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Showing posts with the label Games

New blog domain: kula.blog

It's still work in progress but new posts will be published on  https://kula.blog/ Thanks to 11ty base blog RSS is working from the start so it should be easy to add to your reader if you still use any :) If now then I hope you can sign up to the newsletter where I'll be publishing new posts and interesting articles to it from time to time. Please use  kula.blog  from now on.

Book Review: Masters of Doom by David Kushner

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The book that I wanted to read for a long time. How was it? I have to say that it's really good. I learned a lot about Id and both John Carmack and John Romero - how their lives looked up before and during the creation of the most know Id Games like Doom or Quake. What was depressing but also making it so much more real is how much politics and infighting happened between all those people working in the industry at that time. The only downside for me is that there's not much about the technology side of things. There is a paragraph here and there but most of the book is about two John's allowing you to take a look inside their heads. Maybe another downside as not native speaker would be the font - that made it harder than necessary to read. All in all, I highly recommend it. 8/10

Book Review: Game Programming Patterns by Robert Nystrom

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I have started reading this book in December of 2013 when it was still in progress. Probably I have stumbled upon it somewhere on  GameDev.js Facebook Group  but I cannot really remember how I found it, but important point is that this time I have read it from cover to cover all over again to feel the difference with finished book. The good thing about this book is that it is available both on paper and for free if you want to read it online. Just go to  http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/ . I really liked the book and the hand drawn illustrations that really help understand the ideas. Best thing is that the author tries to emphasize how dangerous those patterns can be and many times warns the reader to do not use them if not needed. In my opinion having a list of downsides and pros of each pattern in one place that you can easily check in the browser, is really handy. I have no idea if I am ever going to use any of them but having understanding of the underly...

Note to Myself: Learn Videogame Development Like Woodworking

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Great article from Hobby Gamedev:  Learn Videogame Development Like Woodworking It's not only about game development. Example about woodworking can be applied to learning all kinds of skills. This article found me in a good moment as I am prone to go for "I want to learn how to do it" or "I want to be gamedeveloper" without actually doing anything meaningful. Unfortunately it is a really big problem to me. From time to time I would read this kind of advice and a week or two later I would be back to "I want to learn..."  I don't know how much I should be concerned about it. Maybe it's natural but maybe it's a bit flaw in the way I think by default. PS. sorry for mourning, feel free to drop any tips about this.

Book Review: The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses by Jesse Schell

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There is a reason why this book was recommended to me so many times. It's really good. I mean it's not even good on the level of game design book. It's much more than that. Just read it: 10/10

Book Review: Foundation HTML5 Animation with JavaScript by Billy Lamberta and Keith Peters

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When I first asked about it on gamedev.js group . Michal Budzynski  was discouraging me from this book, especially because of code quality but added that there are some good theoretical things to read about. I was brave enough to decide to ignore code quality all the time and only look at animation and theoretical ideas in the code. It took me a couple of months to start reading it, then a couple of months to digest it. Sometimes it was really much more about Math than JavaScript. My edition has many bugs in code samples so it was fortunate all examples are live on github pages:  http://lamberta.github.io/html5-animation/ . You can find even some extras :) After reading this book I can't say I'm right now animator, or that I know 3D. For sure it helped me think about many animation related topics. I found myself using things like easing from time to time in places I wouldn't think of before. For me it was really good reading. I know more about animations, exam...

Gamedev.js Krakow 3D and Upcoming Meet.js Kraków

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Next week is going to be great but small event about 3D thanks to Gabriel Habryn who is going to tell us more about his engine/game in 3D. I'm really looking forward to that :) Event will take place in Schibsted Tech Polska, you can read more in Polish on event page:  http://gamedevjs.com/krakow-3d.html If you're going please remember to ask for me at reception, not for Gabriel ;) We started looking for speakers for a upcoming  Meet.js  in Krakow. If you want to see our last event look here:  https://www.facebook.com/events/258720164275519/ Next Meet.js Kraków is going to be in March so there is plenty of time to prepare. We can help you with preparations so just let us know if you want to say something :) Everything form JS and Front-End is ok and we are really open to hearing about interesting things even outside of this field, so just let us know your idea.  So where is call4papers really? You can write to me, at krzychukula with g...

PL: Learn HTML5 Canvas Game Development

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Recently I found really awesome course (in Polish) to learn Canvas and basics of Game Development even for novices. Course is in polish but is really long and covers Canvas and even JavaScript from the basics, some of them was really really well explained and I finally understood them :) http://kursownik.pl/kursy/html5_canvas/ Author Daniel Mizieliński put much effort into this. Whole course takes nearly 16 hours divided into 71 videos. Little hint: on youtube you can change speed of video 1.5 is still easy to understand and follow especially if you know JavaScript and you can always switch to 1.0 speed on new things :)

Javascript Game Foundations - Ten Essentials

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Recently Jake Gordon finished last article of his  Javascript Game Foundations - Ten Essentials  and I think those 10 articles with posts about games he created is really good place to learn more about games and how to create them in JavaScript. I'm planning to read them all soon. Right now I'm: reading  http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/  (at least one chapter a week)  watching  http://kursownik.pl/kursy/html5_canvas/  (beware it's in Polish :) Anyone knows something like kursownik.pl canvas course but for WebGL? Matrix Math? OpenGL maybe? But in POLISH? I think I would learn them faster in polish :)

Udacity HTML5 Game Development Classes Just Started!

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Classes just started so if you're into HTML5 Game Development this can be really beneficial to have some real classes and schedule for learning about it :) https://www.udacity.com/course/cs255 For the ones new to HTML/JS there is a JS crash course as first optional lesson so this should be enough to get you more familiar with technology. I don't know much about content of this course besides that we're going to build GRITS game as shown at last Google IO: Image from udacity.com

WebSummary - Insert coin to continue by @photonstorm - 25 November 2012

For this week only one but awesome presentation about monetization of HTML5 games in practice! "Insert coin to continue: Making money from your HTML5 games" by @photonstorm https://vimeo.com/53698801 "Insert coin to continue: Making money from your HTML5 games" by Richard Davey from onGameStart on Vimeo . This is really worth to watch, especially if you'r thinking about HTML5 game, or creating one.

WebSummary - DOM vs Canvas - 18 November 2012

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Short version of my links from twitter from last week. I hope you will enjoy them :) DOM Sprites: a Viable Alternative to Canvas   http://buildnewgames.com/dom-sprites/ Is canvas tag that much superior than plain old DOM? In many cases not. There is nice talk from onGameStart 2012 about it in context of crappy android phones and tablets.  http://vimeo.com/53452613  - "Making games for kids on the mobile web" by Jon Howard Stop Using Native HTML5! http://youtu.be/uQB4Y7wR51M JavaScript APIs you’ve never heard of (and some you have)  http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2012/11/13/javascript-apis-youve-never-heard-of Helpful Tips: The Difference Between Good And Bad Job Requirements http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/11/12/on-good-bad-requirements-lists/ If you have problem with finding good developer, or any developer maybe your job requirements are bad. I see this also in Poland. Those text can be translated 1-1 to Polish and you wil...

onGameStart 2012

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This post was started just few days after onGamesStart but I have hard time finishing it. Talks were really good and I hope that my personal preferences and laziness will not affect great speakers with shorter reviews :) So let's start: Day 0:  Workshop with Kornel Lesinski & Peter van der Zee - Architecting canvas platformer game During this workshop you will learn about OOP, game loop, timers, tile maps, game editor, map and character collisions, animation and state transitions, NPC AI. Detailed walkthrough of example code of a fully playable platformer game. What I have learned Make your game small and distinct from drawing and input so that it can run on Node or in WebWorker :) So there should be class for Input handling to make it static instead of event driven, and Extract rendering to other Object than game-loop main Object. Thanks to this distinction you can create many different Renderers eg. one for mobile and one for web. With this ...

My Game: Canon Defense

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If you know about #js13kgames contest you might be interested in my small game created for it. I called it Cannon Defense, but the sole purpose of creating it was to learn in practice how to create a game. You can say that it looks ugly, or is small, but for me it was great co create it. My submission is not yet online so if you want, play it at:  http://krzychukula.github.io/js13k/ Code is on github:  https://github.com/krzychukula/js13k What I have learned: User constructor and prototype inheritance for game objects. function Bullet(x, y){ this.x = x; this.y = y; } Bullet.prototype.draw = function(ctx){ ctx.drawRect(x, y, 10, 10); } It will be more memory efficient. Do not use translations to move objects For me it was hard to manage bullets flying at various angles and the first idea was to translate all bullets to cannon position, then add some offset variable and just move bullet on one X or Y angle using offset. It worked :) Until I had ...

X-Type - ImpactJS Chrome Experiment

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At Chrome Experiments there is new game written by Dominic Szablewski in ImpactJS Game Engine. See it at:  http://www.chromeexperiments.com/detail/x-type/ Game itself is available at:  http://www.phoboslab.org/xtype/ For those who want to read more about game itself see blog post on Phobos Lab blog:  http://www.phoboslab.org/log/2012/06/x-type-making-of Engine page can be found:  http://impactjs.com/

Wooga Pocket Island and Gladius 0.2

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Wooga published new game Pocket Island on Github:  https://github.com/wooga/Pocket-Island  play it at:  http://wooga.github.com/Pocket-Island/ipad.html Blog post about it:  http://www.wooga.com/2012/06/woogas-html5-adventure/ Another news is about Gladius, game engine from Mozilla. Engine is now in version 0.2. New version is mostly about improved API  and better modularity. Read more about at:  http://blog.mozilla.org/labs/2012/06/introducing-gladius-0-2/ Visit Gladius page:  https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/gladius/

Learn VIM while playing game

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There is new Game that will help you learn VIM editor :) Link to game:  http://vim-adventures.com/ I've found it on:  http://www.html5gamedevelopment.org/html5-demos/2012-04-vim-adventures

HTML5 MMO - Browser Quest

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http://browserquest.mozilla.org/ Mozilla created HTML5 MMO game. I've tried it in Chrome and it works so +1 for cross browser game. Sources are on github:  https://github.com/mozilla/BrowserQuest To learn more see:  http://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/03/browserquest/

Better Do Not Use MP3 in HTML5 Games

MP3 is a format with fee if game is above 5000 copies. So if game has 5000 views layers can interpret that as 5000 copies... It can be tricky so better use MP4. More at Scirca blog:  http://www.scirra.com/blog/64/why-you-shouldnt-use-mp3-in-your-html5-games

HTML5 Game Devs Blog

There is new awesome blog about HTML5 Games Development:  http://www.html5gamedevs.com/ I'm really impressed with amount of great posts that are published.

Mugeda - Canvas Animations Creator

This looks, and for me work similar to Flash editor. https://www.mugeda.com/client/preview.html?id=1431 Canvas really has bright future :)