LoneWolf Productions Blog

So much to do..

2011-04-28T04:05:00.000-07:00

I was under the assumption that I would be making Flash Games all summer (like I wanted to), but now I find that it is expected that I work full time for EPSCoR all summer (40 hours a week). While this may lead to more money in the end for me and possibly more skills acquired and job experience, I don't feel a passion for this kind of work as I do for game development.
And even if I do not work for EPSCoR full time, I have so many flash games to work on! I will definitely be finishing NOVA because I feel it needs to released so I can get it out of the way, and it should be an awesome release when done.
ARrrgh

gconfucking brilliant

2011-04-27T07:07:00.000-07:00

You know whats fucking brilliant, gconf-editor
I was trying to figure out for the longest time how to edit the power settings on my Ubuntu netbook. While there are limited options in the default power manager, after asking around my Linux savey friends recommended writing some shell scripts etc.
After much trouble and no progress, I finally found someone talking of this gconf-editor and how they changed some setting. I thought, maybe this might have the settings I am looking for, so I fire up my terminal and type
gconf-editor
in seconds I am overwhelmed with an awesome amount of options. gconf is like windows regedit on performance steroids. So, the lesson in this story is, if you have any settings you want to change in ubuntu and cant find them in the default managers, look to gconf-editor, it holds the answers to all your setting related questions.
Alas, I would use Linux more seriously if it was not being held back by the lack of game support and flash development support. Makes me sad
goodnight

Current Projects

2010-09-22T17:12:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be nice to update this blog with my project schedule, so as to keep the comments like "WHERES MORE GAMES!?!?!" down.
-Organized by importance-
1) College classes
I have tons of homework & classwork to do always

2) Computer Science Programming Team
Time consuming events and programming competitions to participate in

3) Student Activities Council
I am employed as the Publicist for the SAC at my college, so I have to attend all the events and meetings and such... sigh

4) Student Academic Game Designer
Recently I have been hired for the Student Academic Aid center to make games to assist teachers in teaching their students difficult subjects to conceptualize...

5) All that other crap life requires you to do... eat/sleep/social life, I fit this stuff in wherever I can

I wish I could spend 24/7 making games... but alas..

September 22 - 2010 Update

2010-09-22T13:08:00.000-07:00

I have done some major updates to the blog, in both theme and location.
The domain of the blog is now http://blog.lonewolfproductions.us/ and all traffic to lonewolfjournal.blogspot.com will be redirected here.

Operation BlackKnife has been released to the public for almost two months now and has been received well. While it has not been loved by casual gamers, pro gamers all over the board love it.
However, I am disappointed with its release due to the major bugs that only became apparent when hundreds of thousands of people started to play it. I tried to patch as many as possible, and now the game is on a mostly stable release version. My only regret is not spending another few weeks developing the game to polish out those last few bugs and add a tiny bit more content (although to be fair the final 2 weeks of dev time was spent debugging)

Given all that, I see the game as a success & progress made in a better direction, as well as a learning experience.

Another bonus to BlackKnifes release was the flood of new beta testers I got for my future games. I hope with their help my future publications will be more bug free.

Currently, 2 games are in development, PointResistance 2 & an unnamed black project. I will be posting screenshots soon, and if you would like to be a part of the development process, help out, and give some of your input, head over to the forum and sign up to be a beta tester!

Operation BlackKnife

2010-08-08T21:15:00.001-07:00

No updates for awhile, this is because Operation BlackKnife has been in development, and is now released!

Play Here!

Now starting production on PointResistance 2

Anarchy Artificial Intelligence Engine

2009-03-01T21:59:00.001-08:00

You may have realized by now that I have not made a game like Planet Wars before, with 2 defense games in my portfolio, which means I have to create a new method of dealing with computer AI. When I first approached this new obstacle I noticed that I had no idea had to start, RealTime strategy actually needs some kind of mass intelligence rather then a assortment of stupid suicidal planes or soldiers. Then I thought of a way to manage the computers actions... however, if I posted it, everyone would use this means of controlling artificial intelligence. I will say though, that it is a basic breakdown of decisions based on fuzzy logic randomness.

The games AI will have a few different attitudes to choose from. These will range from a warbent Nuclear happy nation, to a Colonizing Conquerer. I believe so far I have programmed 6 different kinds of AI, all of which will be choosable by the player when setting up a skirmish map. (Note, I just announced a skirmish mode)

Planet Forge(r)

2009-03-01T21:55:00.001-08:00

When first developing Planet Wars I started drawing out little custom planets in photoshop, this was taking too long and I didnt like the idea of non-dynamic objects in my game. So, I started work on an automatic planet generator, and I quickly came up with a system that will generate an unlimited ammount of geologically diverse worlds with differing weather, oceans, and continenants. Its a pretty simple cool system, I hope to integrate better atmospheric effects and cities soon, along with Satellites and moons.

Currently the planets do not rotate, I choose not to do this because of the extra processing that would take and one of my main goals with planetwars is to keep the FPS high. Although I beleive in the final version I will add some super high quality options =D

Enjoy the pictures

Planet Wars

2009-03-01T21:18:00.000-08:00

First of all may I say that most of your best ideas come when your not even thinking constructively. For example, a few weeks ago I was sitting there in the dead of night drifting off to sleep & listening to a prerecorded lecture on the search of extraterrestrial life in outer space when I suddenly came up for the concept of a new game!

The concept was that of a game in which players construct and destroy large planetary empires. I was this epiphany that I immediately took out my phone and typed in a note on cell.

So far development has been pretty smooth yet bumpy at the same time since I have never made this kind of game before. Within the last few weeks I have finished the panning system, selection and some of the UI features, along with a random planet generator. Concept art will help in this project.

Laptop Charger

2009-02-26T17:08:00.000-08:00

Yay! I got my new laptop charger!

Ordered Wednesday afternoon, recieved at Fedex next day, and picked up by me today. That is a really quick service, considering they told me it would take atleast 5 business days.

2 New Games

2009-02-26T00:48:00.000-08:00

I am pleased to announce two new titles.

Planet Wars

The first is a game called Planet Wars and is a RTS(RealTime Strategy) style game where players control planetary systems & their resources to manufacture masses of nuclear, biological, or propaganda weapons to mobilize against enemy systems. Might include 2 player turn based mode

Project2

Unfortunately, this game so far lacks a name. I struggled in calling it PointRestistance 2 because it is going to be another Defense game but the storyline and gameplay are completely different. It will feature squad based combat defending an area from... bad things, also will have special abilities weapon upgrades etc. 2 Player coop survival will be availible.

Screenshots for both of these games coming up soon.

Ultralite

2009-02-25T15:06:00.000-08:00

Core Ultralite ver. 05 has been released on the main site. It is basically a minimalistic approach to having a nice buffer between the old and new, instead of the old siteunderconstruction.jpg. The Ultalite Series is just a nice bandwidth site I can come up with in about 1 and a half hours =P.

However, there are some bigger better sites in the near future.

First Post

2009-02-24T19:02:00.000-08:00

Last night I got a bunch of work done uploading the new temp site and creating all the blog stuff etc. Well, that must have been too much for my poor laptop charger because today it just stopped working suddenly. It probably didn't help that I used it as a bed warmer last night because it was so cold, but it is standard for Dell Laptop chargers to die after a year of use (ironic since my laptops anniversary is within a month).

I called Dell up and was able to quickly have Sakhmir (my friendly Indian tech support) order me a new one that should be arriving within the next 5 business. Sakhmir was also nice enough to ask me if I needed anything else for my laptops (rubber pads, screws etc.) and he threw in 4 LCD rubber bumpers into my order.

The moral of this story is that 4 year Dell Complete Care 24/7 Indian Tech support is a great service. And the conclusion is that work will slow down considerably until I get my charger. However, another friendly tech support lent me one of his Dell 1720 laptop chargers but I dont know how long I will get to use that.