Jithin Rao

Hey guys,
Me back at home for the very famous festival of God’s Own Country – Onam! Well, for people who don’t exactly know what is onam all about – CLICK HERE !!!

Many People have this misconception that Onam is the Kerala New Year, actually its not, its one occasion when the keralites, so called mallus, unite to have a grand season where every house have a big feast for a period of 5 major days as part of keepin the Asura King Mahabali happy, its a belief that he visits each house at this period to assure that his people are all happy and everyone is equal too. I had my sadya yesterday, mmm.. the yummy taste of Delicacies that especially made in Kerala and for Onam!

Check out the links to know more about our Onam!

Anyways, i am back online today and back to work on 22nd. Till then i think i am on a vacation, just hangin around with amma, dad and sista… and a couple of relatives. There are a couple of things that i need to read study and work on.. will blog it later .

Till Then..

Cheers with ONAM!

Ok, I have been thinking of a simple game that can be a bit challenging for a beginner and i feel its better to start of with this design.

Concept : Very simple, a Physics based game. A rat maze with a entry door and an exit door. The gameplay has an important part to do, the gameplay is – start of the game has a iron ball put into the maze thru the entry door. Its upto to the player to to rotate the maze in real time to move the ball from one location to another and get it out of the exit door. Simple isn’t it? … ok.. so we have the high level concept, but we don’t have the fine filtered concept done. Since the gameplay is the crucial part of this game, its better we simulate a simple prototype of the gameplay, which can actually give us an idea whether the game is worthy to be put into production completely or not. 

Prototype Gameplay :
Click drag mouse up -> rotate the puzzle up similarly for other sides. 
Game can be playable on the main screen + a wireframe view would be present at the right bottom side too.

Prototype Requirements :
Before prototyping the gameplay concept, as a programmer its better you understand the requirements of the game.

1-> Rendering Engine : As this is a game with no high profile graphics and animated models, we would be needing a simple open source engine would do the trick. OGRE / Irrlicht would be more than enough. I choose Irrlicht. For newbies, check this site to know what is Rendering, rendering engine is a package that takes care of the Rendering. 

2-> Physics Engine : yeah this game especially needs a physics engine to enhance us to have the collision detection on the walls of the puzzle. Physics Engine, a good middleware would be a cutting edge . I saw Havok is giving the basic physics SDK free for non commercial use, well i choose it. For newbies, check this link to know what’s a Physics Engine.

You can also use a Game Engine, which is a package that contains the above parts and much more features with the more money you spend on licensing it.

Next, we need an IDE for Development since both the above packages / SDK are in C++, we will take VC++ IDE itself.  Microsoft’s Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition, which is free, is the best IDE that you can have with all the debugging features to help your life smoother with coding.

Currently that would be more than enough for the gameplay prototype programming. Next post on working with OGRE on Visual Stutio 2008 VC Express Edition.

AH, now its showtime. .

CHEERS!