Archive for December, 2009

Spec Ops: The Line

December 14th, 2009

It’s finally been announced! I worked on this game for six months as a technical artist (internship). It was a very awesome time there, and working with the whole team was more than a charm! The very cool thing is, that you can even see some stuff I’ve worked on I don’t know about any legal stuff, so I’ll just say that some of the special and visual effects are from me.

Nevertheless, check it out either at http://www.gametrailers.com/video/spec-ops-spike-tv/59821 or via youtube:

It’s being developed by Yager Development, located in Berlin.

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Posted in Misc

PBE Series: initializing your scene via ActionScript

December 11th, 2009

Prerequisite: use a current version of PushButton Engine.

This will be a short tutorial. It will show you how to intialize your PushButton Engine scene properly via ActionScript.
Let’s get started! Somewhere in your main class, paste in this code:

// Startup the engine:
PBE.startup(this);
 
//Create your scene view:
var sceneView:com.pblabs.rendering2D.ui.SceneView = new com.pblabs.rendering2D.ui.SceneView();
 
//And now initialize the scene:
PBE.initializeScene( sceneView, "Scene", null, Box2DManagerComponent );
 
//Now you're ready to load a level file like so:
LevelManager.instance.load("../assets/levelDescriptions.xml", 1);
 
//Or create your entites directly in code:
var myEntity:IEntity = PBE.allocateEntity();
myEntity.initialize("MyEntity");
//...go on with adding components to your entity as you like :)

A quick remark on the initializeScene: if you don’t want or need the Box2DManagerComponent, you can use the BasicSpatialManager2D:

PBE.initializeScene( sceneView, "Scene", null, BasicSpatialManager2D );

That was it! Easy eh?

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Posted in PushButton Engine, Tutorials

Level Master 2000 gets a domain

December 9th, 2009

Since the project is getting more and more serious, I decided to register a fully fledged domain for it. Currently it’s only referring to the Level Master 2000 section of this blog, but it will evolve as time passes by! The domain is www.levelmaster2000.com.

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Posted in Level Master 2000

Tags: Level Master 2000

Presenting: Level Master 2000

December 4th, 2009

It’s time to unveil the beast! For my master thesis I am developing a rapid prototyping tool (as stated in starting to cook) named Level Master 2000*. The project is in cooperation with the guys from Broken Rules, the makers of And Yet It Moves. It’s really nice working with them, as they always give useful feedback.
For the last weeks I’ve been researching and playing around with the PushButton Engine, and my first impression is very good. Now, time is nearing to get my fingers dirty for sure!
What you see here is a first prototype of the user interface (click on the image to get to a flash demo):

Elements explained:

Component composition: this is an auto-complete input. Try it with e.g. “Comp”
+C is add the component to the selected entities
+E adds the component to a new entity
- deletes the selected component or entity
Magnifier brings up the component browser, in case the auto-completion is not enough
Search Entity: will also be auto-completion based
Duplicate entites will probably work via right click context menu and standard keyboard short cuts of course
All the transformation & collision editing will happen via icons in the viewport, directly above the to manipulate object

I hope that’s not too confusing right now, I’ll post more detailed information about the individual features when it comes to implementing them.

*: Many thanks to Meisi for the ultra cool proposal on how to name this beast! It sounds so retro, that it can only turn into a true masterpiece…