lovely pieces of art.

And while we are on the topic of art….

Concept Art (maybe)

On the home page you can now see a link to concept art. This is a WIP and I may remove it entirely. But let’s see how it ends up when I get Laura’s concept art through.

More Art!

Talking about Laura, she made even more art for us! Woo!

AP Shells, Armor, Oil Spill. Wonderful! And even though these art sections do appear to be getting shorter, I am no less amazed and extremely grateful for the effort that goes into these pieces and the time you spend making CCSO a better game. I have just run out of positive terms to describe how pleased I am 🙂

Second Artist!

SHOCK! GASP! WHAT?!

That’s right! Welcome ElDromedario! A second highly skilled artist who is willing to devote their time to CCSO. They wish to focus on the chassis and weapons and so far two chassis have been produced. Check out the Juggernaut and Power Hull!

They don’t display great in this blog due to their different dimensions, but be sure to check them out in the alpha game 😀 They are in there ready. Aren’t these just perfect or what? That Power Hull looks exactly how I imagined it, except ten times as awesome!

You know what having two artists rather than one means? Art coming out twice as fast and each artist’s workload halving. That’s right, ElDromedario, by helping us out with CCSO you now have half as much work to do. 😛

Seriously, this is more than I could ever ask for. I will work at CCSO and continuously improve it so as to never let you down. The game will one day be as grand as the art it holds.

And with this newest addition, our team is now:

Programming and Coordination: Keyholefixed
Music: Harmless
Artwork: Laurasnake (Abilities), ElDromedario (Chassis, Weapons)

Chassis Section Style

Further to the inclusion of chassis art in the game, I’m trying out a new style with the chassis layout. The art/text now alternates between left and right (land chassis only). I’m a little uncertain on it and it is hard to determine how it will end up looking without having all the art. But what do you think? Do you like it or should I stick to having all the art down one side?

And Finally…

Progress has been a little slow recently, at least from your perspective. I’ve been rewriting all the backend code to make it easier to add new components. The previous(/current) system is just too solid to be flexible enough to easily add new mechanics.

The old database table used about 100 columns to store the game data, and I thought that would be enough. Turns out that is it difficult to work with. This new table I’m in the process of designing has ~2500 columns (o.O). This version offers a much simpler system for storage and contains very high levels of redundancy to enable it to be able to cope with a wide range of gameplay and mechanics. I can’t say if this will be the final version I need, but it is a step in the direction that will let me add a lot of new components at a much faster speed. I thank you for your patience 🙂

Once the table is designed I’ll go about translating it into SQL code the server can read so I can then add this table to the game. Should be awesome. Hope to have it all done and working this week.

See you in a week!

Week 30.1 – Whew!

First off, sorry for the poor blog post yesterday. I spent Friday-Sunday solidly reading through server documentation, following tutorials, and being really frustrated with all the problems I kept facing. I was so tired when I was writing that. The past half week has been very tough, way harder than I thought it would be. Working a server is not a task someone with no experience or understanding of servers can just casually pick up and do.

I felt really bad last night. I had sent around the link to the alpha game while the server will still preparing for launch after its initial crash. The server was ready by about 00:30am local time and unfortunately it crashed again when it went up. Fixing a server can take several hours and there was no way I could stay up that long playing around with it. Had to call it a day and leave it down overnight.

This morning I found this problem causing the crash and fixed it. There have been a few minor hiccups since then but the server appears to be stable now. All its performance metrics are reading what they should and all the traffic from the alpha players hasn’t caused any issues – the server looks to be able to support a lot more players than the current number, although it is difficult to work out an exact number because the usage from players is partly stochastic in its nature, especially when working with very low player numbers. All I can say is I don’t believe we are even close to the usage capacity of the server.

Whew!

I had two big worries when I launched the server. The first being that part of me really believed that no one other than myself would be able to use the site. I was half expecting to launch it and then for everything to be broken and no one able to do anything on it. hahaha…. so did not almost happen.

The second worry was that the server would be overloaded with all the traffic. CCSO is not a ‘standard’ website – it sends a lot of data to and from the database per player. The table for games has over 100 columns alone… That’s a hell of a lot of data. You even notice the effects of it when a round ends and the page auto-refreshes and blinks a few times before displaying the final results. There is a lot of processing that goes into updating a round and yeah I probably could make it more efficient if I rewrote the entire thing, but that doesn’t actually seem to be needed at this stage. All this processing barely makes a dent in the server capacity! Phew.

Anyway, things are working and look good. I’ll leave the server running overnight here and this time I’m reasonably confident it will still be working in the morning. If the server can stay up for a full 24 hours, I will have confidence that it can stay up indefinitely. (perhaps a little naive, but I’m feeling lucky here :P).

How Hard Actually Was It?

Let’s say I almost gave up on several occasions.

And on many accounts I had to take breaks because it was just getting too hard and I could see no way of making it work.

But Here We Are

30 weeks ago I said we would have a just about working game by the end of the year. I would say we have done this, although you might be a little bit more skeptical depending on how you interpret that statement. But no matter how you view it, we are on the verge of having a fully functional game. The core functionality is there. It is just the extra parts that need adding.

But The Site is So UGLY!

I know. This is not how it is going to look in the end. As I’ve been saying all along, the important thing now is to get the game working, and then we can worry about how it looks later on. The site looks utter crap, but for my very first website I think it is pretty good. It is fairly alright, just not the most ergonomic or fancy.

I’m expecting a design overhaul to be done in time for the Beta release – something that is expected in late 2015.

How Can I Test The Game?

Feel free to make a second account. I have added a special 2 player game mode for testing. For the second account, make sure you use a different email to the first or it won’t sign you up. This email can be fake and needn’t exist at all. Don’t worry about it.

When on the game screen, the view button will appear only once the game is full. Use separate browsers for your accounts, otherwise your sessions will overwrite each other; this is not a special feature in CCSO, all websites do this. You try having two accounts open at the same time in the same browser on any other site and you will quickly see that one of them get logged out. It’s just the nature of websites.

Anyway, keep an eye out for bugs and spelling mistakes.

Also, do check the bug thread and the component status page for components that should be working in the game and dodgy buggy traps that might catch you if you’re not careful. Please report anything weird that isn’t listed.

 

Where From Here?

The main focus will be on making more components functional. I’ll fix some of the other bugs along the way too. Each bug is listed from a high to low priority. This doesn’t define the order I’ll do them in, but will certainly influence it.

 

And Finally….

I FEEL AMAZING!

No, I’m not on drugs. Probably. What I mean is as a game developer, releasing my game (even if it is an early alpha) and seeing others play it is so fulfilling. I feel like a genius after getting the server working, and now I see all my hard work has paid off. Game developers get high off people playing their games apparently.

And on that note,

Goodbye for now. I’ll see you all soon!

 

P.S. How did I go from knowing nothing to this in 30 weeks? o.O

P.P.S. Today has been the best day by far for views on this blog. In fact, we broke the old record by almost a factor of 4 :O And this day hasn’t even ended yet! http://i.imgur.com/UYJBsut.png

Bugs and Suggestions

Full list of known bugs and suggested improvements.

BUGS

• Abilities can’t be upgraded. [HIGH PRIORITY]
• Votes do not display to other players when you make them. [HIGH PRIORITY]
• You can view games you aren’t in or which haven’t started, and you can play in games that haven’t begun. (although this bug requires some degree of skill to pull off). [MEDIUM PRIORITY]
• Rounds do not yet end automatically. WORKAROUND: All players must end the round for the round to end. [MEDIUM PRIORITY]
• Some weapons such as the Ballista Impact can have damage enhancements – they shouldn’t be available. *waits for everyone to exploit this* [MEDIUM PRIORITY]
• Death messages don’t display and dead players aren’t announced. [MEDIUM PRIORITY]
• If you customise a unit and then customise it again, it charges you extra gold. [MEDIUM PRIORITY]
• When Stun Gun prevents a user gaining UP, that user still receives a UP Gained message. [MEDIUM PRIORITY]
• Damaged players in a round are not listed. [MEDIUM PRIORITY]
• Boost+ displays in the wrong place in the ability list. [LOW PRIORITY]
• Ability types refer to GROUND instead of LAND. [LOW PRIORITY]
• Muscleman isn’t displayed and can’t be used. [HIGH PRIORITY]
• Apostrophes in game descriptions throw an error. [MEDIUM PRIORITY]
• Radar for some reason ends up in all ability slots when selected. [MEDIUM PRIORITY]

TO-DO IMPROVEMENTS

• Make all components fully functional. [HIGH PRIORITY]
• Where are the teams? [HIGH PRIORITY]
• The unit creator could be made more streamlined. I.e. easier customising from the main area, and the possibility of selecting components directly from the main screen if the user knows exactly what they want. [MEDIUM PRIORITY] Partially Fixed: Abilities page loads much, much faster now.
• Games should be deleted once they finish. [MEDIUM PRIORITY]
• Votes should display from most to least voted for player. [MEDIUM PRIORITY]
• Powered abilities shouldn’t display by default but instead require the user to click a button in the normal ability’s section. [LOW PRIORITY]
• Unit Creator: Incompatible components should be greyed out. [LOW PRIORITY]
• The text fields for entering the game description or your death message could be bigger. [LOW PRIORITY]
• Should be able to quit games you join before they start. [LOW PRIORITY]
• Upgrade names need finishing. Suggestions welcome! [LOW PRIORITY]