Indie Impressions - Kyoto

Worth checking out, some beautiful tranquil effects

Indie Impressions - Daymare Cat

A really cool indie game ART style...check out this free game video (Spoiler alert)

SCRIPT: pressure_wave

Here is a script you can use in the GMS physics engine, or when you are making a game with physics and want to create a cool pressure wave effect.
As we all know pressure waves are invisible, but has force which is acted out on other particles or objects in a world. In this case our game world. My game world I used this for was a simple space game, and when an explosion erupts with a visual particles effect I added this pressure wave by creating many invisible solid objects that shoots out from the middle of the explosion in a circle which will then interact with other asteroids and space ships giving it a realistic pressure wave push back effect.

For this script you require an object (oExplode_part)  that will be set to visible=off (invisible), I used a small sphere, which is set to solid with physics enabled and allow it to have collisions with the objects you want to be affected.

You can then call this script:
pressure_wave(oExplode_part);

in the DESTROY event of any object that is destroyed as an explosion and it will shoot out these invisible balls against all other objects in the area...

SCRIPT: pressure_wave

{
    var i, dims, force, ang, sz;
    //oExplode_part = argument0;
    sz=sprite_width;
    force = 20;
    //dim is the dimension of explosion wave
    dims = 50; //number of particles and directions each must travel to make physics wave

    repeat(dims)
    {
        ang=random(360);
        with (instance_create(x+lengthdir_x(sz/2,ang),y+lengthdir_y(sz/2,ang),oExplode_part))
        {
            //Apply an impulse based on a random vector
            physics_apply_impulse(x,y,force*(-sz+random(sz*2)),force*(-sz+random(sz*2)));
        }
    }
}

GameMaker Tutorials

Hi Friend,
and fellow GM developer.
I decided I will now and again add some tutorials or just brief descriptions with Game Maker Language (GML) scripts to my blog for your perusal.

Now that I added the LABEL keyword cloud to my blog, you can easily find similar topics of discussion on this blog. So I will add 2 LABELs to help you find TUTORIALS and GML SCRIPTS as I post these.

Look out I will start it with a simple script in my next post on how to make a fancy pressure wave effect during say an explosion when you use the box2d physics engine now incorporated in the new GMS.

Feel free to comment with tutorial requests here, and when I have time I just might just develop some of them for you here.

Great community for Game Devs

So many times the game Developer is on a solo guest face of the GameDev boss in the epic battle,
well in this short post I just want to let you in on a secret...
"You don't do this alone!"

Go find like minded individuals to support you and make friends have fun...
A great place to start is at http://www.onegameamonth.com/resources

Here they encourage and challenge each other to make a game a month for 2013, oh yes and there is an epic free pixel font resource for free download.

Enjoy,
finding you the gems and easter eggs in game dev.
Go BIG!
Boysano

Age of gamers...

I had the most interesting conversation today at work with a colleague who admitted he is also a gamer. There are many people in our large professional industrial company whom will never admit they are gamers and in fact may even be embarrassed to admit it.

This probably has a lot to do with the culture in South Africa since we are only now starting our second generation of Internet users where other countries already have a mature 3rd generation going.

Makes me wonder how many other countries still live in a "secret gamer" culture?? Blog your thoughts please..

But what really is amazing about this work colleague is that not only does he play Starcraft and Diablo 3 (his favorite) and wow, but also so does his wife!! Oh and guess what they play this online with their son, whom is in another country 1st world... Why so impressive you ask? He is already 62 years old and his wife 58, now that's just freakin awesome!!! At least I know what the future holds for me one day past 60 in over 30 years from now ha ha

This is really also exciting for the future prospects of South Africa in terms of technical growth and market size for games and innovation, yes we all know that the gaming industry is at the fore front of the worlds innovation!! Whoot and that's why I want to be part of it...

Any thoughts? Please go ahead and comment.

Until next time Indies!
Go BIG!
Boysano

Short update and a personal touch

If you want to follow a more short hand personal update from me you can like my facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/BoysanoIndieGaming.

The game coding is going well, I'm at 80% of my game for now I call it "Mini Creeps of War" and it will be a mob creep tower defense game...retro style.

Already got message system and levels sorted out.

I'm still holding back before I try to go to publishers with it, since in this industry first impressions last, but I wanted to be at that point already, I'm still positive with the progress though for only 8-hours a week after day job stress. Positively the day job can fund these muse projects. Looking back I'm probably already at 4x3x8 = 96 - 100hours on this project.

I'm also increasing my network, busy registering on reddit.com and found that posting honest positive feedback reviews on other game devs and graphic artists projects is the way to go for now... try it.

Keep positive and keep the focus!! You can do it!