Dr Code Forums

treething · 2009-09-15 00:25:02

How is everyone doing?

RhoneRanger · 2009-09-15 01:02:28

Doing great! It is good to see you.

Nitro · 2009-09-15 04:31:05

Hey Chris, good too see you again. I'm fine. How have you been doing all this time?

treething · 2009-09-15 21:04:42

I've been doing good. It has been an interesting time. I've gone through 4 or 5 jobs, moved 4 or 5 times, got married and immigrated to the US. So it's been a bit crazy, but hopefully things are settling down now.

I saw the Princess and the Unicorn. It's very cute.

Nitro · 2009-09-16 05:57:08

Lots of stuff you have been doing there. I just moved 1 time in the period and still managed to escape from marriage somehow

If you are brave enough to fight the cuteness, you can find the playable demo here: http://www.dr-code.org/Princess%20And%2 … -Setup.exe . In parts still powered by your code

The two casual publishers we showed the demo (video) to didn't like it too much, see here: http://www.dr-code.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=147 . Now working on an improved version with characters, more story and more interaction. E.g. people will talk: http://www.dr-code.org/nitro/shots/lipsync.avi .
I'll also put more works into the shaders, they've been kept quite low-fi on purpose so the game would run nicely on old shader 2.0 cards.

-Matthias

treething · 2009-09-16 08:01:40

I played the demo, which apparently is more than the publishers did.

The problem is those casual PC portals do tend to just have a load of puzzle and sim-lite games, such as Bejewelled, Burger Time, even The Sims itself fits into the same category. This would be outside their comfort zone?

I agree with whoever (Rhone?) said in that thread that you should just finish it and move on. But you need then to define what your end goal is, otherwise you could just keep adding to it forever.

Personally I think she should be fighting hordes of zombies that the unicorn stabs with its horn!

Nitro · 2009-09-16 08:24:28

Yeah, fighting will be part of the game, too. Just not zombies First enemies you'll encounter:

- http://www.dr-code.org/hatter/Borogs.png
- http://www.dr-code.org/hatter/renders/borog_render.jpg

I agree about the moving on and casual game portals not in their comfort zone bit. End goal is also much better defined these days, although not finished 100% yet.

Are you still working for some game studio or doing general programming stuff? Or have you moved on to something entirely different?

treething · 2009-09-16 08:39:05

I'm now working for 1st Playable Productions. We make DS games, lots of DS games.

I've also been working on an XNA game. That is progressing very slowly, but I keep picking away at it. The working title is "Break". It is basically a Breakout/Pong style game about hitting balls with your paddle, but you move on a circular track.

Nitro · 2009-09-16 08:51:14

You have a nice team photo on your website

Are DS games more/less/same fun to code than bigger games? It seems DS games are a lot easier to realize with small teams, but somewhat boring. Maybe I am totally wrong though.

XNA looks nice. I've been using .net stuff for a webapp (side project) recently and the idea behind it is quite good. Playing your own games on x-box is probably quite cool, too.

Oh, and if you feel you are still not involved in enough games, I'm sure we could find something to do for you You can also use our engine for your break game if it makes things easier. Everything can be coded in python rapidly fast. Art pipeline with physics export, material editing in fx composer (soon in-game as well), auto-build system etc is also working nicely.

Apropos circular rails and shooting: http://www.dr-code.org/hatter/renders/b … d_side.jpg . We've got a simple prototype of that game working, but it's still pending completion.

Nitro · 2009-09-16 08:51:36

Btw, does your old MSN account still work? I haven't seen you online for years there.

treething · 2009-09-16 09:11:03

I'm not in that photo. I've only been there a few months. DS games are kinda fun to me, because you can make them so much faster. Its nice to work on something for 6 months and see it released, rather than 2 years and see it cancelled. I dunno about them being boring.. you mean the gameplay or the tech? The tech is really the same as any other game, just on a smaller scale and with no shader hardware. The challenges are still there, especially considering the limited memory and MHz of a DS.

Will post more later, gotta go to work.

treething · 2009-09-16 09:18:26

The MSN account works, I just hadn't been using it for ages. I logged on the other night and talked to Rhone for a while.

Nitro · 2009-09-23 08:14:00

What I meant with boring was the tech. To me it sounds like you need to code a bit like you did for a c64 or voodoo 1 graphics card. And stuff like python sounds like luxury (for performance reasons). But I am just talking out of my ass right now :-) Maybe you can tell me it's all much better

treething · 2009-10-03 09:03:01

In terms of graphics the tech is kinda boring. We can do skinned 3D characters, particle effects, etc, but nothing fancy. All our rendering tech is basically done at this point, aside from small incremental improvements.

We do use scripting, although we have to watch the performance especially with regards to garbage collection.

Performance and memory are obviously big issues so we spend a lot of time optimizing and finding ways to reduce memory consumption. We write tools and utility classes to make coding for the DS easier. The DS has a lot of fiddly technical issues to do with saving, wifi, closing the lid, in various combinations. The core tech tries to handle all that stuff so the game teams don't have to.

Every game needs at least some piece of new tech. For example, we just finished a 3D game and we had to come up with a new way of handling customizable characters to speed up the rendering. Another game uses the camera so we had to deal with image compression.

I've spent a lot of time on automated testing and builds. Anything we can do to streamline the process of making games.

Dr Code Forums

#1 2009-09-15 00:25:02

Hello

#2 2009-09-15 01:02:28

Re: Hello

#3 2009-09-15 04:31:05

Re: Hello

#4 2009-09-15 21:04:42

Re: Hello

#5 2009-09-16 05:57:08

Re: Hello

#6 2009-09-16 08:01:40

Re: Hello

#7 2009-09-16 08:24:28

Re: Hello

#8 2009-09-16 08:39:05

Re: Hello

#9 2009-09-16 08:51:14

Re: Hello

#10 2009-09-16 08:51:36

Re: Hello

#11 2009-09-16 09:11:03

Re: Hello

#12 2009-09-16 09:18:26

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#13 2009-09-23 08:14:00

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#14 2009-10-03 09:03:01

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