JAPAN: Game-related books

Just some features of the local bookshelf at Junkudo- the Barnes and Noble of Japan. Game-related books.

The usual you'd find anywhere, coding any type of game in Objective C. All of the Game Programming Gem series. have been translated. Lots of modelling books, mostly devoted to MAYA. Only to be seen are about 3 books coding in Flash AS3 *wa wa wa waaaaaah* and the content none too impressive- how to make a Super Mario Clone etc. There was one 3D coding title that came with some Japanese 3D libraries on a CD.

As you can see the trend in Japan is more towards mobile gaming, there's a TON of books related to the IphoneSDK, for example, as well as coding with Android.

Another thing to note is that you can see some biographies of famous game designers over here, as they are given more acclaim in Japan, comparable with famous engineers in Germany.

Some links regarding the Iphone and Android in Japan.

Android Development Jobs in Japan

Is Japan’s Social Gaming Boom an Explosion or an Implosion?

Japan’s iPhone craze attracting worldwide developers

New

Hey,

First of all, if you're interested in my game updates, skip to the bottom of this post.

New Blog Additions

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So while it might seems pretty obvious from the blogs title, I do in fact live in Japan, although I'm a true blue Brit from Hastings. Living here and being a hardcore gamer is heaven, I sometimes feel as if every other Japanese person is some kind of gaming freak and in reflection of that Japan has some of the coolest gaming paraphernalia you can find on the planet. Gaming centers over here are big business, usually have about 6 floors full of games with expensive high-tech units you could only dream of having in the West. And many shops are devoted to selling quirky gamer stuff that I feel definitely someone living outside Japan might get excited over and have to break the bank to buy on e-bay.

Henceforth, with this in mind I've decided to mix in with this blog some regular concurrent info about the game scene in Japan. My first post is coming real soon, so watch this space.

Game stuff

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It's been awhile since my post, but the good news is that the reason behind this is because I've been extremely productive with work on my latest project, officially titled 'Chronicle' as of last week.

Some of you may have seen the demo of the Asteroids clone in my last post. The game has been revamped and now aspires to being a kind of retro tribute game that features 8 levels, some of which are resemblance to old arcade games, namely -Galaxians, Space Invaders, Gorf, Asteroids and Sinistar- but are fashioned to fit in the game's architecture.

Game features some nice particle effects (I think I've seriously gotten the hang of bitmap blitting these days) and I've even fiddled around with the CS5 3d transformation tools to bump up the sexiness of some of the graphics. You can collect power-ups that morph your ship into other type of ships with differing specialities- none of which I can mention at this point.

Might be just foolishness on my part but I'm a tad protective about some of the unique concepts in this one, hence the lack of an updated demo. Sorry. I will probably post it on FGL soon though, so members with a market level of 1 or over should be able to view it.

Creepy. Gothic. Inspirational

Was perusing through some old book shop here in Japan and came across this book of old Art Deco illustrations courtesy of Bela-Gyula Krieger, a long dead Hungarian animalier artist of the LOUIS XV Period. One look and I instantly thought of how well these would go in for The Insanity 3, ooooh yeah :-)

Best thing about these are since they're over a hundred year old they're totally permission free - as the book says, and as such are ok for use in games. I've a few hundred pages of these amazing awe-inspiring pieces, everything from Toad Daggers to Crocodile Eye Brooches. It's totally the stuff of dark fantasy, perfect for games. I'm even going to base some of my spacecraft design for the latest game I'm working on (still haven't named it).

You can bet your ass Edgar Friendly would have loved these too and yes, you will see a few of them crop up in the third installment of The Insanity series.

ROIDZ continuation...

Design notes for the new game.

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*Start off with your ship basic firing abilities.

*Each enemy destroyed gives credits for buying better weapons.

*4 levels and 4 bosses.

*Earlier bosses will be doable without anything but skill but later bosses will literally be impossible without the correct combination of bought power-ups.

*Each time you clock the game it gets progressively harder.

*Random *super* enemies will appear. Normal enemies that are a special colour and much tougher/faster than others of the same ilk however they will give a fat credit bonus when destroyed.

*Some variety in enemies during later replays.

Est.finishing time, 2 months from this post.

Roids

ASTEROIDZ - I mean :-)

Use the mouse to drag them around. Fingers crossed they'll fit well into the game without slowing up the FPS too much.

Updates-

Small update to the latest shooting game I've been working on, just click on the link on the thread below. Really need to get a better codename than 'BlowUpSh*t' I know but the name makes me chuckle every time I read it. I would genuinely call the game that if I thought parents would allow their little 5yr old Johnny to play a game with such a title.

Updates include a nasty bug being fixed that was messing with the memory, and a new weapon. If you hold down the mouse button it now activates an R-type ray gun actually called the er- *R-Type* (sort of in tribute really) that can rattle the crap out of any enemies it smashes into. The gun does damage relative to the amount of time you power it up, and if fully powered, the generator blinks and you'll do maximum damage- along with doubling the magnitude of the laser.

Don't let the fact the beam goes through some enemies- I'm still collision detection tweaking so expect a fix soon.

Machine guns next.

Another demo:

This one isn't even worth posting honestly, but just so you guys can get a basic idea of how the fighting game I was working on *was* going (till I realised how much work would go into it) here it is for ye all to 'marvel' at, lol. Never fear, though for the time being I'm preoccupied with the shooter, this demo will become a fully-fledged game, hey perhaps if I'm lucky some talented artist might come along and start spriting characters for me based on the biped movements in the demo. I'd truly be motivated to get back on the coding for this one if that were to happen. Major bonus points if you can guess which game the background music was ripped from..

FIGHTING GAME: DEMO

Blow Sh*t Up

Little quick demo of the latest game I'm working on.

I was planning to do a beat-em up game and had been working on that for a few weeks until I began to feel it would take me forever to finish what with all the animations to draw and such. Therefore I decided to ease down off the big projects for a while hence this is what I've been piddling about with these days-

HERE

Codename:Blow Sh*t Up is what I call this puppy. It's nothing more than a standard shooter with some fancy pixel particles explosions. The demo just features a bunch of enemies floating around the screen. The particle engine is so quick I can eve n add Glow and Blur filters to it without much of a halt in the fps.

I'm using the excellent Pixel Perfect Collision Engine by Troy Gilbert. Dude has made a fine piece of code there, it works like a dream.

//Accurate pixel detection turned off (bounding box same as hitTestObject)

if (PixelPerfectCollisionDetection.isColliding(ob,characterArray[i], this,false))

{

//If ship has a weak point check for it first

if(characterArray[i].box)

{

//Accurate pixel detection turned on

if(PixelPerfectCollisionDetection.isColliding(ob,characterArray[i].box,this,true,20))

{

Tint(characterArray[i], 0xFF0000,1);

characterArray[i].oldX=x;

characterArray[i].oldY=y;

characterArray[i].alive=false;

removeMovie(ob);

return;

}

}

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Awesomeness.

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So no 'Insanity III', boo hoo I know :-) I'd love to work on it- I truly would, but the only thing I have to say in my defence to the peeps begging me to make it a Jerry McGuire-esque 'Shooooow meee the money!' because entertaining you guys or not the financial scraps I've been making from this series are laughable, it's time for another strategy.

Love that you guys appreciated the games though.