Beta 4 – I spy a Forum!

Creating a forum is harder than I first anticipated…

 

Forum

Long, long ago, before this blog went public in week 24 of development, CCSO had a fascinating forum. Those of you who have been around since the beginning may well remember my adventures… my discovery, my journey, and my fights with phpBB.

Essentially a forum in a box, phpBB is a godsend to any novice web developer. You set it up and you’re all ready to go. Hundreds of cool features, amazing styles, and everything else you could ever really want.

Anyone remember that image? 26th July 2014. From one of the private weekly updates before CCSO went public.

Anyway, long story short… I lost two months on phpBB. It was amazing. I could have worshipped it. But, it was inflexible. You got what you got, and nothing more. I wanted something that I had more control over. I spent so long reading through the documentation, testing so many things, and yes I could edit it to an extent, but it just wasn’t enough in the end.

I waved goodbye to phpBB 😦

I knew creating a forum was way above my skill level at that time so I left it and moved on to greener pastures…

But now the forum situation changes!

Gah! Not quite as handsome as phpBB, but it is a starting point!

I thought this would be a fairly straightforward task, yet I grossly underestimated the confusingality* of it all. Forums are pretty complex systems, if I’m honest. There are so many variables you have to keep track of and juggle as you traverse or make changes to the forum.
*Now a word.

It was a difficult task (as you can probably tell by the intro comic). Despite this, I succeeded! I am proud of the achievement. The forum is solid and provides a good base to build upon.

I know you are eagerly scanning ahead in this text searching for how to access it. Stop right here! Here you go: Visit the index page of the alpha site. The link is there. You’ll be prompted to log in if you aren’t already as this is required to use the forum.

I greatly look forward to seeing the twisted and warped mess you make of it ^^ Just judging from past experience when I let loose testers on a new feature. Once one of you finds a bug it spreads like wildfire!

Updates to this forum are likely going to be frequent throughout the coming fortnight. I found it quite an enjoyable object to work with – at least once the functionality started to all click together – so I’m motivated to continue to work on it and add even more features.

 

Art

And where would we be without an art section? This time only one piece but there is something bigger we’re working on at the moment! I’m sure you’ll see the secret soon.

For now though… have a Drill!

Great work, Shoopiewoopie! (she hates me calling her that hehe)

 

That’s all for this week!

The beta site is coming together nicely. I know a lot of these projects aren’t 100% complete, but they are getting there. My skills are improving all the time, allowing me to attempt larger and more complex tasks and functionality. You all have a lot to look forward to! See you soon!

Beta 3 – New Unit Creator Design

Thanks Shoop >.<

 

Unit Creator

For those of you who have been around since the alpha, you may remember this image that I posted a while back.

What a sexy thing. Anyway, I had a go at creating it.

Ok, it’s not quite the same, but that is pretty close. Also, while I was at it I streamlined this unit creator so that the overall page now loads a lot faster. In fact, the only part that initially loads is the list. All the art and unit data is loaded in by a server request when you click a component*. The load is a tiny bit slow, but nothing too much and it is only slow the first time you click each component.

* Yes, I have been sharpening my skills a bit so I can do some cool things. Also, I fixed the bug with Boost and Boost+ not being next to each other (you can see this bug in the alpha version of the unit creator).

P.S. you can try this yourself by navigating to /secret/unitSelector.php

This new unit creator is not yet linked up to the rest of the game, so trying to buy or customise a component will throw a 404. The buttons along the top also don’t work yet.

Oh and thanks Shoop for the cool colour scheme. Thanks to her notes and my amazing programming skills and top-notch decision making and leadership, we have made it look pretty awesome. If you don’t like the colours then go moan at Shoop. 😉

Next stop will be linking this up and offering a search feature so users can find the component that suit their needs.

 

Art

Dueler, Boomer, and Bomb+

 

WAIT, WHAT? Bomb+?!

Isn’t that … Laura’s?

Yes, that’s right! 😀 Now Laura has finished all her exams I’ve jumped on her back and dragged her back to the drawing boards of CCSO.

It is great having you back!!!

Also thanks ElD for the other two pieces 😛 Sorry you’ve been a bit overshadowed this time, but you understand? ^^ I’ll get Shoop to bake you a cake or something. But really, Boomer looks really sinister and strong, just like a bomber unit should. Dueler appears fast and nimble, suiting its fighting style. They are both great pieces! 😀

 

Map Editor

As I understand it, the map editor doesn’t work as expected on all browsers.

(image courtesy of Melarec)

It works best on Chrome. However, a friend pointed out that my method for creating the map editor was outdated and I should be using the new HTML5 Canvas.

I had a look into this and it offers a blank canvas where you essentially code the art on it. It looks extremely flexible. For example. the well-known game of Entanglement (http://entanglement.gopherwoodstudios.com/) is created on a canvas. This really demonstrates the power of the tool and I have spent a lot of time this week reading into it.

Unfortunately I have nothing new to show you yet. But soon perhaps I will have the Map Editor moved into a canvas so it is more compatible with everything and offers more features. Canvases may well come in handy for other parts of the site too, such as the core game itself. But that is a maybe. We’ll see how it goes. 🙂

 

Graduation

BOW BEFORE ME. I AM NOW A MASTER!

…of Physics.

…which I guess is even cooler than being a regular old Master?

Yeah, I passed all my modules. I understand the universe now. Seriously. After four years of physics I can now never watch a single action film again because all I see are the mistakes in its physics.

Sigh.

But even so, I do not regret this degree path in the slightest. It has been an amazing and highly rewarding journey and I have developed so many skills along the way. And well, I guess it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows the entire way. We’ve lost a lot of good people along the way. In first year we started with over 70 people. I went through the graduation list and only counted half that number. I remember in first year how we used to fill huge rooms. It hit me hard when I was in the graduation ceremony and saw that my class took up only four rows.

We lost about a third of the class by the end of first year alone. People switching to different courses or vanishing completely. Second year hit us hard too. I guess I witnessed first hand how friendship groups can fall apart completely if a few key people are removed. By the final year the rooms looked so bare. In some there would be more fingers on your hands than students in the classroom. But I guess this brought us all closer together. By the end of it we weren’t a class of friend groups. We were a class of friends. We would all look out for one another and work together just so we could pass.

Less than half of us made it, but only 19 of us achieved the rank of Master, which is the highest qualification. 19 people out of 70+. How I made it just seems impossible. I was never that smart. I just. I don’t know. I just knew how to knuckle down and work through anything.

To anyone out there thinking about studying physics. DO. There is a shortage of physicists in the world. With such a degree you will never be unemployed, you will never be poor, and you will get to see the world. But all of that is insignificant to the major problems that humanity will face in our lifetimes. Global warming, terrorism, overpopulation. It’s not that we lack the potential to fix all these problems. It’s that we just don’t have enough people. There is a skills void.

Still. Do not worry. The future of your world is in good hands for now. We are highly trained and we will work for the best of all of us.

But. If you want to study physics for the sake of prestige or money (physics opens doors to banking), then don’t study it. You will fail. Only follow physics if you have a true passion for it, if you are by your very nature a problem solver, if you are a mathematician. Anything else and you are lining yourself up for disappointment. Physics is not easy and I cannot stress this enough. You have to be strong. I remember in first year there being a girl who was in tears because she couldn’t handle the workload. She didn’t make it beyond the year. But then there was another girl, in second year she came out of an exam in tears. It was a challenging paper – they all are. But she recovered from it and went on to be one of the 19 graduating Masters. We all have our own stories to tell, but stories can only have happy endings if the protagonist is able to overcome every obstacle.

 

It is the combination of the canvas learning and this graduation that has left me short on time since the last update. I’m still happy with what I’ve achieved but I know it’s not a whole lot. I hope from here on things develop a lot quicker.

Beta is coming.

Beta 2 – Map Editor (Demo)

Oh my god I have just figured out how to make graphics come out full sized in the text…

 

Map Editor

I had some strange urges this week regarding Shoop. I felt really motivated to create that map editor we’ve been talking about for a while and use those tiles of hers.

Then I thought for a while and was like Pfft… nah! That would require an insane amount of JavaScript! I’m going to look at cat pics instead.

But for some reason though I found myself in my code editor writing this script. I forgot how fun JavaScript actually is. I’ve remembered a lot and for some reason my skill seems ten levels higher than it did in the alpha. I wrote some pretty complex code without too much hassle. And the next thing you know…

And while this editor is only a simple demo at the moment, I have decided to open it up to all of you. You can find it by looking around the Alpha site 😉

It’s pretty cool to be fair, and that is a really bad thing because it means I’ve spent so much time playing with it – as you could probably tell by the face pictures – so here’s a little note to self: Do fun things last!
I’m learning one step at a time.

Anyway. Enjoy the editor! Do screenshot and post your best pieces 😛 I am aware of a few problems with the tiles such as tiles with water on being largely incompatible with each other, and there being some colouring/texture problems. Oh and larger structures like dunes and bushes being made piece by piece And the lack of T-junctions and crossroads.

If you think anything else is missing, let us know! I’ll get Shoop working on it straight away.

(P.S. the map editor is bootstrapped so resize the page, refresh it, and the map and tile selection will resize to fit the new size. Note that refreshing will reset the map.)

 

Art

  

Trident and Capsule at the top and two familiar looking chassis at the bottom; a new Juggernaut with an improved flame on the left, and on the right is CMFR with a golden disc on the top. Little things that make quite an impact.

Cheers ElD and Shoop for such great pieces! ^^

 

What next?

Lots of small fixes and additions to the map editor and lots of code translating from the alpha site into bootstrap.

See you soon!

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!