Done

Hey everybody!

I'm very happy to announce that we're done with the project. Not everything we aimed for worked out, but we're happy with the result. The last few weeks we've all been working our figurative butts off, so we're all delighted the work's finally over.
We had to create promotional for our game too. The assignment told us to create a trailer video and a flyer for our game. The video has been posted on YouTube and the flyer will be posted as a page on our blog.
We've had some plans to develop our game further as a sideproject after the deadline. And if we do we'll be putting a final post on here telling you where to find the new blog and what to expect from our game.
That's it for now, seeing as we all have to learn for a exam this evening, so I hope to see you later.

Ruben

The end drawing near

Again, another milestone in our SVN revision. This time it is number 400! You might have noticed that the intervals between them have been shortened every time. Apparently we work better under pressure. We are working very hard on polishing the game, making it look even better and fixing a lot of bugs. That's it for now, I have to get back to programming!

Rem

Hey everyone!

So right now it's only 3 days before the deadline, so I'll have to keep it short. This time I'd like to explain a little bit more about our network code, seeing as I wasn't that clear about it last time.
So here's the overview.
First of all, when you start the game, and go to the online menu, the game will connect to our gamelist server.
On that server the gamelist is stored and sent to all the people who want to play online.
When you hit refresh a new gamelist is sent, and if you hit new game, a new game will be sent to the server. After that you disconnect with the server because you wont need to use it anymore, also, you will go to the pre-game lobby menu, where you wait for someone to join. To join you have to select one of the games in the gamelist and hit the join button, after which you will also go to the pregame lobby and connect with the host. In that screen you can chat, if you both pressed ready, the game host will be able to press start, after which the game will commence.
so in a drawing:

So that's all for today guys, since there is a lot of work to be done before monday.

Ruben

The joy of programming

Hello all,

Little update from me again. Today I made the 300th revision! This means we work a lot more than before and this can be seen in the progress we are making. Yet it still is programming, so when I changed a 1 into a 3 Yesterday, the whole game stopped working correctly. After searching for some time I found this error and was really surprised to find out it was this subtle change that caused this whole chain reaction. Luckily I was able to find this error very fast so today we are able to do a lot of work.

Anyway I think I should get to work very fast so I can finish up the sounds, see you around!

Tim Hoogenkamp

Network talk

Hey again guys!

So with all the sprites done I figured I'd put a spritesheet on the blog. If you want to see it, it's on the concept art page of the blog. I'm very pleased to be done with this, so I can finally start working on the network code.
It shouldn't be too hard to get it all to work, as our game's mechanics force synchronous behaviour. I did ran into a few problems earlier tho. I've created a server which keeps track of all the games, and sends them to the game when you search for games. The server itself is already done by now. The problem I ran into was the fact I wanted to use the IPAddress of the host as the key for a dictionary (which represents the gamelist).
I tried to send the IP of the host to the server, so I needed the external IP of the computer on which the game was running. The only way to do that is to get your IP from a service like whatsmyip.org, but they all have rules similar to things like, only 1 lookup per 5 minutes. But even for our testing purposes we might overdo that. So I kept thinking and came up with the idea of not sending the IP, but just getting the IP on the server end, which is way easier.


Socket s = client.Client;
IPEndPoint tempip = s.RemoteEndPoint as IPEndPoint;
return tempip.Address;

You'd put this in a method and pass it the client you're connected to. So in our code, as soon as a connection starts the method is called and we get our IP address which we can then use as a key in our dictionary, if the user decides to create a new game.
On the server console that would look like this:

I don't know who added the lovely little rabbit, but I like it.

That's it for today folks, see you around next time.

Ruben

200th revision and more

With the deadline approaching we all have to start working harder to get it all done. Today we have been working all on the game using Skype and many revisions later, we have reached our next milestone. I hereby present to you, as promised, revision 200!

Furthermore, we have done a lot of work today, such as improving the AI, adding the final sprites and setting the game to 720p. You can see all the units in the newly created page on our blog: "Concept Art".

Rem

Hey again,

It's been too long, I know right, but I've been busy getting the art and sprites for the game done.
I'm pretty much done with the units right now, and only a few of the tiles have yet to be done, so I'm finally getting somewhere.
We've put the concept art on the concept art page, for now, only the units are on there, because they are drawn big at first. Later a whole spritesheet with all the sprites of the game will be on there.
Next up for me is network code, so my next post will be way less artsy, and more technical. I am looking forward to getting that done though. See you next time!

Ruben

Tutorial

Yo!

Even in the holiday we work at our project. The path finding algorithm is finally done and we have got a playable game now. Although our game is far from finished, I am kind of proud to announce that the artificial intelligence for the tutorial is working as well. It is very dumb but it is able to walk and attack the player.

We are getting closer to our end game and it is nice to actually see the progress now!

Tim Hoogenkamp

Revision 100

Hi!

We just missed posting our 100th revision to our SVN server. So for now, you will have to do with number 101. Let´s hope we will notice revision 200 so that we can let you know.

Also, we just hand in our code for checking. Hopefully we are on the right track!

Rem

Hello!

After a week, we've finally gotten the time to create a new post. We've been busy programming, and creating sprites. We're very busy trying to get the game to work properly and consistently before December 17th, when the code has to be handed in for midterm checking.
After that, the 20th, we'll have to present our game to the rest of the teams. We aim to have a semi-playable game with voice control, so we can present something cool to the rest.
So from now on I will be focussing on the art and the voicecontrol, Arjan and Tim Ha will be focussing on the menu, Rem will be focussing on cleaning up our code and going on to create a working game, and Tim Ho will keep on focussing on the AI and pathfinding. This way we hope to get it all done in time.
So I'll go on and create some more art, type some lines of code and create a kick-ass game.

Ruben

Design Document

Hi!

Finally a blogpost by another member of Liquid Banana! The Design Document, containing all our ideas about the game is finished and submitted. If possible, we will put it online to for you to read. Now we can focus on bringing our ideas to live, so stay tuned for updates on our work.

Rem

Concept art and team roles

Hey!

It's been a long time since the last post, but we've been very busy with boring documents (might give a link to those later). But let's get to the point. We started programming this week, the goal for this week is to get as close to a working game as possible, so we can start implementing the nice tech's we've got in store for this project.
So there's two other things to talk about right now, Concept Art and the team roles. Let's start with the roles before moving on to the concept art.
These are the roles we assigned to the team:
Arjan - Game Designer
Tim Ho - AI Programmer
Tim Ha - Tech Programmer
Rem - Lead Programmer
Ruben  - Graphics Design + User Interaction

Now on to the Concept art. I've drawn together a picture and a sketch so far, as we've been working on the core of the game first.
The first one is the Spider Recon unit, while the second one is the 3-Barreled Tank.

The team

Hey again!

As promised, I will be introducing the team in this post. So sit back and enjoy stories about every member of the team.

Tim Hoogenkamp

Hello, I’m Tim Hoogenkamp and I am 18 years old. I’ve just started studying computing science at the university of Utrecht. Besides my study I like to party, play sports and play some games. I play waterpolo in a competition. I was inspired to choose my study because I like to play games and I enjoyed the computer course I had on my secondary school. In this course I learned the basics of a few programming- and scripting languages such as HTML, javascript, PHP, java, pascal and C++. This however is very basic and I hope to learn a lot more about programming and making games in this study.

Tim Hasselaar

Hello, my name is Tim Hasselaar. I'm 18 years old and started my computing science study in Utrecht this year. When I started this study I was still 17 years old, which makes me the youngest member of this group. This, however, is no reason for me to stop trying to become a great programmer. I have always enjoyed playing games, and I've been interested in computers for a long time. These were for me the main reasons to choose this study.

Jeremy Veldwijk

Hello, my name is Jeremy Veldwijk and I’m 20 years old. This is my first year studying computer science/Gametechnologie at the university of Utrecht.  The reason why I choose this study is because I want to create games. The first time I played a game, I was 5 years old and my first console was the Super Nintendo (SNES). 15 years later I still enjoy playing games. Although I don’t have a lot of knowledge about making games or programming languages I would really like to learn this and someday make my own game. Besides my study I like to play of course games, but I also like sports and music. I’ve been training thai-boxing for 3-4 years and a year ago I also started to train at the gym.

Rem Smiers

Hi! My name is Rem Smiers, I am 19 years old and I both study and live in Utrecht. Just like everyone else, I study game technology at the University of Utrecht. Also like everyone else, I like to play video games. My favorite games are the Elder Scrolls games, all of the Halo games and Minecraft. When I was young, I would not dare to play computer games because I might break the computer, but now I am the one to ask to fix your computer or to do anything related to computers. The computer languages I am best at are the website related ones, such as HTML, CSS and PHP. Furthermore I am quite good at Photoshop (actually most of the Adobe software) and, thanks to my study, programming in C#. Besides being a computer nerd, I enjoy going out in both Utrecht and my hometown Groningen and I row at ORCA Utrecht. After I finished my study, I am going to buy Google and make Bill Gates my secretary.

Arjan Schimmel

Hi there. I’m Arjan Schimmel and I’m 20 years old. I live in Utrecht and, like the rest of us, I also study Game Technology at the University of Utrecht. From an early age on I enjoyed playing video games. My first console was a Sega Master System. After that console other consoles came. I still own all of them and use them regularly. Now I love to play games on my PC, mostly RPG. I’m still green when it comes to programming. But I’m sure it won’t be a problem cause I have great ideas for games which will find a way out thanks to our study. Aside from playing video games I also like to be outside on my longboard. Going down hill with my board is the biggest rush I’ve had in my life!

Ruben van der Velde

Hello, I’m Ruben van der Velde, 20 years old. I’ve been studying computer science for a little over a year now. In my spare time I like to play video games, mostly Call of Duty and League of Legends, and I also enjoy photography and playing bass guitar. In the future I’d like to run my own gaming company, for the creative freedom that gives you over working for a boss.

So together we're team Liquid Banana and we plan on making the most kick-ass game there ever will be.

On behalf of Liquid Banana,

Ruben van der Velde

Introducing... Liquid Banana!

Hey there!

We are Liquid Banana and we are group 1B in the Gametechnology Introduction project. 

For this course we've got to implement a retro game with new technologies, and ultimately make it our game which can be played for at least 5-10 minutes.

In this first blog post we'll be explaining what our plans our and some of our initial drafts.

The game we're implementing is the original Advance Wars for the GBA. The game was released in 2001 in the USA and 2002 in Europe, it was not released in Japan until 2004, where it was bundled with the second game of the series. If you want to read more about the game, here's a link (opens in a new window).

Of course we still have to implement new technologies in this game, so here are our idea's for that.

First we'd like to implement voice control into the game. The idea behind this is if you're going to play multiplayer on the same computer, it would be fun if you'd both be able to shout at the screen, trying to get your units to move where you want in your turn, while your friend is trying to sabotage you by shouting random words at it to confuse the computer.

Secondly we'd like to implement online multiplayer. We'd like to implement this to make it possible to play with your friends on the other side of the world. This would also make it easier to organize more small tournaments. In the current day and age almost every game needs multiplayer to increase the lifetime of the game.

So, these are our idea's of what we'll be doing in this course, look forward to our next blog post introducing our team somewhere today or tomorrow.

On behalf of Liquid Banana,

Ruben van der Velde