Fire...

On Thursday, November 21st, the house I was renting (637 Anderson St, Oconomowoc, WI 53066) burned down.  My wife and I made it out ok, and she also managed to get our dog out, but we lost all our cats.  We also lost the majority of our things, of which nothing was insured.  

While we are ok with the lack of things, (and we will begin replacing what we need over time), I lost most of my computer equipment I use for classes.  I try to offer free education online, but I also teach classes, and provide laptops for students that don't have them available to use in class.  I had to put a pause on my current classes, because the machines have been damaged.

At present, I only have one student who was/is using a laptop of mine and I have already received one laptop from Ian Bestler (An old friend of mine who happened to be out in Wisconsin for the weekend, thank you Ian!) but I have new classes starting in February, and with it, more students.  It is hard for me to cover expenses of computers while we are taking care of everything else.

If anyone has some equipment they could donate to me, to use for education, I would really appreciate it.  Here is a list of things I'm hoping to get replaced if possible:

• Laptops, PC typically, though other OS's could work.  2G Ram+, 1.5 ghz+, 60G HDD+, Power Cord
• Projector screen, I was using an 8x4' stand up screen.
• WiFi Router, (I use this for networking the laptops in class)
• Remote Keyboard and Mouse (to keep up mobility in class)
• Bright Extention Coords, Good Power Strips
• Printer/Scanner (used for printing materials)
• LCD Monitor (I have one, but I'm used to two, and the power controller burned out on my second screen)
• *Other - I did not originally have or use Android in the classroom, but thanks to Ian's contribution of a Nexus 7, I now have Unity 3D games running on it, and can use it in classes as a testing device for students.  If I receive a device I cannot use, I will try to make sure it goes to good use somewhere deserving.  
• Projector, I have done everything I can to clean out the current one, which sort of works now, but it makes the whole room stink of burning plastics any time I turn it on.  It is a 1080p projector, but lower resolutions can work. --> I spent several more hours cleaning it, then let it run in the cold winter air.  Most of the smell is gone now.  :D  I should be able to start using it for classes again!

Learn Build Play is *not* a non-profit business, but so far has made no profit.  I teach the classes because this is what I love doing.  If you are interested in helping out, but have no devices from the list, we can accept cash as well.  

Warp Wars 0.2 On The Move (Region Tool)

At the beginning of V 0.2, we felt a need to hold back all the plans, until we felt our design was complete.  Its not complete yet, but I believe it is far enough along that we can start sharing pieces of it.  That first piece is the:

Region Tool

The region tool is a system that allows us to define a specific area of our game map.  This can be used to lock down regions where buildings can be constructed, areas where bridges can go, safe zones, AI information, etc.  

The specific reason we chose to build it, was to support one of our basic designs for the game, Gridless Buildings.  We want a player to have pixel perfect placement of their buildings.  Most games like this use some kind of tile based system.  But we want our designers to be able to create worlds that are rich, and take full advantage of 3D terrain.  

In order to do this, we needed a way to detect if our building was within certain buildable areas, i.e. reasonably flat ground.  The designers will build the world as the wish, and then use the region tool to mark safe areas.  

Enter the new problem.  Unity does not have out of the box support for this.  You can't even edit individual vertices in unity, you can only stretch, rotate and reposition entire models. To do this, I needed to write code that would generate editable points on each vertice to allow us to reshape them in the game.  Here is a video showing that.

Book Release: Indie Game Development with C# and XNA

I've just released a book that can be found here: free-ebooks.net/ebook/Indie-Game-Development-with-C-XNA

Its part of my (future) series, From Concept to Complete.  It takes you on a journey of making a game, where you act as a team member helping to prepare the entire thing.

• Game Design (brain storming, defining fun, minimal documentation)
• Team Management (how to keep people motivated, and the project progressing)
• Beginning C# Programming (Covers quite a bit)
• XNA Game Development (Multiplatform, 2D for us, but also does 3D)
• Game Release (Finances, Marketing, Investors)

I have been teaching Game Development courses at colleges since 2006 and have not found a book that I thought worked well enough with my teaching style, and really covered what I wanted it to cover.  So I kept preparing my own handouts and materials.  This book is based on the materials and training that I have been perfecting class after class and refining based on results.  

At present, most of my work relates to Unity 3D for game development, such as for my project, Warp Wars.  Perhaps in a year I will generate a book on Unity 3D, after I've had a chance to teach it in a couple class rooms.  XNA is not dead though.  It works great, and if you are planning to develop a fully 2D game, XNA is actually a better choice.  Unity 3D can do 2D, but it is not focused on it, and requires some extra hoops to get 2D to work.  XNA is a great place to start, and relatively easy to build games from a programmers mind.  Unity is built more for a Designers mind.

Training Video 1 complete! How To Get Started in Game Development.

I just completed my first video for Learn Build Play and Pinkie Square, on the current top FAQ from kids, "I want to make a game, how do I start?"  In it, I cover a few key topics, such as trying a tabletop game, experimenting with free game editing tools, finding a mentor and getting more resources.

This is not my first video, but I'm still very new to it.  I'm also very much open to ideas on how to improve these videos moving forward.  The video tool I used is TechSmith's Camtasia.

If you like it, please pass it on.  If not, please comment openly on how it could be better.  

Thanks.

XNA to ashes, along with my book, but I'm not done yet. :D

After several months with no contact, I have bad news to deliver.  The book I completed, that was in review, will not be published.  In February, Microsoft announced that XNA is done.  It will see no more development, and all official support will end as of March, 2014.  With news like that, no publisher in its right mind would publish a book on it right now.

I had neglected this blog, as this affected far more than just the book.  Most of my game development classes used XNA as a standard for development.  So I had to select a new development engine and get myself accustomed to it.  I'm pleased to say that I'm nearly ready to introduce a new series of classes based on Unity 3D.  I've spent the last two months figuring out a game to build to take advantage of the 3D environment, and at the same time simple enough that it would be a good starter game.  So I chose to make a Real Time Strategy game.

RTS's are not simple, but huge undertakings with a lot of work.  But I'm not actually building an RTS.  Instead, I split the game into its 3 key areas, a City Builder, a Tactical Game, and a Strategy Game.  I spent a while on GameDev.Net's forums talking with other developers and players about what the best parts of RTS's are and what their missing.  In the end I came up with a solution that turned into a project code named Warp Wars.

I started planning it out, created a full GDD (the light type I normally use for Design Classes) and started building.  Since the start of it in January, when it started as a small spark of an idea, it has grown into a project with 10 people offering help on it, a blog with hundreds of views every week, an active User Voice site (where people (and me) are bringing up ideas and bugs) , a public/private development forum, and most importantly, the real website and the Live Demo.

The blog gets regular updates, but here are a few snap shots of the progress in the game:

  

The Live demo has functioning registration, the map is different for every player, scrolling and rotation of the near infinite terrain and in the next two weeks, we plan to add the first in game menus, and the ability for a player to add buildings.  Connect to the blog for regular updates.

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Kenzie's Project:

I'm also please to bring up a project on kick starter, about a 9 year old girl making her first video game.  It originally started as a fight between her and her brothers. They said she'd never be able to build a real game.  Instead of get discouraged when things got tough, she got going.  She researched how to do it, found RPG Game Maker and a training course for kids her age, where you end class with an actual game of your own.  The only problem is that the training package and the environment came up to over 1000 dollars.  

She and her mom, started a kick starter project to see if anyone wanted to support the idea, and get a a copy of the finished game out of it.  Kick Starter exploded with responses.  Unfortunately many of them were complaints, even threats, saying the whole thing is fake.  But fortunately, over twenty three thousand dollars in small individual contributions have taken Kenzie's initial hope and turned it to something bigger.

They've created a site called Pinkie Square, which is based on her in ability to say "pinkie swear" when she was younger.  This site is dedicated to helping kids learn to make their own games.  You really should check it out.  And when you do, drop into the Create section, and check out who's going to help them setup training videos and Q&A for kid's game development.  

That's right, I will be.  :D  This is re-igniting some of my earlier plans of Learn Build Play being an online training community.  I'm preparing some videos now that I'll be posting on Pinkie Square, this blog and the new version of the Learn Build Play website that is underway now.  Pinkie Square will be focused on Kids, and Learn Build Play will cover more, but teaching kids is a strong passion of mine.  I had to go through a lot of hurtles in education growing up, so I'm doing everything I can to make those easier for the next generations.

Check back soon for more updates.