Game Programming Tutorials

[TESLACOIL]

I am with you

I have a passing interest in computers and programming. Ive always enjoyed games as a way of exploring the universe. Computers just a handy virtual exploration vehicle if you like.

I have a passing interest in AI, im building a sentient machine because my extremely diverse knowledge base ( thanks to my magpie mind ) which allows me to conceive and construct complex systems. Building HAL9000 is childs play to me and comes naturally. However the penalty for knowing 'everything' is you have to go light on details until such times you have to roll up your sleeves and get down and dirty.

I am seriously considering writing a proper game though.....i only do awesome, lol so im having a good think about what i want to achieve.

( i have cupboards full of 'exploratory toys', but every now and then i build something 'proper' )





lol i like the graph on 'Why We Play' ...sadly game designers are overlooked in the marketing and code benchmark rush. 99% of games suck, and quite frankly should never have been made. In general the 'game' has to been to screw and sucker the masses....u have to trust the glossy box....which inevitably is a gloss full o dross....sad but true.

Short of winning the lottery or taking a baseball bat to an interview its pretty hard to punch through. I have found the leaders and managers of computer games companies to be 9/10ths egomaniac and 1/10th talent at Bullsh... a little tricky to negotiate with.

Good games are like good films, every now and then the industry just gets lucky and the right jigsaw pieces come together for a single dance before flying apart again.....there are very few sequels in the game or film industry that build upon that lucky strike.




Game AI is usually really sucky ' warfront turning point' an exception ( slightly in part to the overpowered military heroes )

I can best 10 AIs at total annihilation , 7 AIs at age of king or redalert if i use the right map but warfront...heck i struggle to beat the computer 1v1. The first lan game i played me and my bud got wiped of the map vs 2 easy AI...i was mssging sorry i need help...and the reply i got was i got wiped out 15mins ago. It too 6 more games for two experienced gamer humans to beat the 2 AI

It thinks big and it reacts well to large or small threats. Its not that smart but it has enough If thens to make it realy hard to snipe it from an angle as it where and gain the upper hand.


Suggested game for you

You could go for a simple 2d game and make a powerful AI for it. Something like Panzer General which is strategic and turnbased played on a hex map. Graphically and interface wise its not that demanding. ( tip you can use offset squares instead of hexes )

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/258/P ... neral.html

[BasicCoder2]

I am seriously considering writing a proper game though.....i only do awesome, lol so im having a good think about what i want to achieve.

It seems you are going to do a lot of things and like talking about all the things you intend to do but until you actually do something of interest to others ...

Don't suggest games for me to write as games as such don't interest me. Instead find a game type you like and start writing it then post it to the FreeBasic forum for help and suggestions.

[TESLACOIL]

you have to pick your targets well....carefully select which projects get your full attention and which are just 'exploratory' toys

If i write a game i want 100s if not 1000s of people to play & enjoy it...thats the ' win ' for me



As you have written a great deal in posts related to gaming i was under the obvious ( but false )assumption you are into writing games....but its just a philosophical /intellectual exercise for you. Solving the problem the ' win ' for you....i like to build stuff for real every now and then so i guess that's where we differ on the games front anyway. I too appreciate just the intellectual challenge of solving stuff on paper or in theory.

now i know where you are coming from it makes things a little clearer.

The users on this forum are not really into playing games or writing games...except as an exploratory tool. If i want to write a proper game ill go to a game coders forum rather than a general coding forum or join one of the 'open game' projects. There the focus IS on games. Here the focus is primarily on FreeBASIC and programming in general..... its Horses for courses, but i though id ask here anyway just in case.

Eventually as the wider international FreeBASIC community grows specialty forums for games, or Phones or Internet apps will spring up.

As a non coder in general i simply find it easier to use a basic like language if and when i do need to write some code for a particular project. Thats why im here. ( the ASIMOV1 project ) FreeBASIC is fast and simple for me to use. The power of modern computers is such that i could write a proper game without having to resort to miles of ASM or tight highly optimized C and this is why im considering considering one of my game ideas to code. ...the technology now enables me to do that. Writing a game is a secondary consideration for me. I had to brush up my code skills for the AI project. If not for the big AI project i would prolly have given up coding years ago.

If i wrote a good game in FreeBASIC i doubt that people here would be interested in playing the game itself, but they would probably be interested in the code & the methods i used.

[BasicCoder2]

As you have written a great deal in posts related to gaming i was under the obvious ( but false )assumption you are into writing games....but its just a philosophical /intellectual exercise for you. Solving the problem the ' win ' for you....

My interest was elsewhere, in particular robotics and visual systems, but there wasn't any interest shown by others in that area. And my interest was not in talking about it but in developing actual working FreeBasic code.
http://www.freebasic.net/forum/viewtopi ... lit=target
http://www.freebasic.net/forum/viewtopi ... lit=webcam

i like to build stuff for real every now and then so i guess that's where we differ.

Well build something for real. Just get on with it. A task started is a task half done. You might not feel like vaccuuming the house but once you plug it in and make the first move you are more likely to finish the job.

If i wrote a good game in FreeBASIC i doubt that people here would be interested in playing the game itself, but they would probably be interested in the code & the methods i used.

My impression is that most people who post to these forums love to play computer games. Just get on with writing one and I am sure you will get all the help you need. I might even be able to help if there is a "win" there for me ;)

[TESLACOIL]

well thats where we have a common interest AI , vision and robotics.

Im building half a dozen full sized robots and androids
http://asimov1.wikispaces.com/Utah+Raptor+Android

Ive been working on an artificial brain for almost 30 years.....now its time to build a body to go with that brain.

I also dabble in electronics, but not at any great depth.




Yes the people on this forum are very good at helping. Game design not an issue for me, that's my strength. Im a bit weak on technical details, but you cant be good at everything.

[BasicCoder2]

Well I am no longer actively interested in vision or robotics notice I used past tense in the post.

As no one was interested in developing FreeBasic vision code perhaps if you can work out how to interface roboRealm to FreeBasic, where development has been on going, you might be able to get your robot doing some vision.

http://www.roborealm.com/

[TESLACOIL]

yes it can be a little frustrating if there are not that many people interested in the particular thing you want to do.

I can help you out on the robo vision side....i have to go there anyway, what good is a blind android ? lol So i have to build an extremely sophisticated and powerful vision system...i have no choice but to do this.

What ever you want your vision system to achieve i can help you design and build it.

I have a feeling that Roborealm will be a little too constraining for all but the simplest visions tasks. Not much use for my androids anyway.

My androids already have a very sophisticated vision system. Ive been upgrading it steadily over the past 18months or so.

just one of the exe's ive written
http://asimov1.wikispaces.com/Robotic+Vision

You really need an i5 2500k or better and a dedicated graphics card to do 'real time' robo vision any justice.+ lots of very fast ram , and a pci'e SSD





Back on games topic, A lot of consoles and some pc games are now incorporating vision. This is sure to play a bigger role in the future. It wouldn't be too hard to hook up a webcam & write a program to play snap or naughts and crosses. With a little more effort it could 'see' a chessboard or even play monoploy or poker....add in a little speech and you are well into the fun zone.

[BasicCoder2]

I don't believe Roborealm would be constraining. It doesn't prevent you writing any of the modules yourself. At a minimum it provides interfaces to common hardware.

There is no interface between roborealm and FreeBasic and I don't have the expertise to write one so you would have to use another language that supports roborealm.

Yes A lot of consoles and some pc games are now incorporating vision and that is the future I believe for game controls. Roborealm comes with many hardware interfaces including,

http://www.roborealm.com/help/Microsoft_Kinect.php

With all due respects your line exe is trivial and doesn't amount to any computer vision which is what you do with the edge data. That and much more is available from OpenCV or RoboRealm and learning how to use them would, I suggest, be faster than writing your own.

There is no interface between openCV and FreeBasic and I don't have the expertise to write one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCV#Pro ... g_language

You would have to use another language like CPP and learn how to use OpenCV

http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/vision/opencv/whatisit.html

But you have to stop talking about it and get on with doing it and then showing us all how it is done.

[TESLACOIL]

ref Game Programming Tutorials

Vince has written a variety of games and you can see how all there source code and resources are managed, well worth a look
http://www.imakegames.com/


ref robo vision

I dont see the problem with capturing frames from a webcam using FB, there is some code on this forum that does this and there are plenty of free utilities to capture data from a webcam and save it to disk either as single frames or video clips.

As you can see its fairly straight forward to extract features from frames with FreeBASIC code...i dont see whats holding anyone back from writing their own vision software ? No need to spend x hours hacking and binding into other peoples software. Just go straight for the kill.


ref

There is no interface between roborealm and FreeBasic and I don't have the expertise to write one
There is no interface between openCV and FreeBasic and I don't have the expertise to write one.

so look elsewhere simple ?....or am i missing something here ? What exactly do you want your vision system to do anyway ?

I write my own vision software so im free from any bindings with other software. Once you have the data captured in a format you are happy with then i just dont see what the barrier is.....by the sounds of it you are after some kind of plug n play vision system ?






ref But you have to stop talking about it and get on with doing it and then showing us all how it is done

i really dont know what the heck you are on about here ? I really dont. If you take a look at my wiki you can see ive been very very busy indeed. To be 100% clear I am not writing a roborealm kind of package in FreeBASIC if that's what you are after/think in doing ? ?



What am Im building is a vision system specifically for my androids.

Some of the code i have may be useful, ive posted a few snippets up here and there but the are only of use if you are building a sophisticated vision system yourself & even then you would probably solve the same problems slightly differently. My vision system is modular with many parts to it, its not just a monoblock of code that does x,y,z. If i want another feature i just code up another module & add it to the mix.

Now if someone else was building an android or was building a really sophisticated vision system then the problems and the solutions would be common, and perhaps a code exchange highly productive. If your not building an android or a 'full on' vision system then my code is not going to be much use.


I guess its easy to read the wrong intentions.....i thought you might be in to writing proper games ( but your not ).....it sounds like you thought i was writing ' roborealm' in FreeBASIC ( but that's not even close to what im doing ) Im building a megabucks!!! android, we are talking $100,000+ once its finished and that's just the parts ! The audio system alone is $1000
http://asimov1.wikispaces.com/Utah+Raptor+sound+system ( ive still got to add a subwoofer 2 mid speakers and a mono amp )




we do have many similar interests, but we are coming at things from VERY different angles, motivations and end goals...i think that's how we are unintentionally getting our wires crossed.

[En929]

Bit of inspiration for you

A 21-year-old computer whizzkid has become a millionaire and takes home £50,000 a month after he created a hit online computer game.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/n ... -game.html

Teslacoil, thanks for the article. I personally do think there is more room for games to grow and all it takes is for someone to create the right game and everybody then will start jumping onto that game’s bandwagon and thus, make whoever created it rich. Take the recent SIMS game for instance and certain Facebook applications that virtually all of my friends play today. Next to movies and TV shows, games are popular (whether 2D or 3D) and I think there are avenues where games can improve.

In where I live, there are a lot of opportunities for programmers (I bet even if someone programs in BASIC). Here, whether BASIC or other languages people tend to run away from programming because they don’t want to deal with the math and they think it “looks difficult” and of course, if everybody thinks that way, then it discourages other people (it like dominoes). Thus, it is very rare to find people who try programming here where I live. If someone hears that someone makes games, then it becomes big news here.

[En929]

Don't forget the tutorials featured in my e-zine: http://games.freebasic.net/basicgaming.php

Thanks Lachie

[TESLACOIL]

More games with screenshots here
http://users.freebasic-portal.de/rdc/programs.html



if you know of any other FreeBASIC game pages / websites let me know and ill add them to this list

http://freebasicportal.wikispaces.com/FB+Games

[En929]

More games with screenshots here
http://users.freebasic-portal.de/rdc/programs.html



if you know of any other FreeBASIC game pages / websites let me know and ill add them to this list

http://freebasicportal.wikispaces.com/FB+Games

Thanks for the website. There has been some cool games made in FreeBASIC and I've been downloading a lot of them. I just now went in the site above that you posted and downloaded the game called "Lode's Raycaster in FreeBasic." It's pretty cool. I like how FreeBASIC has 3D capabilities.

[borncoder07]

I think its all about how game pretends to work with potential gamers out there. The better and wisely you code the better results and error free platform you gonna provide to them. I wonder if its gonna be 2D or 3D? and which language you chose and why? As a coder I think of every possible thing to code now and then.