Geiodo

Archive for July, 2009

Yesterday, I went down to where all my friends usually hang out… Gr, Ja, and I were playing some Parcheesi on the deck, which slowly degraded, most likely due to my degrading attention.

In the background (Actually right behind me lol), I heard graf (their grandpa, not mine), and jo setting up a character… The more I heard, the more enticed I was. I eventually made a short suggestion after hearing some of the character “classes”: “Why not make it a thief/ranger” – Players can have multiple classes. After that, the people around had started saying how great a player I would have been had I played it, and how I would find something better than splitting an atom!
I’m sitting there thinking “What are they talking about….?”.

From that point on, ja had called me a genius around 20 times, and every time I was acting a little too smart for my own good, he would say “Your hurting your case” (As almost every time he called me a genius, a replied “I’m not a genius…”) Why do I say “almost”? Well, around the 17th time, I gave up and said “You know what? I am just going to pretend I’m a genius, but understand, when I do, I don’t mean it”. At that point he only said “Your hurting your case” lol.

Eventually the game of parcheesi totally died…, and I was pretty much doing nothing but sitting there, while two people were setting up characters – temptation had me overrun… I had told the people currently outside (On the deck) that I was going down to talk to my parents, jo half mumbled “Ask them about the game” (Something along those lines). So, I rode my bike towards home to ask. First it was a yes because the thought it was at that moment, but I thought it was going to be late at night today – I told them this, and it was then a maybe. I rode m bike back down, I was asked, and I told them “It’s a maybe”, then my miss-information about the timing was corrected (Unintentionally, but I am still lucky it was) – it was actually pretty early in the morning. So, I immediately rode back home (all ready feeling tired, and saying “Exercise” a couple of times), and gave the info. It was a yes. After that I went through to setting up a character – In part two that is lol.

Dungeons And Dragons (D&D), is a game that I have heard of, but never played – however as of today that will change.

From what I have heard, it is a pretty great game! One of which I will most certainly be blogging about… Anyways, from now on I am going to be referring to Dragons and Dungeons D&D lol.

Also, I have quite a few friends evolved, and I am unsure whether or not they are ok with their real names being posted… Likewise, I am going to use a trademark of bunny… I’m not really sure how to describe them, so hopefully you can intuit their personalities via my writing.

jc : Male (teen)(tall)
gr : Male (teen)(average)
ba : Female(pre-teen)(average)
jo : Male(teen)(big)
graf : Male(Grandpa)(average)
grap : Female(Grandma)(average)

Anyways, off to part one…

Dungeons And Dragons (D&D), is a game that I have heard of, but never played – however as of today that will change.

From what I have heard, it is a pretty great game! One of which I will most certainly be blogging about… Anyways, from now on I am going to be referring to Dragons and Dungeons D&D lol.

Also, I have quite a few friends evolved, and I am unsure whether or not they are ok with their real names being posted… Likewise, I am going to use a trademark of bunny… I’m not really sure how to describe them, so hopefully you can intuit their personalities via my writing.

jc : Male (teen)(tall)
gr : Male (teen)(average)
ba : Female(pre-teen)(average)
jo : Male(teen)(big)
graf : Male(Grandpa)(average)
grap : Female(Grandma)(average)

Anyways, off to part one…

I have been working on around three projects :

A full 3D space dogfighting/exploration multiplayer game(full 3D means that any direction you want is up, same with forwards, backwards, left, right, and down) – Space

A simple First Person multiplayer shooter, with extravagant weapons, but low violence – Un-Named.

A Third Person single player story lined, cartoon like action game – Team members would prefer the name kept quiet.

I was working on another 3D project, and researching on the Unity Community. I saw a post about some radar project on the Unify Wikis, and I decided to check it out. I started messing around with the radar, and began to think how perfect it was for space.

I messed around, reprogrammed, changed logic functions added logic functions, created new technologies (In my world), and overall, it’s s something pretty different… The only function I left virtually untouched, was a function that used mathematics that I don’t yet understand, but hopefully will.

On an experiment before hand I worked in mesh manipulation, and was forced to work with a “for” sequence.

I had originally HATED “for” sequences, due to some bad experiences (more or less experiments) with them. However after having been forced to work with them, I turned to love them, and in the week afterwards I had all ready used about seven of them LOL. Learning to use them opened up allot of doors for me…

“for” sequences are a special kind of loop. First they define a local start variable – then they define what value must be in what state for the loop to function. Finally they define what side function to do every time the loop is run.

One can use a “for ” sequence to iterate through an array – Arrays are special variables that are made up of more variables – for simplicity, and multiple data storages, that can be iterated through easily. Unity does not support multidimensional arrays as far as I know, but if it does, that would be quite useful. A multidimensional array is an array that contains more arrays!

Anyways, here is an example – if you don’t like programming talk, click here:

var string = “”;
var array = String[];
array[0] = 1;
array[1] = 2;
array[2] = 3;
for (i = 0;i < array.Length;i++)
{
string += array [i];
//Code here
}

First of all I define a for -

"for ()"

Inside the parentheses I define more parameters.... First I define what "i" is the first time the loop is run "for (i = 0;".

Next I define what must be true for the loop to run (after this is false, the loop will stop): "i < array.Length;" - this means that it will run as long as i is below the length (amount of objects) of the array.

Finally, I define it so that every time the loop is run, the value i is increased (moving it on to the next object):

"i++)"

Inside the code, I add the currently selected object's value to the string - at the end of this code's completion, the variable "string" will go from "" to "123".

I iterated through the array, and used it to display a number of gameobjects in the scene – displaying their location, name, and distance to the object carrying the script. I also added some cool graphical stuff too.

I also modified the radar script so that it can display multiple kinds of objects : Enemies, Allies, Neutral players, Unkown objects, and dangerous objects.

Unfortunately I misspelled ally…

Anyways, here is that teaser I was going to mention so long ago… Yup, a teaser for that game I have been monologging about…

Before I begin this post, I would like to apologize for how long it has been since my last posting. I have been busy as a bee working on many projects, and I have many things to blurt out! For those of you who still check my blog, thanks for keeping hope…

A while ago, I tried for the first time, multiplayer gaming. Things were ok, untill…. DUH DUH DUH!!!!! The Unfixable Bug

I found that all players controlled each other! :/ I tried, and tried, and tried, not knowing what I was doing. I eventually gave up – or did I?

Over the months, my brain was assimilating data, and comprehending what multiplayer really was, and how it worked. Almost before I gave up, I did a little bit of reading on the subject… I had spent two months semi-consciously thinking, and understanding multiplayer. The more I thought about it, the more I knew that my last idea would fail. In fact I was so sure I never even tried it – to this day! Eventually I asked…. DUH DUH DUH!!!!! The Unity…community!

After that, in about three days, I got my brilliant, well cooked, and delicious answer…..

I was thinking in terms of make a script ignore other player’s input! However, since all scripts are un-synched across the network without a network view, one can actually view it in terms of this: make all other scripts ignore me! (scripts turn them self off on the clients computer if they were not actually spawned by the clients computer – this is un-synched, so on your screen the other players script is turning off. But on their screen YOUR script is turning off!).

I was absolutely exited about this, and thought the reversed logic was GENIUS! In a way, I still do lol.

Anywho, ever since, I have not had that problem – though I once thought I did – it turned out that my player was not being controlled by someone else – but instead, I was seeing someone else’s camera LOL.

~ Geo