XML
Half a year after my bachelor's thesis game was presented at the bachelor's exhibition, it is now available as a download on this website.
The version is still largely the one that could be seen at the exhibition, with an additional, though very rough, English translation added.
Still, there are some bugs around. It might be best to understand the current state of the game as a tech demo: Most of the functionality is here, but it still lacks content and proper balancing. Play around – and tell me what you think.
Download
- ID: Me, You (and everybody else) – Mac OS X Intel, Revision 117
- ID: Me, You (and everybody else) – Windows, Revision 117
Known issues
- Some dialogue options lead astray or produce errors. If you encounter one, please let me know the last working option. Pressing ESC will allow you to interrupt the dialogue and start again.
- Moving around while carrying the moving box and looking at the floor will make you bump around – weird physics. Should have exchanged the box model with another one upon picking it up.
- Kicking the ball around might result in it dropping out of the level.
The complete list of all known issues can be found over here.
If you encounter bugs or have other suggestions, please get in touch with me. Thank you!
Currently, I'm sitting on a plane leaving for Amsterdam. So yes, I'm on holidays!
Internet connectivity might be limited during the next two weeks until August 8 – depending on the availability of free WiFi. All your pending requests and mail will be dealt with after my return, promised.
But then again, you might be in for some new flickr pictures afterwards … ;)
One future I see for our little company? Definitely something like this:
A StarWars game called FleetCommander, played on a 8160 by 2304 pixel wide touch screen.
Well, let me correct that. A touch wall.
More information on that project can be found on Arthur Nishimoto's site. Interesting fact, mostly for Dragica: apparently, it was programmed in Processing. Not too shabby, I have to admit.
[found via GamelLife]
It's sometimes funny what you manage to dig up when trying to archive your projects. There are always some projects that you started for some people out of an act of kindness, and, since they have been pet projects for everyone involved, died a slow and painful death, languishing in your projects folder, untouched and unloved.
What remains are the stories that come with those projects. Sometimes, they are better than the projects themselves.
Like, you know, this weird archive I have found. I had no idea what project this could be, and only after decompressing it, I remembered — well, half way at least. I won't give any names here, not just to protect the persons involved, but also because I can't recall them anymore.
It was supposed to be a collection of poems. I did not write them, I was just supposed to do the layout. Which was enough, because the poems were not something you would like to have your name associated with after some years. They were the kind of poems you write when you are a student and occasionally in and out of love.
The booklet was a team effort. She, the student who asked me to do the layout, was the driving force behind it. The other one, a guy, seemed to be more tagging along with her fancies.
And boy, did she have fancies. You could say that I found her remarkable, mostly in the way she seemed to embrace her girlishness. She had bracelets with heart-shaped ornaments. Most of her stuff was pink, and she took great care in getting that eyeshadow and lip gloss just right. I had a hard time taking her seriously. And I guess she took me looking at her the wrong way.
She started to talk to me. She left a spot open beside her in the lecture for me. She was very talkative about her projects. She started to involve me in her projects.
Okay … normally, April Fool's jokes are somewhat lame, and I have a tendency not to repost them. But this one … this one is pretty cool.
Actually, it's a pity that it's just an April Fool's joke. With good writing and engaging characters, this show would have potential. Hat tip to Chris (or, actually, one of his friends – anyway, without being Facebook friends with Chris, I would not have found this).
Since I happen to be ranked somewhat high when it comes to mentioning Unity 3D and XML, and some of the posts1 happen to be outdated by now since I learned stuff2. But most of all, I intend to learn even more.
That's why I choose to release those two projects into the wild and publish them on github.
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Like the one on writing log files in Unity 3D or the one on getting strings out of XML files. ↩
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Yes, that happens from time to time. ↩
Or: How Much Are We Letting Reality Getting Into the Way When Designing Games?
Yes, by now Robert Yang's article about the gay plot in Dragon Age has made the rounds elsewhere, but I think the issue is important enough to warrant publishing it here as well.
So, Robert Yang mods Dragon Age so his male character can play out the romance plot with another male character, Alistair – something, which only can be done by modding the game, even though the dialogue is surprisingly gender neutral. All is perfect, until ...
Since I already played around with XML in C#, this part of the project was easier to do than before.
What is it supposed to do?
Basically, I could simply hard-code most of my strings used in the game directly into the code – no one would notice the difference anyway. But obviously, this is not a very good idea, both because editing strings and later translating them becomes a pain.
Creating some data that would allow me to get strings out of an XML file would solve this problem – and, if the code is good enough, be reusable in later games.
It would allow me to edit text independently of the game code and add translations on a later date.
Since I want to make some basic statistics for my game at Fantoche, I needed some basic logging function of the player's position.
Of course, this could also be done using a simple CSV file, but the perfectionist in me insisted on an XML format. A preliminary test showed me, that I would be able to transform the XML to a CSV later on, so that my S.O. would be able to use it in his own programs.1
Having set up my development environment in MonoDevelop, I started to work on the problem on how to get my data into a well-formed XML representation and onto the hard disk.
The first approach was to use serialisation. I created a Location class, with all the necessary attributes – until I realised that this would only allow me to get one dataset into a file. I wouldn't be able to add more data to the file.
Conclusion: Serialisation is only good when you have one clearly defined object you want to dump onto the drive as a well-formed XML file.
So I tried to work with the XMLWriter.
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So why again am I doing it with XML? Good question. Because I can? Does that make me a nerd? ↩
