www.ivegotmyownwebsitenow.com!!!!

Hello!

Well, where to begin. Whirlwind would be a good place to start - that's what my head feels like at the moment. Project Blast! is coming along nicely - starting to get some good back story in there too. Ive been working almost exclusively on the map editor which has actually come on in leaps and bounds. Just a few minor bugs to sort and it will be fully usable. I think need to look at adding more functionality for when we let the public get their hands on it. I know how much you guys like to break the toys we give you!

Also, I'm proud to announce that Adarakion Games now has its own website - www.adarakion.co.uk (or .com) - not much to see there at the moment, just a holding page, but we are adding functionality and updating quite regularly - so keep checking back for updates... Hopefully we will have something to look at in the next few days/weeks......

The team really feels like its cohesive too - we are all chipping in and working hard to get Project Blast! off the ground, the team will post a blog on the official website introducing themselves once the site is configured properly and set up etc. so another reason to keep checking back.

I guess all we lack at the moment as a team is an artist. But they are incredibly hard to come by (well, good ones are anyway) - and given that art is a concept I'm not familiar with, its something we will need to address in the near future... watch this space..

A New Old Project!

So whilst my brain is being wracked on Odds On (and whilst I wait for the artwork to arrive) Ive turned my attention to another project..

As yet untitled its essentially a very similar game to "Gravity Power" which came out on the Amiga oooh, about 10-15 years ago. Its a very simple concept, 2 player controlled ships battle it out in an arena and the one with the most kills win. A bit like Combat for the old Atari 2600, but with larger arenas, customisation of ships and weaponry, destructible terrain etc. etc.

I did start to code this game a while ago, however I took one look at the code the other day and decided I would start again as it was quite unoptimised and buggy.

Hence I'm in the very early stages at the moment - just found some nice spaceship sprites (2 different ship types at the moment, but want at least 10) and Ive begun to get the actual mechanics of the game to work. The key to this game is that EVERYTHING (and I mean EVERYTHING) will be customisable - so if you want Jupiter levels of gravity, then go for it. If you want negative gravity, do it. Also, you will be able to "set up" your ship with a set number of "setup" points - so you could have a really quick ship, and trade off some armour. Or, carry a LOT of ammo, but lose some speed etc.

I also need to develop a level editor (which the player will be able to use too) - to design various maps etc. which I will also use to make the default 50 or so maps :)

Lots to think about, but in essence a much simpler game to make than Odds on. I'm hoping that this game will be something to put on after a couple of beers for a laugh.. at least, that's the plan :)

So 2 projects on the go now.. wow, I'm almost multitasking here :)

Odds On progress

So, I have been spending some time thinking about where I go with Odds on.

Ive got a fully working (well, kind of!) 2d race engine and the results of which are affected by the odds of the horse, however there are some elements of the design in not entirely happy with, and others I'm having to think long and hard about to find the best solution.

So, my first design issue is how do you track (no pun intended) the horse you have bet on (or horseS for that matter). Initially I had 50x50 pixel animated sprites which looked WAY too small on the track, but with them being so small I had space to "trail" the names of the horses behind them so you could see which horse was which.. yes, they all had their own individual colours but at 50x50 it was tough going to see the colours as they were so tiny.. So my first decision was to up the resolution of the sprites to 100x100 - much better. Can see the colours no problem at all - though the new size sprites look a little jaggedy edged (but can change that simply enough later on), however now the trailing names are very much lost..

Ive toyed with the idea of doing a "live" leader board, which updates every frame, need to work on the code for this, but I guess this might work... if a little slow doing a nested for-next loop sort.. I already show the bets made on the screen in the bottom left.. so maybe i could make the bets animate in some way if its likely to pay off? But then you wouldn't need to look at the actual race.. I guess another way to do this would be to keep the horses names in their respective "lane" - so its simple to see which horse is which. But if I did this and wanted to change the way the horses run (i.e. all congregating to the middle after the first 100 yards) then it wouldn't work.....decisions decisions...

Also tried to make the track get muddier as the horses race across it. I can make this work, but its slow, basically because I'm grabbing an image of the entire track every frame, which takes its toll on the processor.. so i need to address this too.

Once Ive sorted all this out I can progress to sorting other data which may affect a horses performance such as going, form, jockey, etc. etc. This SHOULD be relatively easily achieved by use of a database of horses and jockeys...

.. lots to do and not enough time to do it....

Oh yeah, and I got cut up by some F*$&*£ at least 4 times on my way to work this morning. Ah feel better for that!!!

Pic of the race with small horses

Pic of the racetrack (old version)