April 2011
4 posts
4 tags
4 tags
The Refactoring
So, this week I took a step back to evaluate all of the code that has been written so far and look at how it could be improved to make the game as stable as possible, scalable and importantly - more secure against potential cheating.
The Singleton Design Pattern
At this point the code for Animash was based around singletons, a class for the interface, game, controls, networking, player, hud...
2 tags
6 tags
All Important Interface
Although animash is first and foremost browser-based we want to create an experience that feels like a real game and not the usual embedded flash surrounded by flashing adverts that has become so synonymous with casual online games.
The game adjusts to take up the entire browser window - menus and other interface elements will be navigable with both the keyboard and mouse.
As part of the...
March 2011
7 posts
5 tags
Frickin Cute.
It’s great to announce that Ajay from the Devil’s Garage has got involved with the game! He will be creating all of the graphics and style for the game including environments, levels and character designs - awesome.
I can’t wait to start posting some videos or screenshots of the game in action, but in the meantime the imagery above should give an idea of the graphical quality...
5 tags
Zap! - Html5 Audio Manager
As mentioned previously one of the most interesting and frustrating parts of building a browser-based games in html5 is the audio management. Handling the different browser idiosyncrasies and providing a common interface is an essential part of game development.
Zap! is an audio management library that provides an interface to the common functions required in games and interactive applications....
4 tags
We have life!
(not our server)
Our multi-player development server has sprung to life and can now host multiple games in many rooms at the same time, awesome.
One of the main aims of the game is to make it as easy as possible to create and join rooms (ongoing games), it should also be easy to make your own ‘corner’ and invite your friends for a private game. The solution is to have the game...
5 tags
Node.js & Socket.io
Some big architectural decisions have been made over the last couple of days on the server side structure of animash. Originally we were thinking of creating the server in Ruby using EventMachine with Redis as the persistent store.
However, after researching node.js it seems to make sense to use a language that we know inside out (javascript) with a super active community and incredible...
4 tags
Boom! Crash! Zap!
So, the original plan was to tackle the character animation first but this seemed like a waste before a designer gets onboard, instead I decided to stray into the minefield that is HTML5 audio.
The original thoughts were to use an existing library such as SoundManager2 or jPlayer to manage the in-game sounds and music. Although this would have meant introducing a flash fallback I’m not...
5 tags
Powerup Time
This evening has mostly been focussed on improving how powerups are created, initalised and managed within the game. The powerup management is a pretty standard affair contained within the main game class, it keeps track of whether there is a powerup on screen and spawns new powerups at appropriate times in random positions
The powerups them selves are extended from a base...
4 tags
