tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59958890606077169662024-03-13T03:31:57.132-07:00Tiny FlameTiny Flame Dev Blog!Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.comBlogger67125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-12832755582611759072018-02-28T13:46:00.002-08:002018-02-28T13:46:30.859-08:00Blender away!<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ok so this whole Blender a day thing kinda got away from me. Mostly due to work constraints and having to learn a lotta awesome cool Linux stuff really quickly. I have been working on my little project in my free time here and there though. Here's a summary of what I've done over the last couple of months:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-V-FLrh7xI&t=68s">My very first rigged Blender character</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbKjbkTjhDg">More modeling, animation and rigging practise</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL1VSN-amEc&t=40s">My Little Alien Guy!</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VojZ9ch69qg">Implementing resolution menu for my game</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2Hya2cQiII">FIRST EVER SHADER WOOOO!</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The game is coming along really well, I have some more things to animate (already rigged) then I gotta do some more UI work in Unity and then POLISH POLISH POLISH! >.<</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But yea, there ya have it, like a crazy condensed buncha stuff I have been up to in video form :D</span><br />
<br />Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-4491046043180135272017-06-28T14:53:00.002-07:002017-06-28T14:53:22.346-07:00Blender a Day! Day 6!<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Every log cabin needs logs right? So I made some really basic ones. It's basically just a cylinder with a Decimate modifier on it, which I did in Blender. I learnt a lot from Modifiers and how they can make an artistic challenged person like me actually look semi-good :P My favorite modifiers that I spam all over the place from this point on-wards are Mirror, Bevel, Subdivision Surfaces and Decimate. Although subdivision makes the model so much more complicated and expensive in terms of performance x.X</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FF7LHqgHECk/WVQkcsAPoII/AAAAAAAAAfo/K7u3jxbXwNc-qC_x2qZ7NpSgiI6phqm-ACLcBGAs/s1600/5_LowPolyLog_Day_5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FF7LHqgHECk/WVQkcsAPoII/AAAAAAAAAfo/K7u3jxbXwNc-qC_x2qZ7NpSgiI6phqm-ACLcBGAs/s320/5_LowPolyLog_Day_5.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Log being textured in Blender</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> And an example in Unity can be seen below.</span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EbcXG4HT_jI/WVQlResesLI/AAAAAAAAAfw/ELd6I_x8ki8f4UlTGIuU_fcqIT3g8uo3gCLcBGAs/s1600/5_LowPolyLog_Day_5_Unity.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="516" data-original-width="923" height="178" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EbcXG4HT_jI/WVQlResesLI/AAAAAAAAAfw/ELd6I_x8ki8f4UlTGIuU_fcqIT3g8uo3gCLcBGAs/s320/5_LowPolyLog_Day_5_Unity.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Quick and easy one as that day was a week day and I was tired from work.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Cheers,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Rob </span>Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-21443389064242225932017-06-28T14:45:00.001-07:002017-06-28T14:46:48.719-07:00Blender a Day! Day 5!<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So in part two I'll cover the rest of my basic assets! Lets get started!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Day 5 - Fixed up cabin door and low poly pans!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So in my last post, you might have noticed the light shining through the cracks of my cabin door. That was a change I made to the original solid block door I first made. I made the change so I could play around with different lighting and shadow affects which was cool. I also added the cross bars.</span><br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dGcIWwCwaEg/WVQidzLC7YI/AAAAAAAAAfU/kD9i2YNhoGwXSq3z97lgO9b1lu_FNNduQCLcBGAs/s1600/4_DoorFixed_Day_4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="781" data-original-width="505" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dGcIWwCwaEg/WVQidzLC7YI/AAAAAAAAAfU/kD9i2YNhoGwXSq3z97lgO9b1lu_FNNduQCLcBGAs/s320/4_DoorFixed_Day_4.png" width="206" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Next up I wanted to add some more things to my cabin to make it look a bit less boring. So as it was a week day and I didn't have to much time, I made some low poly frying pans to hang on the wall. I wanted to make a shelf they were attached to but I've not had time yet and will probably do it as part of my cabin rework.</span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AvYXoG8HX4I/WVQi1ui3sHI/AAAAAAAAAfY/ZIx40qIjgfAP-A0wytVqEJDyxkZex1mZQCLcBGAs/s1600/4_LowPolyPan_Day_4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="543" data-original-width="667" height="260" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AvYXoG8HX4I/WVQi1ui3sHI/AAAAAAAAAfY/ZIx40qIjgfAP-A0wytVqEJDyxkZex1mZQCLcBGAs/s320/4_LowPolyPan_Day_4.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">An example of what they look like in Unity can be seen below.</span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xa93i_hhjo4/WVQjAD2Mt_I/AAAAAAAAAfc/tSK-l6tdmkEjwuds0g2gKYufRJzh58Q9gCLcBGAs/s1600/panz_15_05_2017.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="519" data-original-width="1048" height="158" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xa93i_hhjo4/WVQjAD2Mt_I/AAAAAAAAAfc/tSK-l6tdmkEjwuds0g2gKYufRJzh58Q9gCLcBGAs/s320/panz_15_05_2017.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And that was day 5. I think it's best if I do a post per day to keep things concise.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Thanks for reading!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Rob</span><br />
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Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-76016898108657865062017-06-28T14:12:00.000-07:002017-06-28T14:45:59.050-07:00Blender a Day! Day 1 to 4!<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Thus far I spent roughly 2 weeks teaching myself Blender and 3D modeling. The whole creative art thing isn't really my deal but I wanted to gain a better technical understanding of rigging, weight painting and animation. Since most of my games are constrained to 2D due to my lack of these skills. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So my goal with this was to reach an ok looking bunch of assets that I could practice with. My weapons of choice were Blender and Unity! Yaay! I'll post my progress below. I was aiming to make 1 thing a day. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Day 1 - Cabin in the woods</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Since this would be an easy start (just a cube really) I thought it a good starting point. I did learn how normals worked in terms of which way they face in Blender though! Before that standing inside my cabin meant I couldn't see the inside of the walls. I still need to redo all of it since its far to simple and im not happy with it.</span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iLm2udOtZz4/WVQXRt5BR1I/AAAAAAAAAeY/k46TqHnPPcUV6ijhmg9MNYCgpa73hHI8wCEwYBhgL/s1600/0_Cabin_Day_0.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="511" data-original-width="795" height="205" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iLm2udOtZz4/WVQXRt5BR1I/AAAAAAAAAeY/k46TqHnPPcUV6ijhmg9MNYCgpa73hHI8wCEwYBhgL/s320/0_Cabin_Day_0.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Day 1 - Cabin in the woods</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Day 2 - Some Furniture for the inside</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Next I tried to make some basic furniture. I also made a window that was transparent so that I could experiment with some lighting stuff. I also made two light rays to try and match the low-poly art style. The table is super basic so I wanna rework it. I'm pretty happy about the window.</span><br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AfvS7LXS_II/WVQYQdjU5LI/AAAAAAAAAek/NhgHypEcziUis5fR5uTyKfAV5OVb9pPpgCLcBGAs/s1600/1_Window_Day_1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="637" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AfvS7LXS_II/WVQYQdjU5LI/AAAAAAAAAek/NhgHypEcziUis5fR5uTyKfAV5OVb9pPpgCLcBGAs/s200/1_Window_Day_1.png" width="191" /></a><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mXKYEJGNI2s/WVQYPPrbpMI/AAAAAAAAAeg/vB_TYeA9QmAQwI0ZvgLzZ_SjIFlZ_f56QCLcBGAs/s1600/1_Table_Day_1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="535" data-original-width="750" height="142" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mXKYEJGNI2s/WVQYPPrbpMI/AAAAAAAAAeg/vB_TYeA9QmAQwI0ZvgLzZ_SjIFlZ_f56QCLcBGAs/s200/1_Table_Day_1.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Day 3 - Crappy backpack and a bed</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I deleted these from the scene in Unity since they are really bad, but I thought I'd show em anyhow. On day 3 I made a backpack and a bed. I also tried my hand at texturing in Blender.</span><br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QD0HGDSMU0Y/WVQZgUEC1NI/AAAAAAAAAe0/-gHaZqixxx4IFrUh7vRgkOjUVj68wbWogCLcBGAs/s1600/2_Bed_Day_2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="659" data-original-width="991" height="211" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QD0HGDSMU0Y/WVQZgUEC1NI/AAAAAAAAAe0/-gHaZqixxx4IFrUh7vRgkOjUVj68wbWogCLcBGAs/s320/2_Bed_Day_2.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I had a go at making the bed cover look ... like...kinda clothy? But yea, that didn't do well and it looked even worse textured.</span><br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GIxvdn0uAdU/WVQZdpMwxCI/AAAAAAAAAew/Fz2d1LRSq9gPJxmY4A_g3xUgVqx1zsVjgCEwYBhgL/s1600/2_BackPack_Day_2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="179" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GIxvdn0uAdU/WVQZdpMwxCI/AAAAAAAAAew/Fz2d1LRSq9gPJxmY4A_g3xUgVqx1zsVjgCEwYBhgL/s320/2_BackPack_Day_2.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And next I made a really super blocky backpack. Also not great but I learnt how texturing works in Blender so its not all bad.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Day 4 - Ham Radio</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On day 4 I focused on learning how to make ropes and use curves in blender (the wire part). Some kid on Youtube taught me and after I got the basics I experimented around. </span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CHt-IZ8QFqs/WVQaaQDQZWI/AAAAAAAAAe8/ECzqtRnIQ1IX3VrPEVrzS93ri_8vICM2QCLcBGAs/s1600/3_HamRadio_Day_3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="606" data-original-width="656" height="295" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CHt-IZ8QFqs/WVQaaQDQZWI/AAAAAAAAAe8/ECzqtRnIQ1IX3VrPEVrzS93ri_8vICM2QCLcBGAs/s320/3_HamRadio_Day_3.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ham Radio</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Below is what I had thus far, imported into Unity, textures included.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Collection of assets</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So that's the first 4 days. I'll continue on in my next post. Don't want this to run to long. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Peace!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Rob </span></div>
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Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-24735388032345691952016-11-22T05:34:00.002-08:002016-11-22T05:43:23.463-08:00Done with my Masters Degree!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Well, I did it. I finished a Msc
with commendation and I'm graduating in January of next year. The end
of another academic stint. This year honestly felt like 4 sleep deprived
months for me. I ended up doing my final year project / thesis on AI in
video games. I managed to get distinction for it, I have no idea how.
There are so many areas I could improve on. I made a demo game to show
it off using Unity and some external libraries I created in Matlab.
I'll cover that in a future topic though. I've not had a day off to
relax in 2 years now and I can feel it starting to catch up with me. To
be honest it caught up to me at the start of this, my second year, at
this point I'm just glad I'm still sane and functioning.<br /><br />But! I
am still here, still doing my thing. Many people (like ... 3 of them!)
have asked me what's next, and I have a lot of ideas. But currently I
just need to slow down or try to. I'm not even 30 yet and already im
starting to go grey. I'm going to book a few weeks off work in January,
to attend my graduation and screw around with some projects I have been
putting off, while I was busy with my Masters. First time in a while
I've not had to book time off work to study.<br /><br />It does feel strange
not having a deadline looming over me though. And I am finding it
difficult to switch off, but that's not strange for me. Anyhow, I hate blogposts <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">t<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">hat</span></span> is just a buncha text about what I'm up to, so check out this thing I made one Saturday night! </span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kq1ZBzFYav8/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kq1ZBzFYav8?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />I was interested in how Action RPG's interpolate 2d coordinate space into 3d coordinate space. The answer (in Unity) is raycasts! Feels like cheating but hey, it works I guess :D</span></div>
Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-42194987796330775512015-10-24T11:16:00.004-07:002015-10-26T06:17:35.009-07:00Unity.exe caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005)in module Unity.exe<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Quick tip since this drove me insane.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I reached a point in my Uni project where I would crash every time I loaded into a specific scene. At one point the crash went away but two builds later it came back. Unbeknownst to me, this occured after I adjusted or changed fonts in my project.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The error message read "Unity.exe caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005) in module Unity.exe at 0033:405ee4af.". </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The stack trace was all in hex and I wasn't sure how to pass it through a debugger so I resorted to google. In my case it turns out it was my fonts (on my OS) messing up for some reason. I fixed it by doing the following:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Go to Control Panel</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Go to Fonts</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Restore default fonts</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Boot back into Unity and load the crashing scene</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Observe scene loads fine!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If that doesn't fix it in your case check out these links, god speed!</span></div>
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<a href="http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/950569/game-runs-in-editor-crashes-on-startup-after-build.html"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/950569/game-runs-in-editor-crashes-on-startup-after-build.html</span></a></div>
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<a href="http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-4-2-crash-on-startup.195577/"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-4-2-crash-on-startup.195577/</span></a></div>
Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-53668492647272770162015-10-06T06:29:00.001-07:002015-10-06T06:43:57.721-07:00Decisions, decisions ...<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Okay, let's fast forward through this lack of updated blog content! Ready....go!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Finished my second module at university, which I think I already mentioned. I had a lot of fun on it and learnt a lot (of C, C++, OpenGL and using glfw, Visual Studio). But the stress kind of outweighed the fun parts. Another string of 'I'll just not sleep, it's fine' days. I didn't manage to snag a first for this module, I was off by around 2%! My supervisor was amazing though! It always helps when you have really enthusiastic people around to spur you on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It was the same problem I always face, do I do something I know really, really well - and not learn anything new, or do I, trail by fire, take on a whole new area. As usual I choose the latter and unfortunately my grade reflects that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I wasn't that upset about it as I learnt a bit about a huge sub-field in Comp-Sci, graphics programming. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">At the end of the module it was the summer break. I spent some of this time learning Perl. I had two weeks to get competent at it. Now I am really pretty good at it if I do say so myself. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My employer, who remains nameless but is awesome, gave me the opportunity to switch from being a tester to a more developer oriented role. The specifics are yet to be confirmed but thus far I've been mostly building/maintaining tools to help other departments/developers with their day to day. Automation, baby! Most of the time I use Perl but from time to time I stumble into C++ or some other languages. I am loving it! It's pretty much the best job in the world for me right now. People have problems that need solving by some form of system/tool and I get to solve <b>and </b>build it. How is that not the coolest thing ever!? One of my finest moments was making a manual task that would have taken weeks take a minute with a script. That was pretty awesome.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">University started up again yesterday, currently learning how to use Unity...so as you might have guessed I'm a bit ahead of the curve. But now I am faced with another choice again. Do I stick with the Unity game engine, or do I stray into Unreal territory so that I can have more face time with c++? </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
Seeing as how I still need to work my day job and have a total of 3
weeks-ish to do this first assignment which counts for 50% of my grade, I
don't know.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">During the summer break I built a little twin stick shooter in Unreal following a tutorial, it's pretty sweet and looks great I think. I did it just to see how things work. But I still don't feel like I know UT well enough to even make a start on my own projects. The blueprint system is neat, but I need to make more use of c++. I get that you are supposed to set up the building blocks in c++ classes and then interface with the blueprint system so designers can make use of your building blocks. But I am not good enough at writing the building blocks yet! It's so annoying.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In any case, for my current Uni module, I already have a few game designs I made which I have been wanting to prototype for a while now. I have just not had the time to do so until now. So once I get my assignment brief I'll know which design I can use, save time having to think of one that way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As for my final year project, after working in my fancy pants new position, I see what it takes to be a good graphics programmer, in the Industry. And to be frank, I don't think I have it in me. I am still not nearly experienced enough at it and I don't think I have enough time to spend getting to that point. Graphics programming is way out of my field of expertise. My undergrad was devoted to AI and I am still in love with that. I don't know what it is about graphics programming, I don't mind the low-level stuff or the math even. I am willing to spend as long as I need on that, it's just that in my current situation, I have deadlines for everything I do and I physically don't have the time to get to where I need to be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I told myself I would specialise in graphics programming as it's very important in my line of work, which it is, but I feel that currently, as far as University goes, I'd set myself up to fail if I pursued it as a final year project. I have not made a decision yet but I am currently looking into alternatives. Constantly finding myself back at various AI topics. I'm looking into combining AI and VR on a project. Thus far with my ideas, the connection between the two are pretty loose at best. The superficial connection between the two fields is pretty underwhelming to me, but then that's what literature reviews are for right?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In any case I'll need to discuss with my supervisor and see if he'd still be interested in my new project and if not look into new options.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As for now, I need to get back to studying!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Rob out! Peace! *gangster signs*</span></div>
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Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-73183969513729392682015-06-15T07:00:00.001-07:002015-06-15T07:41:31.329-07:00Robs Stock Tracker!<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Background</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ever since playing Eve Online I've liked playing the market in video games. So much so I built a little trading game <a href="http://tinyflamedev.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/trader-v0.html">prototype at some point</a>. One that relied on a barter system. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I really should go back and finish this at some point! :D</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't have the time to play MMO's anymore. But while watching my girlfriend play Eve I started jonesing to trade again. So I thought to myself, why do something in a game? If I was 'ok' at it on Eve then why not try the real thing. I mean, it's not technically a game but the term 'playing the market' must means it's kind of a game, right? :D</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I started reading up on stocks and shares and came to the conclusion that this was a lot more in-depth than any game I've traded on. Reading candle graphs and trying out technical analysis was fun and all but I'd need to do a lot more research before being able to invest cash on this. I needed to find out what time scale I wanted to be using (day trading, swing trading etc). I'd need to settle on collateral to start off with.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I started trading on a fake/virtual stock exchange. Just to practise. I had a lot of fun and managed to make a profit of 3K fake Internet money in a week (albeit with a collateral investment of 100K).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During my dabbling I found that I would often have to do the same calculations over and over again. This got on my nerves really quickly. Especially when trying day trading where 15 minutes can mean profit or hitting your stop loss. It was at this time that I started dabbling with Perl and saw an opportunity to make something cool!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Objective</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The objective of this Stock tracker wasn't just to track the value of my stocks and list them out as increases or decreases per stock. This information can already be found on the stock market and various other sites / newspapers. This information wasn't all that helpful to me as an increase on the day wouldn't necessarily mean a profit for me as this would be based on when I bought into the stock.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wanted to be able to at a glance see what my total profits would be at any point during the trade day per stock. This included any commission fees and taxes. So I set out on doing this, making use of Perls text matching functionality. The tracker works really well albeit pretty basic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am able to retrieve a webpages source directly by making use of the LWS module, after this I parse the HTML extracting only the information I need. After I have this information, I simply use it with my own information (amount of stock I have, how much I paid for it, my stamp tax, commission per sale etc.) I read this in from another file and nothing is hard coded.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In fact I am able to specify multiple stocks by specifying it in a file (at the moment its a simple .txt). I specify the company, URL and the rest of my details. After this, my tracker uses the URL to grab the page. After it does its parsing and calculations it returns the values I want. At the moment only the total profit per stock.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The next step I wanted was to automate the updating as constantly re-running the script manually is pure madness. My script will start up when run and continue to update itself every minute (updating my profits). It will run up until the market closes (for debugging purposes it will run till 18:30 GMT at the moment). Once it hits this time it will shut itself down. You can also quit out using ctrl+C which will then run a subroutine to clean up a bunch of information and display a user friendly message.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After this I used the Term::ANSIColor module (a built in module) to colourise my output and make things a bit more user friendly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The final feature I added was stop loss tracking. This allows me to set a stop loss values (in a similar fashion as the rest of the values input). This will the be used to either inform me that my current total stock value is still higher than my stop loss or if it drops lower it'll output a warning. This stop loss can be set in an easy way for each stock I wish to track. The number of stocks I want to track is (in theory anyhow) infinite. There is no limit but obviously tracking more will impact performance as I have to parse a lot of information.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The final output can be seen below! A stock tracker that can track any amount of stocks on the London Stock exchange and update it in real time. Only total profit numbers will be output and stop losses will be monitored. Pretty much automating a whole bunch of minor inconveniences for me. And best of all is it runs on most platforms (Only tested on MacOS and Windows however).</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Example of the script in action!</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">TODO - Future Work</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's still some things I'd like to be able to do with this script, but they aren't super important. These are:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">User specified output - I already have this partially implemented in my script. It would in theory allow the user to specify what they wanted to see. For example perl Scriptname - StopLoss would only show stop losses. Scriptname - showall would output everything. Scriptname - help would list the help output. I'd need to use the getops module for this. At the moment I use ARG[] for this so I don't have to rely on cpan or third party mods.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This little project would also be really neat to use to combine with some AI. As I specialised in AI during my undergrad I am pretty interested in this. Mostly in terms of using some form of intelligence to calculate ideal stop losses. Seeing as how I can track the days trend / months trend and even years trend. This is something that seems feasible to me. If I had a week or so free I'd love to look into this. the AI field seems pretty dead in terms of Perl so I might have to rewrite things into Python or Ruby for this however.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In conclusion I'm pretty stoked with what I managed to get done. I got much better at Perls data structures and the flow control (which is pretty much the exact opposite of C++'s flow). Yea I get ones a scripting language and ones a proper programming language! Chill! Sheeesh!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most importantly I got competent at using regular expressions, which was a big gap in my Perl knowledge until this point. For example, do you understand the code below? Cause I finally do! :D</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Good times, good times!</span></div>
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Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-73618871645338706132015-06-15T06:04:00.004-07:002015-06-15T06:05:38.273-07:00Still transmitting! - What I've been up too<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hello world,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It has been a while since I last updated my blawg! :D</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So what's been going on with me lately can be summarised in three words - University, Work and Perl.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As can be seen on my site, in the portfolio section I finished my second module on my part time masters course. My preliminary grade is 65% which is kinda low for what I wanted. But considering I was trying to learn C++, OpenGL and the Oculus Rift SDK all at once, I think I did ok :D I'll just have to focus on my next two modules to make up the mark. This can still work! Just means I need to write more (read ALOT more) c++. I also need to pick up a book and Datastructs and Algo's in C++. I have only recently come to understand the utter importance of data structures and algorithms. Something I wish I picked up on sooner. I always knew they were important in theory, but I always shied away from them and Big O notation. This will need to change soon. Additionally I need to pick up a good book on OpenGL, one that does not use deprecated stuff! Out of date GL stuff screwed me over a few times!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As you can probably tell, our Grimm Journey game project has been on hold for a little while, as most of the team are currently pretty swamped with various other projects that has been sucking all our time away. Hey we gotta eat and pay rent, right? But fear not for the project will continue soon! Personally I am aiming to implement the animations from the demo scene into the game and hook up the narration (yup still working on this) properly at the end of next month when I have the time. After all that C++ and perl, writing some C# should be a treat lol.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For now my main focus has been on refreshing myself with / learning Perl to a proper standard, due to work requirements. And because I learn better by doing than reading and watching I set out to make a little application/script. Making a game in perl would have been ... interesting. However I wanted to use it more in line with what it was designed for really. Covering scalars/arrays and hashes as well as regex and matching/substitution.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As such I made a basic Stock/Share tracker that pulls info from the stock exchange and does some math on it. The tracker doesn't track the value of stocks ion their own, mostly because this info is available all over the Internets. What it does instead is track your specified stocks, based on the mount you paid for them and the quantity you have. Then using that calculates you profits (after stamp tax and commission and things like that). The results update in real time (at the moment every minute).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What this means is I have an easy way to at a glance see where my stocks are at, if I had any. I'll make a follow up posts going into more detail for those interested. I am currently using it with a fake/virtual stock exchange to test. The goal here was to see the accuracy of my script and not make cash...although that would be neat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Work-wise everything is going neat, should be moving departments at the end of this month and be able to focus on more programming and less testing. I'm looking forward to this. Exciting times.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That's all from me for now, I'll be updating my portfolio with some screenshots of my stock tracker sometime soon so go check it out :)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Seeeeeeeeeee ya!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rob</span></div>
Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-6580836626989839352015-02-01T17:07:00.006-08:002015-02-01T17:07:59.709-08:00Grimm Journey Old and New<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Before logging off for the night I wanted to make one last post and be all reflective. I know what you're thinking "Just finish importing the narration already!" and to that I say, "I'm working on it! GOSH!"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We started this as part of the Ludum Dare 31 game jam. We started with nothing, just a blank screen in Unity. Then we started doing awesome things to it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I found one of our early GJ pictures and thought it would be neat to compare. Images don't do the functionality justice though. In the old image the giant troll had no movement, the enemies didnt patrol or have much AI. The Big Bad Wolf couldn't attack yet and the Character Swap was a white cube and didn't work properly yet. There were also no victory points. The game had no audio or sound effects.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A Grimm Journey during the Ludum Dare 31 game jam:</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kZYoRvh69vI/VM7EzgtcpKI/AAAAAAAAAY0/STvXFoQ6X7s/s1600/Piccy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kZYoRvh69vI/VM7EzgtcpKI/AAAAAAAAAY0/STvXFoQ6X7s/s1600/Piccy.jpg" height="223" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The latest commit had all enemies with their attacks / audio. Rob added some great AI and basic pathfinding. I put in out artists assets and created the level animations. Made the pause menu actually work. I added attacks for the Big Bad Wolf and Rob made it possible for the Big Bad Wolf to attack whilst remaining still. We added the Darkness into the game which rises from below the level. Laura grabbed and formatted all our audio and Rob added the audio into the game, with awesome timing on the audio queues. There are many, many other features and bug fixes which slip my mind at the moment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A Grimm Journey today (commit 3d140fff89)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I think that even though we are making slow progress, we are making progress all the same! And I am super proud of what we have managed to accomplish thus far. And things are only getting better! Rob has been working really hard on adding some UI elements into the game (such as health bars) and I have been slowly adding narration and voice acting elements to the different levels, which our designer Laura made. They are really, really awesome and add a lot to the game! Our artist is working on some assets for Robs UI stuff.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Our bug list is looking good with 15 open and 27 closed bugs. I'm gonna post an example below:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I think I've finished about 3 games and I have like 6 prototypes/unfinished games. But this is the first game I have worked on that made me feel really good about what we've accomplished. When play testing a build with my girlfriend (its mutliplayer after all) we had so much fun! It was the first time I felt like this was a game and not 'another game project I have to debug and balance'. We all started with nothing and made something that is becoming more and more awesome as we go :D </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To the team - great job guys. Out of all the teams I've worked with, I want to murder you guys the least ;)</span></div>
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<br />Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-76372920671628001972015-02-01T16:01:00.002-08:002015-02-01T16:01:30.716-08:00Grimm Journey Project page<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Quick update, to show that I still live!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I refactored the sound manager, in our game into three different ones, and I am in the process on implementing them. Unfortunately as usual my<a href="http://robdjstudies.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/the-end.html"> University studies</a> are keeping me pretty busy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Apart from that I have set up a basic frame work for a project site for our little game project. It is pretty simple, has a few tabs. Currently these read About, Media, Play and Contact. It's not live yet since it still needs to be filled in and I want to grab some art for it to make it look nicer. I also want to set up a different page style as I just use the CSS from my main site at the moment. I am waiting for our artist to get back in touch so I can ask her advice. Will run this by the rest of the team as well.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I think it's important that we have one solid place to show people our stuff. At the moment it's all grape vined through blogs and links and repos. Hopefully this will be a solution and rather than try and explain to people we can just show em :)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Not heard anything from Leftfield peoples yet. Wondering if I should shoot them a mail or not. Will look into this.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">That's it for tonight! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Rob</span>Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-75503850614638224672015-01-23T06:19:00.004-08:002015-01-23T06:20:31.187-08:00Adding Narration into our game<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Still making slow progress on this as Uni's been getting busy (more on that in my Student blog). However I have been doing s few things here and there. At the moment I am working on adding narration to our game.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Laura did some super cool narration for our project and I've been adding them in little by little as I test at the same time. Taken from our github tracker:</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Added level 1_1 intro narrative as a test in afdeb2d. Started restructuring the Sound Manager a little bit. We drop all audio sources volume to 0.2F while the narrative is playing. Once finished we boost up the audio to all audio sources in the level to 1.0F. This works pretty neat currently :D The narration plays with quiet audio in the background and once its done the audio is restored to its full glory!</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">I am still thinking whether or not this is the best way to go as atm we are constantly updating each audio sources volume per frame. But I can't think of a better way right now. I'm gonna keep running this through my head, but the good thing about updating per frame is that the audio seems really responsive. And we don't have -that- much audio really so it shouldn't impact performance I think.</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That's it for now, small update. After some more testing last night I am thinking the way we are doing it will be fine for now.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm looking at making a project site for our project now to show people. This means more HTML/CCS and javascript stuff when I get a minute spare.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cheers,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rob</span>Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-68470877841471165012015-01-16T06:21:00.000-08:002015-01-16T06:21:09.609-08:00EGX build - Almost done!<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Well I realize I've not updated my blog in quite some time. Mostly because I've been far to busy with two projects. Our gamejam and my University project.<br /><br />My University project progress can be seen <a href="http://robdjstudies.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/presentation-update-video.html">here</a>.<br /><br />With regards to our Gamejam, we have been making steady progress. The submission deadlines for Leftfield is today and I still have two bugs to fix after work.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Rob1 set up an awesome little bug tracker for our project on github which we have be using to good effect :D It's been really useful in keeping things organized.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We are aiming today to have some more levels added into the game and the last remaining bugs for this cycle to be fixed. After that, time permitting I'll be able to run some more tests and see where we stand. <br /><br />We have a bunch of polish issues on standby and I'd like to clean up my code a little as it appears really unorganized at the moment. And maybe improve upon some of my more 'hacky' fixes.<br /><br />Our game is slowly growing up in front of us and I'm super proud of all the work we've all done. Huge shout out to Rob1 as he's been doing the brunt of the bug fixes for this submission. It sucks being so busy with my Uni project. I'm hoping that after the deadline for it on Monday I'll have some more time free to help out properly.<br /><br />It still never get used to the feeling you get when you start with nothing and create something fun out of it. It is the most rewarding feeling ever. Makes all the hours of working on it worth while :D</span><br />Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-60142589296428381582015-01-01T08:53:00.002-08:002015-01-01T08:57:42.955-08:00Ludum Dare 31 Results<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Happy New Year!<br /><br />So our results are in! We managed to do really well and I'm super proud of everyone on the team! <br /><br />Our results can be seen below. Soon I'll be done with my University assignment and I should have a few days spare to spend fixing a bunch of bugs on it with other Rob. This is to get things ready for submission on the 16th.<br /><br />#2640 total entries<br /><br />#400 Graphics(Jam) 3.48<br />#406 Mood(Jam) 3.17<br />#449 Audio(Jam) 2.85<br />#746 Overall(Jam) 2.92<br />#785 Innovation(Jam) 2.57<br />#866 Fun(Jam) 2.52<br />#890 Theme(Jam) 2.96<br /><br />Rob has been awesome and set up the bug tracking in Github so we can keep things nice and organised. For now though I have to rewrite a bunch of GUI code for my University project so I'm out for now.<br /><br />Cheers,<br />Rob</span></div>
Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-31557217935361830012014-12-24T04:55:00.001-08:002014-12-24T04:55:10.697-08:00A Grimm Journey is still going<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As my other dev buddy mentions <a href="http://www.ribbybibby.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/quick-update.html">here</a>, we are still working on cleaning up our Ludum Dare submission, A Grimm Journey. After it's good to go we'll be submitting it to the Leftfield collection at EGX Rezzed in London. With some luck we might be able to show it off there! That would be so awesome!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After we clean up our chaotic sub build, we'll be tweaking things. I really want to get controller support back in again after if broke. The game feels and plays much better with game pads rather than keyboards. This is especially true because its a co-op game.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unfortunately I can't get to it right now as I have annoying University deadlines. I'm hoping to finish these as quickly as possible as I really want to work on some GAMES!</span></div>
Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-12046149676501012662014-12-10T06:29:00.000-08:002014-12-24T04:47:39.160-08:00Aaaaand it's over!<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well that was a crazy bout of chaos. Chaos in a fun way though :) We managed to finish up a game to a basic level at least with some interesting game mechanics! Please check out our LD entry here:</span><br />
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<a href="http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=38275"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=38275</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was a lot of fun doing this game jam again. Second time ever, and my first time with a team :D</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'll be fixing a few bugs and importing more assets throughout the week as time permits but I have to play catch up with my University studies for now. I'll also try and upload our source to my github repository :)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That's it for now! Will post some screenshots below once I get home from work!</span>Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-25261541252870306872014-12-05T21:20:00.003-08:002014-12-05T21:20:58.559-08:00Ludum Dare 31 - It' starts! Theme - On one Screen<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So I spent like 3 hours on this so far and made the following stuff:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In-game pause menu that pauses/resumes the level.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Front end main menu that starts the game on Any Key event.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I am liking the new Unity UI features :D Although the new script-attaching UI is a little annoying sometimes. Change is never easy though right?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Apart from that, I have not done much else. My coder-in-crime has been though, you can see more of that in his blog <a href="http://www.ribbybibby.blogspot.co.uk/">here</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Our current team structure has changed to: </span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2 coders</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1 designer</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1 artist</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I'm hoping to get all the menu stuff done tomorrow and then I intend to move onto adding pad support to other Robs character controller code.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I'll also spend some time getting audio / font assets. I left this way to late last time! </span>Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-65599371913022155052014-12-01T11:23:00.003-08:002014-12-01T11:23:42.427-08:00Ludum Dare 31 time!<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So I'm taking a break from my University project this week end and I'm taking part in another <a href="http://ludumdare.com/compo/">Ludum Dare</a> :D</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This time rather than doing the 48 hour competition I'm doing the jam which is 72 hours. I put a team of bad asses together and we're going to try and make something cool while learning in the process :D</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The team currently consists of:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2 coders</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2 artists</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1 game designer</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">All awesome people :D</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I'm already stoked as the theme votes are almost over. 4 more days and we'll be good to go!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Watch this space as I'll be updating on our progress as we go! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But for now I have to get back to finishing off my study work to free up some time for this week end!</span>Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-24622888436567882952014-09-22T14:36:00.001-07:002014-09-22T14:36:50.833-07:00Salvation - We can make it brighter! We have the technology! <span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Hey all :D</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I have been running around like an idiot over the last few days. I just finished enrolling and I'm heading back to University on a part time basis :D I'm studying for a masters in games programming and I can't wait to get started!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Anyhow, I was low on time this week but I am still reading and working on my design. I'm pretty happy with how it's coming along. But I don't want to bore you with boring stuff so check this out! :D</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YaFNlI7Iy6A/VCCUmYo7nNI/AAAAAAAAAQE/I1PkeB5W678/s1600/CellShaded.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YaFNlI7Iy6A/VCCUmYo7nNI/AAAAAAAAAQE/I1PkeB5W678/s1600/CellShaded.jpg" height="245" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I decided to take a break tonight and instead of designing stuff I had some fun with the Unity Cellshaders! I also started replacing all my quads with primitives (cubes), so my game is slowly starting to become 3D! :D I rotated each cube to see how the outlines looked.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Check out the shot above. I left the spaceships and UI as quads for a comparison. I know it looks rough right now. And my programmer placeholder art is still there but the shaders works pretty well!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Super bright and 3D :D</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Anyhow I'm going to get back to working on my design a bit. Just wanted to post something up here to let everyone know that I'm still truckin'. And I thought the construction blocks looked cool, even though they are placeholders haha.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Thanks for checking things out,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Rob</span>Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-62017966494145952832014-09-18T07:32:00.000-07:002014-09-18T07:35:08.246-07:00Salvation - Design chance vs. skill<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As I mentioned before, I am reading the Art of Game Design book and I'm currently reading about game balance. The book divides what it teaches into lenses, and I found lens #34 - The Lens of Skill vs Chance to be pretty interesting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I had a thought pop into my head after reading this section about how Salvation deals with refugee ships and provides the player with the resources they need (population). Currently as it stands 4 ships are spawned per x amount of time and they can be 1 of any 4 races.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This means that when the level starts - a player will start receiving refugee ships, and they will be random. This is the chance that the book refers to in this chapter. It states that chance is used more in risk like elements and skill is used in more serious game mechanics. With this in mind I thought about how other city builders / strategy games handle similar problems.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For example many grand strategy games have random events that can occur. However these events are not completely out of the players control. A random event of some nature may occur if the player does something of the same nature. Starve your people and a relevant event may occur. Host a certain party or festival event and a random set of events based on the party type could occur. There is still an element of chance, to keep the player on their toes and to make the world seem more immersive. But they are not completely out of the players control. The play still have to initiate them to some degree.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fact that the player is the one to initiate the events in the above example, allow them to take the risk that random events may occur. It is a good balance between skill (have I prepared myself for the events that could happen in I do this) and chance (what events are going to happen, did I prepare well enough? Will some unforeseen event happen to my town/city/population etc?).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With this in mind I went back to my refugee spawning. I want to give the player as much choice as possible when they build and run their station. For example lets say the player only wants one race to be allowed into their station. Currently there is no way for them to do this without being lucky. As random ships are sent, and if refugees are forced to leave the station could rebel. There are two interesting ways I can solve this problem, keeping the above in mind:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Solution 1: Plan for negative fallout</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So the player has his station, it's blank and empty - the perfect canvas. Now they decide they want only Korr refugees, as they are Korr sympathisers and care nothing for the unwarlike and puny other races!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They build Korr living facilities and the game spawns random ships as it currently does. Because only the Korr can live in the station and the others are turned away, the player will need to prepare for the negative publicity that can occur and the fallout in their stat points. Happiness will go down much faster due to the other races being turned away. Additionally, the player will not have access to the other races buildings as there will be nobody to work them. A third factor will be the stations over all population will grow slower than, if they were to accept all other races along with the Korr.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why would the player do this? What benefit would they gain? Other than making the game more difficult and because the player wants to roleplay - currently there is no reason. I am still working on this, but I like the idea that the player can decide how to scale the difficulty based on their in-game actions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Solution 2: Communication Facilities</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This next solution would add Communication facilities. Let's call them Comm Sats for the example. Each race would have one, just like the current living quarters work. This is nice as there is now another dynamic, another building in the game the user needs to think and plan around.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The refugee ships in this case would no longer spawn by default and they would no longer be random. They would not know the player station was there at all. Once the player builds a Comm Sat for a certain race, lets say the Klein, it'll act as a beacon for that races refugee ships. Once built, the Klein refugee ships would start spawning in and flying towards to player station.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This would give the player complete control over what race will ever find his station. That way, no refugees who are unwanted will be able to find the station. The player has more control on events.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Additionally this building can be worked on, improved in someway, to allow for more and more refugee ships to find the station - thereby increasing population. This would give the player even more control of events.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The benefits of this solution over the other is that is adds more building functionality, and gives the player full control of things. They can set the difficulty in terms of how they build the pace of their station. Fully upgraded Comm Sats for each race would be pretty hectic. Basic ones for 2 races and then 1 fully upgraded one for another would be easier. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am uncertain of which method is best and I'm still thinking things through. But I thought it was an interesting design idea and wanted to talk about it :D I'm super happy I got this book at least. I'm already thinking of design in a whole new way. Still can't wait to get back to code though :P</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanks for reading peeps!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rob</span></div>
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Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-57670203808161002562014-09-16T06:53:00.003-07:002014-09-16T06:53:49.624-07:00Salvation - Focusing on the Design<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As I mentioned on my tweetar I'm currently reading through The Art of Game Design a Book of Lenses. I am realising more and more that my design experience is pretty much 100% from a software engineering background. I think of things in a pretty binary way. This needs to do this, then it'll work.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trying to design fun is a pretty tricky thing to do. I have always been pretty opinionated about designers and how they think but the more I look into it the more I see just how important their way of thinking really is. And how difficult it can be to get right. I often scoffed at having to waste time thinking about stuff like Lore, Backstory, whether a specific mechanic was fun. As long as it worked efficiently and correctly it was fine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It wasn't until I played through my game a few times that I started to realise it was lacking something. I am still not sure that this something is or if it consists of a bunch of missing elements. As such I am trying to get to grips with game design in a more formal sense. Seeing as how I am stepping back from the GUI stuff for the moment, I am using my current build and applying things I am learning from this design book.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am already realising a lot of things I have not been keeping in mind. Additionally I have seen a lot of stuff I just did, to actually be a technique in games design. Being able to read up on new things and improve upon what I've been doing bad/well is a great help at the minute. Especially for morale :P</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So my current plan is to spend at least this week reading through the book and applying what I learn to my current build. I want to expand the games functionality. I want to add more mechanics and assets to the game and start working on the technical side of the art style. To do this, it's no longer sufficient to just go "a spaceship .. just cause they are awesome!" This is fine in the short term of a basic game or prototype, but a bigger game will require some planning and forethought.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm hoping that by doing this, once I start putting in the mechanics they'll make sense and be fun. I'm hoping to start doing this asap so that I can get some people to play test my prototypes. To see what works and what doesn't work so well.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I also hope to have a solid picture of what I want the game to be once it's complete. Right now I have been winging it design wise. As long as I could build buildings and have people live in them I was happy. But now that I have hit a complicated design area I am a bit out of my depth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The design I'm currently thinking over are the buildings my game will use / currently uses. Many city building games that I have played use many different types of buildings. All these many types of buildings are built, for a reason. This reason is normally to house your inhabitants/feed them/keep them happy/make money/trade etc. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These elements never seem to be very large when compared to the number of ways to achieve them. Meaning that the player has a multitude of (fun) ways to achieve their goal (of having a trade income of X or entertainment value of Y for example). The goal objectives are limited, as to not make things to complicated and overwhelming. Therefore, from what I have seen, the buildings available to a player in a city building/grand strategy game, will always be more than the end goals the player can achieve with these buildings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This can become an issue, as in some games there are so many buildings, requiring so much micro management, that the player becomes overwhelmed. Giving the player a lot of choice is not always a smart move. So finding a balance is important.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not only is a balance important, but having buildings work in a fun way is just as important. Especially for Salvation as buildings are pretty much a core feature. I'll have to achieve this by minimising micromanagement but still have it present. And using my buildings or building space in an interesting way. As I said before, I have to try and model a fun gameplay mechanic. I can model and code a gameplay mechanic that functions well, but what will make it fun and to whom is something I am struggling with. Hence the reading.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyhow, lunch is over and it's work time again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanks for reading!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rob</span></div>
Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-51905004626148866922014-09-14T08:32:00.000-07:002014-09-14T08:33:53.937-07:00Unity 4.6 BETA - Adding new GUI features and what it means for Salvation!<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I have finally managed to find some time to sit down for a few minutes to check out the new Unity beta stuff I been hearing about. Reading/watching the changes that'll be coming with Unity 4.6 specifically the <a href="http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/ui/ui-canvas">new GUI stuff</a> is getting me all fired up in different ways. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Part of me let out a giant exited SQEEE sound while the other part was experiencing a cold sinking feeling that I'd have to redo all of my GUI stuff I spent so long on. If I should choose to upgrade, that is. And I am pretty sure I will be, after seeing what I've seen thus far. Granted I've only had 30-40 mins to check things out. First impression is really good.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">After looking at my game framework thus far, playing my demo level a few times last night. It dawned on me that the GUI still feels clunky. It functions fine, but it feels like it could be done better. I click on a panel and it opens up, and I know that each element that is now visible is a separate thing entirely. Tied together by a parent gameObject. But making sure all these elements act together in a synchronised way is tricky. And even though it looks fine now I know that adding more UI features is going to be a huge head ache.</span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr align="center"><td class="tr-caption">Each element is a separate UI object I have to worry about!</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For example the way my GUI is structured, I have to worry about each GUI element separately. For example scaling them based on aspect ratio, requires me to run the same script on each and every GUI element that I use. The new Unity UI will implement a new type of transform, called a Rect Transform. This thing is awesome and you can use it, with </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/ui/rect-transform">Anchors </a>to have all UI elements scale themselves based on the parent element, which could be a canvas. Which brings me to the next feature I'm happy about. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The canvas is a parent element that all UI elements belong too or need to belong too. If no canvas exists for an element when it is created then one will be made. This is awesome since I do this manually currently. I have an empty object called MasterPanel and this panel has all the GUI panels as children, which in turn have all their children. However doing this manually still takes time and makes things look and feel clunky and fiddly. Just because a gameobject is a parent doesn't mean I don't have to worry about each childs separate settings. For each child, which there are many of! Giant head ache. So I'm stoked about the Canvas. At a glance it seems like they'll allow me to change children elements in a more unanimous fashion. I'm hoping this is the case.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The workspace UI elements feature, that canvases will allow for, is amazing good news for me. The latest UI feature I added a few nights ago were little message pop ups that appeared for example whenever a ship offloaded new refugees to the station. I wanted this GUIText (string) message to appear where the ship docked. And as the ship is a moving object in world space (3D space), getting the right transform was a little bit tricky. However, what I am finding very difficult to near impossible at the moment is how to convert the GUIText transform to that of the gameobjects transform. For some reason even though they are identical, they appear different in world space. Making things look buggy and miserable. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This new feature will allow me to add my code to a worldspace UI element easy and things will work and look right. As the worldspace UI element is not tied to local space it will make things so much easier. And I will not have to be comparing floating points and doing a ton of number tweaking to get transforms looking right.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So is this a huge step back for <a href="http://tinyflame.co.uk/Salvation_minisite.html">Salvation</a>? Not huge but some tweaking will be required. As I'm still working on the framework I feel that if I were to make a change like this now would be the best time to do it. As things are still at their most basic level. A little work now will save a lot of work in the future.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Since Unity 4.6 is still in beta, I can't just make the jump right now and I'm not really sure when it's being released. What this most likely means is that my UI stuff will take a backseat for now. I'll instead focus on the other game features, as there's a lot of stats and numbers flying about. I'll also be checking out 4.6 in more detail and learning the new GUI features on offer so I acn hit the ground running.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I am also going to be removing my terrible programmer art and going to add in 3D models. Basic ones for now so that I can mess around with shaders.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There's a lot to do so I am not to nervous about leave the GUI stuff for now. Especially seeing as how fixing the GUI up has taken up all my time thus far.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Unfortunately I need to stop research for now, as I am actually on my way out the door again, this week end has been busy and not in terms of my games development. Additionally I finish my University enrolment next week, so things might be getting busy. But fear not as I am super keen to crack on with things!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Have a great Sunday everyone :)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Rob</span></div>
Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-21203662350233546422014-09-09T16:37:00.000-07:002014-09-09T16:37:05.646-07:00Salvation Update - More GUI bug Fixes<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Unfortunately no concept art for the minute as my lady is a perfectionist who doesn't let me post things unless she is happy with them :x They look super awesome though, I am hoping my code skills can do her models justice once we reach that stage.<br /><br />But I have a boring bug update for everyone! :D<br /><br />I added/fixed the Room Selection GUI feature. Well I say feature, it's pretty necessary. The ability to see what you have selected in your station is pretty freakin' important. At the minute this is highlighted by a halo. This works in a really neat way, now when you click on a building it'll have a little aura around it so show that it is selected. Doesn't sound complicated or that impressive but I'm super proud of getting this working in the way I wanted.<br /><br />All room objects are stored in a list. When the user selected a building or room, this list is searched through for the room that's selected. This rooms halo is then set to active. All other rooms in the list have their halos hidden. What I think is pretty nifty is this list will only be as big as the initial rooms, because I recycle the lists elements. In my current level there are 16 elements in the list and that will never grow. Even if I add building upgrades, buildings, rooms etc.<br /><br />If the user builds a new building, the emptyRoom object gets destroyed, which means that the list now has a null value. So rather than simply append the list with the new building, I now make sure to update it. All null values are now replaced by other buildings.<br /><br />A mechanic I want to have in my game is building space. I want the player to have to remain conscious about the fact that they only have a set amount of room to build. So I don't really foresee there being a case where I have a greater number of buildings than the initial ones. And if I somehow do end up with that scenario, I'll just add more emptyRoom objects or an object based off of the emptyRoom class. <br /><br />With this part of the framework in place I can now add building upgrades, building overwrites etc. And the list will never grow larger than the original set of room sizes. This took me two days to implement and fix. Which is a tad long. But now I can move ahead.<br /><br />That's all for now, I won't bore you with code this time :P<br /><br />Thanks for reading!<br />Rob<br /><br /></span>Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-33899763743984202422014-09-04T18:58:00.000-07:002014-09-04T18:58:01.344-07:00Salvation Update - Concept Art added to minisite!<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Hey all :D</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I finished off the Salvation minisite and updated it with some badass concept art! The Maki and Korr races transport ships! :D</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Go check it out <a href="http://tinyflame.co.uk/Salvation_minisite.html">here</a>!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As it's like, 3 am and im super tired I'm off! HTML man awaaaay!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Rob</span>Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5995889060607716966.post-55684772230326833242014-09-03T15:22:00.000-07:002014-09-03T15:22:13.776-07:00Salvation Update - Minisite in the works<div style="text-align: justify;">
My girlfriend is being amazing and is working hard at the concept art. While she slaves away over a tablet I thought I'd make a start on the minisite. My HTML and Javascript are basic at best but I got most of the basics done.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-y_3efUsGYIY/VAeTOvHBLOI/AAAAAAAAANk/irdDPeHRLOo/s1600/minisiteExample.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-y_3efUsGYIY/VAeTOvHBLOI/AAAAAAAAANk/irdDPeHRLOo/s1600/minisiteExample.png" height="177" width="320" /></a></div>
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Now I just have to populate it with the content.</div>
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Not had any time to work on the actual game tonight. Pretty lame since I'd rather be focusing on the bug fixes and such but getting word out is just as important :D I also really can't wait to show you guys the concepts that she has been working on. I think they look amazing :) </div>
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We also had a pretty long discussion about the world my game is set in. I thought I knew a lot about sci-fi but compared to my lady I'm an amateur!</div>
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I also started fleshing out the story line so that I can start pin pointing how many levels I'll be adding to the games Campaign/Story mode. </div>
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As usual you are awesome and thanks for reading,</div>
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Rob</div>
Rob de Jagerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10494377764663201090noreply@blogger.com0