Nifty GameDev

Accurate depiction of this post's author, Nour Häni A lot of paper work to be honest with you! In the last two days we've been writing our whole program architecture which was a bit tricky not to miss out on anything there. After describing what each class does the biggest challenge came, which was finding a way to represent the whole link between the classes and how they work together. We found out that the best way would be through a giant schematic containing what happens after every outcome and different case possible. The network documentation was also brought up to date to our last modifications. What's left would be to write up the instruction manual that we can't wait to share it with you along the game on our webpage! The webpage will also include the game trailer that's currently in progress.  Oh and concerning the webpage, it's going to have a fresh new look in terms of layout, graphics and overall structure.

by Leonardo S. 落花枝にかえらず - The fallen blossom returns not to the bough Damn, that was a journey. Yesterday, on the 18th of May, Nour and I met to set the parameters for the game, like how fast they accelerate and how heavy they are, until we found that sweet, sweet spot of values that make the game actually fun, provided three or four players are playing. She and I were testing for hours and hours, until we finally got a reason to jump off our chairs in excitement: The game is finished. We also made changes in the course of the last few days, for example having a maximum of four players in a match, so that the server is not overworking itself with all the calculations. This led to the decision to use one fixed camera instead having the camera follow the player, since the map fits in the screen with four players. The power ups also spawn random enough and are actually adding a layer of fun, especially the ones changing the size of the ball and with thats its mass. Unfortuna...

角を矯めて牛を殺す - To kill a bull by straightening its horns by Leonardo S. Now I get it. Our team experienced several setbacks because of our faulty server structure. Whilst setting this structure up, what we had in mind was that a server is only connected by a client that was also developed by us. But we were oh-so-wrong, which became clear when receiving the evaluation from the hand-in on the 8th of May. So, what was the problem? Our server was able to receive messages from other sources that were not the clients set up by us. Oopsie. Big oopsie. After a brief meeting with one of our tutors today, in which he explained how the server would be more secure from such "attacks", we got to work and restructured the whole logging-in process. And we made it. So, what did we do? We simply listen for each incoming messages from directly within a thread which is dedicated to one client and lies server-sided. When connecting, the server now immediately starts pinging the cli...

二兎を追う者は一兎も得ず  - Who chases two rabbits catches neither by Oliver W. We are online! Again!  Our website is finally up. As promisedOliver’s bought the domain http://balls2thewall.rocks and handled the hosting a couple days ago and after some problems with the security certificate (HTTPS/SSL), it's finally up and running! The Game manual + the current version of the game (as a jar) are currently downloadable from the website. Leo has promised to later create a .exe file from the jar file which will be uploaded, so that less terminal-savy users can play the game.  Apart from a few beauty touchups, the website (which is supposed to look like one of those late 90's homepages everyone had for some reason) is near finished. There’s a gallery for game screenshots, as well as gameplay videos. There’s also ‘Contact Us’ page, where feedback can be sent to us. Our blog is also linked there, for those that want to read about the development process. But th...

亀の甲より年の功 - Experience is the mother of wisdom by Oliver W. Hey hey heey! As I've clarified in the last post, our game is basically finished. Today is Saturday, May 11 and the Milestone 5 presentations will begin on Monday, May 20. So we have around 9 days left until everything has to be done. Because of exactly that, all we're going to work on code-wise are the addition of powerups and some gameplay optimizations. We've clarified during a phone conference today, that it's not worth it, risksing the addition of any major new elements like new game modes. We're basically doubling down on our Deathmatch mode and making it was sparkly as we can. During today's phone conference we've also talked about the Milestone 5 presentation (for which we will have 20min) and who will say what. Creating the presentation will be my responsibility, but my other teammates will help me of course. This final presentation is very important, as it is more or less the ...

... and we're all out of bubble gum. 猿も木から落ちる - Even monkeys fall from trees by Oliver W. We've done it! We've successfully presented our (basically) finished game to our tutors at the Milestone 4 meeting. The 10 minutes right before our slot were probably some of the most stressful during this entire project, as we found out that the Multiplayer on Mac doesn't work (whereas the Singleplayer does?) and we had some strange freezes while my three other team members were testing the Multiplayer features one last time. Thankfully however, those freezes stopped and the presentation itself went near-perfect. The only problem as aforementioned, was that the actual Multiplayer component (minus the Chat) simply wouldn't work on my Mac. The resulting error messages were cryptic, but after a quick Google search I'm getting the impression that trying to get OpenGL to work on Mac is simply a lost battle. That is because Apple has dropped its support for OpenGL en...