Tag: productions

Entries for tag "productions", ordered from most recent. Entry count: 133.

Warning! Some information on this page is older than 6 years now. I keep it for reference, but it probably doesn't reflect my current knowledge and beliefs.

Pages: > 1 2 3 4 5 6 ... 17 >

# Pixel Heaven and Bajtek Special Issue

Thu
09
Jun 2016

Do you remember "Bajtek" magazine? I don't, because I was a little kid back then, but older colleagues told me that in 80's and 90's it was a popular Polish magazine about computers (like Atari, Commodore or Amiga - platforms that were in use at that time). Archival issues can be downloaded for free from atarionline.pl.

Now, 20 years after last one, a new issue has been released. It's a single, special issue - Wydanie specjalne: Bajtek. There is my article inside - "Programowanie grafiki dziś" ("Graphics Programming Today"). The article describes briefly a history of graphics cards (from first 3D games, through 3Dfx Voodoo and S3 ViRGE, cards from NVIDIA and ATI/AMD, appearance of OpenGL and DirectX, to invention of shaders), shows graphics pipeline of modern GPU-s and mentions the new generation of graphics API-s (Direct3D 12 and Vulkan).

Many people who were interested in graphics programming, games or demoscene at the time of Bajtek magazine, now have a more "serious" job, whether in software development or something completely different, and they no longer have time for this hobby, so they are not up-to-date with advancements in this technology. So I thought they may like a short update on this subject.

The new issue of Bajtek was first shown on Pixel Heaven - a party that took place 3-5 June 2016 in Warsaw. I've been there and I had a great time. There were many different activities, like indie games exhibition, retro gaming zone, lectures and discussion panels.

Comments | #gpu #events #teaching #productions #history Share

# Global Game Jam 2016 - Postmortem of our project

Tue
02
Feb 2016

Last weekend, this year's edition of Global Game Jam took place all around the world. Just like in previous years, I participated in 3City Game Jam - a site in Gdańsk, Poland. It is a big one, with over 150 participants, organized by Playsoft company in their office. Theme this year was "Ritual". Regarding technology, Unity was most popular in our site, with just few games using something else: Unreal Engine, HTML5, GameMaker and C++ with SFML.

We have also used Unity. Our team consisted of 3 programmers. Here you can see our game: Bloody Eclipse, but it is far from being finished or playable. Honestly speaking, in my opinion the project on this jam went exceptionally poor. We didn't even make it to the top 10 best voted games to be presented on a big screen. That's why I'd like to share some conclusions, for you as well as for my future self.

First, it were not environmental issues that caused any problems. We all had our hardware and software set up before the jam, with Unity, Visual Studio, Git client and other tools already in place. Internet worked perfectly with transfer up to 80 Mbps in both directions. Second, it was not a lack of knowledge or skills. Our work in Unity went quite smoothly. We could deal with C#, 3D math and Git pretty well. Third, it was not because of the lack of artists in our team. Sure, graphics is very important for overall experience, but the guys who made The Bad Ritual also didn't have artists in their team and they somehow found a consistent visual style for their game, made it fun and pretty. There are many possibilities to make minimalistic and yet visually pleasant game, just like there are many free assets ready to use in Unity Asset Store.

The biggest thing that was missing in our team was management/leadership. I deliberately don't call it planning or design, because in a hectic environment like a game jam it's not enough to design the game at the beginning and then just execute. Things are changing fast, new ideas come to mind, time is running fast and new obstacles appear (like bugs or difficulties in development), so someone should have an authority to decide what to do next, keep the list of tasks "TODO" and update it constantly with priorities assigned so the most important things are done first. Noone took this role in our team. As the result, we've spent almost whole Saturday developing and polishing algorithm for enemy movement and around half an hour brainstorming and then voting for the game title, while our game used untextured, placeholder cubes and spheres as models until the very end :)

Conclusion: It's not enough to know how to code. It's also important to decide WHAT to code so that best possible result can be achieved with limited time and resources.

But the Global Game Jam as a whole is not a contest (despite our site actually was one, with PlayStation 4 for each team member as first prize) but just a fun, creative event. Despite all the problem we had I think it was fun. I had yet another opportunity to use Unity, which is a great technology. I realized I can handle Git pretty well, despite I don't feel like an expert knowing about "rebase" and such advanced stuff. I realized I still remember how to use the so much unintuitive inteface of Blender, which I learned many years ago to use in my master thesis. I could play many interesting games created on this jam, like my favorite: Witch Rite (it took 3rd place) or the one that won the contest: Acolytes: Ritual of Ascension. And finally, I've met many interesting people who do all sorts of crazy stuff, from running a company that produces medical software and hardware, to visiting escepe rooms and practicing celtic dances :)

Comments | #ggj #competitions #productions Share

# Global Game Jam 2015 - Our game: ComicsTale

Tue
27
Jan 2015

Last weekend a big event took place - Global Game Jam. As every year, thousands of people around the world had fun while making a game in 48 hours. I was in a jam site 3City Game Jam (link to site at globalgamejam.org) in Gdańsk, Poland, organized in Olivia Business Center by Playsoft Games. With 163 registered jammes, it was one of the biggest in the world (actually 24th out of 518 sites)!

Theme this year was a question: "What do we do now?" so we came up with an idea for a game that looks like a comics, where player has to choose where to click. Our team was:

Developers: Leonardo Kasperavičius, Adam Sawicki
2d artist: Ryszard Niedzielski
Game designer & producing: Frederic Raducki

And here is our game: ComicsTale (source code on GitHub). It is made in Unity (as most of the games), with 2D graphics and with mobile platforms in mind. In the voting on 3City Game Jam, we took 4th place out of around 36.


comicstales_win.zip - Windows Binary
comictales.apk - Android Binary
comictales_mac.zip - Mac Binary

It was fun to make game in a weekend. People were nice, atmosphere was great and there was free pizza! I recommend participating in Global Game Jam to anyone interested in game development. It's much more interesting than coding alone at home and submitting games to some virtual, online competitions.

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# (Polish) Architektura współczesnych gier video - Prezentacja

Sat
20
Dec 2014

Zapraszam do obejrzenia slajdów z mojej prezentacji zatytułowanej "Architektura współczesnych gier video", którą pokazałem dzisiaj podczas targów Kariera IT w Gdańsku, 13 grudnia 2014.

Architektura współczesnych gier video from Adam Sawicki

Comments | #productions #events #game industry Share

# Hack3city 2014 - Our Game

Sun
11
May 2014

I just came back from Hack3city - a programming competition. Participants had to develop their applications over this week - Monday to Friday working from home, while Saturday and Sunday working in Starter, Gdańsk. There were 4 tracks. We participated in track organized by Playsoft, where we had to create a game. The theme of this competition was "fear of the dark". We took 3rd place.

As I promised to some of you, I publish playable version of our game today. The game is created in Unity and can be run in web browser if you have Unity Player installed.

PLAY ONLINE

Controls:

Our game is called "Jason McBrady Dark Adventure". It's a 2D platform game. It's about an adventure seeker exploring ancient tombs full of dangers like zombies, who want to kill you, but run away from from the light. It's quite difficult :)

We called our team NOQA. Credits are:

In the next post, I will write more about Hack3city. See: Hack3city 2014 - Review

Comments | #competitions #hack3city #unity #productions Share

# Ball-B - Our Game at Global Game Jam 2014

Thu
30
Jan 2014

Here is the game we made during this year's Global Game Jam. It's called Ball-B. The goal is to defend the base at the center of the arena. You are rolling a physically simulated ball (using arrow keys or WSAD) of one of 5 kinds, each one (except the green one) having a special ability activated with Space. ESC key shows menu.

The game is made in Unity, so it works on the web page (if you have Unity Web Player installed) and can be build for multiple desktop as well as mobile platforms.

Play Online

Windows Binary: Ball_B_Windows.zip (8.78 MB)

Source Code: Ball_B_Source.zip (20.4 MB)

See also Ball-B at globalgamejam.org

One week before the jam I decided to learn Unity a little bit instead of make a game using custom C++ technology, as I always did before. Arek, who is doing 2D graphics at work, also a week ago decided to learn making 3D graphics. So it was a new and interesting experience for both of us. We made our game in same team as last year, only without Klamacz (who now lives in Czech Rapublic and works in Bohemia Inteactive). Our roles were:

I was the only programmer in the team and I didn't try to be the leader of the team or a designer, so I could say the game was artist-driven - most of the time developed considering how things should look like. Which is a good approach. Of course not everything went right and there are many things we could have done better. But it was fun to participate. In the competition at our site we scored 3rd place.

Comments | #productions #events #competitions #ggj Share

# (PL) Pisząc kod natywny C/C++... - Prezentacja

Sat
14
Dec 2013

Zapraszam do obejrzenia slajdów z mojej prezentacji zatytułowanej "Pisząc kod natywny C/C++, czyli nie taki diabeł straszny", którą pokazałem dzisiaj podczas targów Kariera Programisty.

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# Time Measurement in Game Programming - My Article in ProgramistaMag

Wed
02
Oct 2013

In new issue 9/2013 (16) of Programista magazine there is my next article (in Polish) - "Pomiar czasu w programowaniu gier" (Time Measurement in Game Programming). This is an article about very specific subject, important in game development, as well as programming other real-time systems. Most books about game development mention the subject of time measurement, but usually go quickly to higher level like creating some timer class etc. This article focuses on lower level and gives solid theoretical background. It covers:

Plus some other information... You can find the magazine e.g. in Empik stores, as well as subscribe for electronic or paper version.

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