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First off, I have zero knowledge in programming... Just thought I would say that first before I get bombarded with jargon right out of the gate haha. I am an illustrator, motion graphics artist and animator trying to make their first game. This game has all the artwork covered... I plan on re-designing everything 100% to not appear to look like Cartoonsmarts on any level.
THAT BEING SAD... lol
If you are not familiar with this template you can see a little overview of the Wave Attack template I purchased at https://vimeo.com/34988233#at=1
What I need to do to it:
rotate the game to where the enemies come from the right and the player stays on the left. This means changing the menu to be landscape on top.
turn the "waves" into levels... I want to have 5 worlds with 4 levels for each world. I have 5 different backgrounds to show the world changes.
add a new set of enemies every world change. I have the sprites all covered for each world.
add a menu screen! haha the template does not include one and just jumps straight into the game.
lastly I need to divide the worlds with an image slideshow fading from image to image, about 2-3 images in an illustrated comic book explaining the transition to the next world.
If anyone knows how to do these things or help me in any way whatsoever please contact me on Skype (the25thPixel) I did not expect to budget for this thinking it would be easy lol but I am willing to pay someone for their help.
I am also willing to do a trade with some illustrations, graphics, or animations on any project someone may be working on. My site is 25thPixel.com ... please take a look and see that I plan on really showcasing my skills with a fun game that looks awesome.
I am always available and will be working on graphics in the mean time. I hope to hear from some of you soon... I was recommended to this site by the creator of the template thru his tutorial videos so hopefully this is the right place to post.
This isn't really a freelancing/hiring site, though as you're really only asking for help rather than a complete project it's probably okay. In terms of learning how to do what you outlined, be prepared to invest a little bit more time in the project. Some of the things you want to do, such as changing the orientation of the game and menu to landscape and adding a main menu, should be fairly simple, though they are difficult to explain in the limited space on this site. Following beginner tutorials on Cocos2d is your best bet in my opinion.
Some examples that should help:
Cocos2d - Setting Device/Screen Orientation
(Game orientation)
http://www.reigndesign.com/blog/creating-a-simple-menu-with-scene-transition-in-cocos2d/
(Main menu and different levels)
http://www.raywenderlich.com/352/how-to-make-a-simple-iphone-game-with-cocos2d-tutorial
(Best resource for what you're looking for - should help you create multiple enemy types, and attain a basic understanding of the parts of your template)
Also, you probably already know that Google is your best friend. In case you're not sure what to look for though, a couple examples: (By the way, remember that your template is in Cocos2d and you should be looking for info on that in particular)
Scenes will allow you to create menus, "slideshow transitions" between worlds, etc. Very, very important.
CCSprite is what your ship and your enemies are most likely based on. Also used to add UI elements sometimes.
I hope you're able to accomplish what you're trying to do, and maybe gain some programming knowledge along the way. Also, excellent portfolio - you have some very impressive work.
Cheers,
XenElement
Related
I'm currently stack at creating an app.
Our requirement is to make "book viewer" app similar to the iBooks. Each of the book is just series of images (JPEG or PNG) and not a pdf. So it's more like an image viewer in a sense.
The main view is going to be like "horizontal tableview", which the user can scroll horizontally the covers of the books, click it to download and open the book (which led to another page view). The row for the cover should be at least two since there's two "type" is set for the books. This part is more like a "pulse-style" bookshelf with UI similar to this.
When I thought of how to implement this behaviour, I found the way with UITableView just as described here. However, as an objective-c beginner, it's little complicated for me to use this, and our requirement has also each "cell" must have multiple buttons to set each book as "favourite" or "downloaded" etc... and this could be more complicated if I choose to use the UITableView.
So I came to think of using UIScrollView to line up the book covers, embedding each cover as an UIImageView with buttons. But I really don't know if this is the right direction, sicne the UIScrollView has no "reload" function, and the requirement also stated that the user should be able to find the books by using "search bar" at the head of the bookshelf view.
As you can see, I'm completely confused and depressed because I don't know how can I achieve this. I searched around google and several answers here at stackoverflow suggest using AQGridView or EasyTableView. They are both great, but again too complicated to implement these into our requirement...
Which way, or how should I implement this dynamic "pulse-style" bookshelf like feature?
I think my question is a bit vague, but I'm also not clear what to ask here because I really don't know how to do this. The Android version of this app is already achieved this requirement with fairly simple and easy to understand codes (since I have some experience in Java), but for this Objective-C, everything seem needlessly complicated...
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you.
<preachy>The fact is that you have made a mistake by trying to make this app with a complex interface full of non-standard UI components when you are “an objective-c beginner”. I understand that this may not have been your decision; it may have been forced on you by the guy that signs your paychecks. Nevertheless, it is not reasonable to expect that you can just implement this app before you've spent the time working through tutorials and reading documentation for the programming language and libraries required to build it. We all have to learn the alphabet before we can start writing limericks.</preachy>
That said, if your app can require iOS 6, and you can take the time to learn a bit of Objective-C and iOS programming, it sounds like this would be pretty easy using UICollectionView. Apple did a couple of sessions about this powerful new class at WWDC 2012. I recommend you watch the videos:
Session 205 - Introducing Collection Views
Session 219 - Advanced Collection Views and Building Custom Layouts
You can also easily find some tutorials about UICollectionView using your favorite search engine.
Take a look at Collection View's
You can even download some sample code to see how a grid layout can be accomplished.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I want to design an easily extensible item system for my game where I don't need to modify existing code much. I want to add items with new effects on the fly.
Traits my items have in common:
A name,
a description,
an npc sell price,
if it can be equipped,
required level,
if it is usable in battle,
if it is usable outside of battle,
a cooldown
So I can encapsulate this already into a class. But now there are item effects.
Example:
heals x health points,
heals x mana points,
removes debuff x,
adds buff x,
gives x stat points on equipping,
has x% chance to create some other effect when equipped,
etc.
And those can be combined like: heals x health and mana points. The first four are examples for effects a usable item can have while the last two are examples for effects equipable items can have.
The idea behind it is that I have this structure in a database as well and I can add a new item with a new effect combination in my database, my code reads this then and builds it together into a new fancy item, without me having to modify much. The only time I need to modify my code is when I add new effects obviously.
How would you put this together in design pattern(s)?
I thought of decorator. Is there a different, better design pattern for this or maybe even a combination of multiple design patterns?
It seems a decorator pattern is good for your needs. Think of a pizza with different tops. You can warp the basic pizza with many tops and at the end you call a function to sum the prize or whatever. It's a kind of wrapper and you pass the object to the next class. Hence you need only a basic class and can add new (top)-class when you need it.
You can use Decorator Pattern to decorate your objects with additional functionality without modifying them.
This isn't a direct answer to your question, though I believe it needs more words than can fit into a comment:
Picking a design pattern for a chunk of code is not something which you would typically do up-front (If you do it this way, be prepared to change it after you've seen it working); it's something which you're more likely to do after you already have some working code in-place and are looking to refactor it. - Chances are that whatever decisions you make now will be affected by many (currently) unknown factors once you've started writing code.
I'd suggest thinking more about the features, behaviour and functionality which you'd like to create, and then just begin writing code to see what works and further develop your ideas. Trying to solve a problem by designing it up-front around buzzwords like "factory", "decorator", "visitor" etc most likely won't lead you to a solution - design is very much an iterative process of continual improvement, change and refinement.
As an aside, and specifically on OO design, have a careful think about the SOLID principles while you're writing code; they should help you make decisions when you come to refactoring
http://www.blackwasp.co.uk/SOLIDPrinciples.aspx
http://butunclebob.com/ArticleS.UncleBob.PrinciplesOfOod
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Can anybody help me with this?
Here's the problem...
When I have to code let's say, a registration form, I add the new form and start coding it. But sometimes the form is a bit complex and I find myself duplicating code and making the same verifications over and over again making the code messy.
I was wondering is there is some sort of tool that allows me to create a flow of this form before coding it, like a flow chart... where I can find such places where I'm duplicating code and then avoid that.
thanks!
Well real tool/language designed for this is UML. You can read up on it.
But its very strict. Altough you don't have to follow all specs and conventions. There are several types of diagram that cover pretty much everything. But AFAIK only 4 are practically in use.
Most people I know tend to draw Control flow diagrams
Google Docs drawing is perfectly fine for that.
But it depends on the type of application. I pesonally think more in data and like data flow diagrams.
I also like to design top-down. Other people do it differently. I mostly start with a sheet of paper and a pen and draw some stuff i could not tell what it means half an hour later. But I start very basic with application/database/user or something and when a picture arises i go into specifics using modeling tools.
I cannot design anything without knowing the greater picture, altough i know it is a software developers quality to just that.
ps: designing a form sounds very trivial at first, altough it might be not. but a great help
I think a great help is sticking to some programming patterns and paradigms you like. A good base is the MVC concept. I like to extend it with a "resource model" that does all the database stuff.
1) The best place to start is the white board. If your company doesn't have white boards, tell them to order some. Seriously. You will wonder how you lived without it.
2) Build a paper prototype with the stakeholders, or have them build one. They take maybe 30 minutes to make and solve a ton of UI arguments that otherwise would be "defects"
3) Code. That's the easy part.
4) Refactor as you fix defects. You'll notice better things you could have done, shortcuts, duplicate code. Take time to fix the defect correctly and code quality will improve. It's an iterative process.
5) Visio if you hand the process off (to support or whatever). This could be step 4 as kind of a state machine, but the paper prototypes should be enough of a process to get you started with enabling, disabling, etc.
If you're on the computer designing and writing code before you have a prototype and have white boarded everything out, you will have to invest a lot more time in the Refactor step. Visio and other state design applications will show you what happens, but the white board marker is the excalibur of the development world.
I know this doesn't answer the question you asked, verbatim; however, solid processes are infinitely more valuable than tools.
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I would like to start building apps starting off with a small one. Is this even possible or d I have to learn code from going to school or get training?
Programming an iPhone App has nothing to do with rocket science at all, but there are some drawbacks to it:
You will have to use Objective-C as a programming language, which has quite a steep learning curve.
Albeit a lot of books being around on the topic of iPhone/iOS programming, I still have to see one written particularly for people new to programming in general. Same goes for the tutorials. Once you've written your first classic "Hello, world" programme, things will start to become difficult.
XCode (the development environment most people use) has a lot of stuff going on, which might seem to be a bit obscure at first sight (things like plist and their usage, the whole Interface Builder thing etc. come to mind).
As ChristopheD mentioned: Objective-C isn't one of the most forgiving programming languages at all (pure C isn't either, so why should its superset be?) and I can entirely second cdhowies advice to learn a more beginner friendly programming language (Java, for instance) first.
Whatever your decision will be: welcome to a really fascinating world!
It's absolutely possible, as others have noted, It will indeed take a lot of determination and effort.
Programming is a learnable skill like most others, but like any skill that pays well, it's not something you pick up over a weekend, or a week, or month. To create your first iPhone app of any real complexity if you've not programmed before -- and even simple apps are usually much more complex behind the scenes than they seem -- it's going to take months at least.
I encourage you to go for it, though, if you're willing to put in the effort. Start by learning to program in general; if you start with Objective-C and Cocoa Touch and the Xcode IDE (integrated development environment), it's likely to be overwhelming. Head First Programming is quite good, my girlfriend learned the basics of programming with it in just a few months of spare time, and it was clear from her questions that she really was learning the essential concepts. You'll be learning Python, which isn't like C or Objective-C in syntax or structure, but 95%+ of what you learn will transfer.
Next I suggest plowing into Objective-C. There are several good books out there; the one that I particularly liked escapes my mind at the moment, but some Amazon reviews will be able to guide you to a good choice. While learning the language there will likely be a few concepts you're missing that will require further investigation on your part, some object-oriented programming basics for instance, but you can likely fill the gap with some online resources.
After that go for iPhone programming with a book like Head First iPhone Programming (I have nothing o do with either book, btw); I've seen two people learn from it quite successfully. With most of that book under your belt you'll be able to write a variety of basic apps.
Importantly, with the experience of three books along those lines you'll be at a point where you'll be able to ask questions here at Stack Overflow in a clear enough manner that you'll get useful answers. If you start asking iPhone programming questions right away, odds are you won't be asking something that can really be answered, and even if so, the answers won't necessarily make sense to you.
Like I said at the start, it will likely be months before you're able to build something you're satisfied with, and it could be many months if you can only do it in your spare time, but it's definitely doable.
Lastly, understand that a crash course like this won't make you a good programmer, and won't give you the skills to write complex apps: only experience can do that. Keep programming, read online tutorials and blogs, and answer questions here on SO that you're qualified for (something that teaches you a lot, btw). Within a few years you may well qualify as good, and be on your way to great.
Yes it is possible, and you do not have to go to school.
Programming is not for genius people.
http://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/index.action
Go for it.
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In short I'm creating a 2D mmorpg and unlike my last "mmo" I started developing I want to make sure that this one will scale well and work well when I want to add new in-game features or modify existing ones.
With my last attempt with an avatar chat within the first few thousand lines of code and just getting basic features added into the game I seen my code quality lowering and my ability to add new features or modify old ones was getting lower too as I added more features in. It turned into one big mess that some how ran, lol.
This time I really need to buckle down and find a design that will allow me to create a game framework that will be easy to add and remove features (aka things like playing mini-games within my world or a mail system or buddy list or a new public area with interactive items).
I'm thinking that maybe a component based approach MIGHT be what I'm looking for but I'm really not sure. I have read documents on mmorpg design and 2d game engine architecture but nothing really explained a way of designing a game framework that will basically let me "plug-in" new features into the main game.
Hope someone understands what I mean, any help is appreciated.
If you search for component-based systems within games, you will find something quite different to what you are actually asking for. And how best to do this is far from agreed upon just yet, anyway. So I wouldn't recommend doing that. What you're really talking about is not really anything specific to games, never mind MMOs. It's just the ability to write maintainable code which allows for extension and improvements, which was a problem for business software long before games-as-a-service became so popular and important.
I'd say that addressing this problem comes primarily from two things. Firstly, you need a good specification and a resulting design that makes an attempt to understand future requirements, so that the systems you write now are more easily extended when you come to that. No plug-in architecture can work well without a good idea of what exactly you hope to be plugging in. I'm not saying you need to draw up a 100-page design doc, but at the very least you should be brainstorming your ideas and plans and looking for common ground there, so that when you're coding feature A, you are writing it with Future feature B in mind.
Secondly, you need good software engineering principles which mean that your code is easy to work with and use. eg. Read up on the SOLID principles, and take some time to understand why these 5 ideas are useful. Code that follows those rules is a lot easier to twist to whatever future needs you have.
There is a third way to improve your code, but which isn't going to help you just yet: experience. Your code gets better the more you write and the more you learn about coding. It's possible (well, likely) that with an MMO you are biting off a lot more than you can chew. Even teams of qualified professionals end up with unmaintainable messes of code when attempting projects of that magnitude, so it's no surprise that you would, too. But they have messes of code that they managed to see to completion, and often that's what it's about, not about stopping and redesigning whenever the going gets tough.
Yes, I got what you want...
Basically, you will have to use classic OOP design, the same one that business software coders use...
You will first have to lay out the basic engine, that engine should have a "module loader" or a common OOP-style interface, then you either code modules to be loaded (like, as .dlls) or you code directly within your source code, using that mentioned OOP-style interface, and NEVER, EVER allow a module to depend on each other...
The communication, even inside your code, should be ALWAYS using a interface, never put "public" vars in your modules and use it somewhere else, otherwise you will end with a awfull and messy code.
But if you do it properly, you can do some really cool stuff (I for example, changed the entire game library (API that access video, mouse, keyboard, audio...) of my game, in the middle of development... I just needed to recode one file, that was the one that made the interface between logic, and game library...)
What you're thinking about is exactly what this article describes. It's a lovely way to build games as I have blogged about, and the article is an excellent resource to get your started.