Could you use Minecraft to teach programming?

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There are two mods (that I’m aware of) for Minecraft which let you build computers inside the game. ComputerCraft allows you to have Lua-programmable computers and robots, with basic wired and wireless networking capabilities. RedPower 2 on the other hand has a 6502-like CPU based computers, which are programmable either using 6502 Assembly or FORTH. What if you used Minecraft …

I made a thing: Planetside 2 minigame

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Random ideas and idle hands lead from one thing to another. While waiting for the Planetside 2 (a large scale MMOFPS) beta to land, I decided to make a hex-grid of the game’s map. Once the map is complete, someone suggests it should be colored in one of the three in-game faction’s colors… then I realize, why not just let …

Danmaku mechanics in first/third person shooters?

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While there are some good shooters coming out lately, no one is really pushing to improve the genre with new ideas or concepts. Most games build on the shoulders of the previous ones, merely improving areas here and there. What if you were to combine two genres of shooters which are distinctly different from each other? What if you would …

Unity: The best game development platform?

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One day I saw a webpage which had some game, and wanted me to download the Unity web player plugin for my browser. I thought “What crap is this? I’m not going to install it!”. That was stupid, because Unity rocks as a game development tool!

The best old “indie” games

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Just for fun, here’s a list of the best old shareware/freeware games I played before Windows XP and such even existed… The word indie is quoted because these games would probably be called that nowadays, but weren’t back then :D

Rendering graphics in JavaScript games

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As I’ve been rewriting TankWar, I’ve been thinking of various approaches to displaying the game’s graphics. At the moment, I can count three feasible approaches for rendering game graphics: DHTML – In other words, using divs with images and moving them around Canvas A hybrid: Canvas with DHTML I’ve considered each of these, and they all have some pros and …

Rewriting TankWar: Assessing the damage

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I have decided to rewrite TankWar, and I’ll be writing a bunch of blog posts about the process. If you ever wanted to know how to write a scorched earth/worms-like game using just JavaScript, now is your chance to learn ;) This is the first one: Assessing the damage. In other words, take a look at the old code and …

TankWar has online mode again: This time on Opera Unite

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You may recall an earlier post about TankWar, my 100% JavaScript cannons-game. Back when I wrote it, I included online play, but the server went down with a hard disk failure. Now, I have rewritten the online mode – this time that part is also all JavaScript – continue reading to find out what makes it tick.

Using canvas to do bitmap sprite animation in JavaScript

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Have you ever thought about writing a game? If you have, you’ve probably wondered how to render animations for your game characters. In this post, I’ll show you how you can use JavaScript to do time-based sprite animations, drawing them on canvas – vital if you want to do a game. You can also apply the same techniques I’ll show …

Opera Command, JavaScript based Missile Command game

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Firstly I’d just like to let you know that the lack of posts lately is because I have a new full time job which I’m enjoying quite much so far, but it still means I have less time / motivation to write stuff. The unit testing series and other postings will continue (see how I didn’t say “next week”, but …