Space ROX V 0.4

Now you can hear Space ROX – the music that is.  The issue with music and sound however, is that dramatically increases the size of the output Flash file. To compensate for this, I created a Pre-Loader for the flash file.

Also, the keyboard input does not work for Flash files unless the Flash control has focus. To accomplish this, I ask the user to click on the Flash file to begin play.

Check it out!

World of Goo creator Kyle Gabler has a keynote address at the IGDA’s “Global Game Jam.” The Game Jam is a 48-Hour rapid prototyping session where the objective is to create a complete game within 48 hours. One of the most impressive things that Kyle mentions are the number of great games that came out of such fast-paced environments.

In terms of game programming time, Space ROX has less than 8 hours worth of real programming time under its belt. More time has been spent polishing the actual assets of the game, somewhere upwards to 24 hours or more. I’ll be sure to note where we are in terms of development and assets once we hit a total of 48 hours of development time (between two people) and when I hit 48 hours of strict programming time to show how much a small team can accomplish in a short amount of time.

The more I read about small elite development teams versus juggernaut development houses, the more I am convinced of their superiority in terms of quality and design. The designers of Little Big Planet got no bigger than 31 people while intending to keep the team size no greater than 20.

Recursion is probably one of the most powerful logic tools that a programmer can use.  It solves many problems that are simply too complex for humans to be able to solve on their own.  From quickly sorting millions or records of information to swift path-finding techniques.  In the example above, I created a recursive map generator to create a maze, which can be used for random map generation in many games.

The logic is as follows:

1. Pick a direction to travel.
2. Check if the direction to travel is legal (not out of bounds and if it has not been visited.)
3. If true, then go that direction.
4. If false, then pick another direction.
5. If all directions are invalid moves, backtrack a step.
6. Check to see if we have not backtracked to the beginning.
7. If true, then do step 2.
8. If false, then there are no more legal moves.  End recursion.