I've been interested in video game design and programming since I found RPG Maker about 6 or 7 years ago, and I'd been interested in designing board games well before that. RPG Maker is a little limiting though and I found Game Maker a short while afterwards ('05 ish). It didn't take me long to pick up, although I never really finished any full projects for a varriety of reasons. A few months ago I picked up a book on C++. I'd tried to teach myself before and failed, but this time I was determined. I've been teaching myself as much as I can as quickly as I can ever since. In doing so I've made a number of games and utilities, and I've decided to release them, open source, to get some constructive critisism.
Back in October '09 I started work on a Rogue-Like game entitled "Tower of Azari". It's really progressed very well, thanks to the advice and support of the Bay12 community. I'm currently working on rewriting it from scratch, as my coding style has progressed a lot since I started it; it had become a tangle of old and new styles and was becoming difficult to manage.
Below is a list of my projects, along with descriptions and links (in the spoilers). Download whichever games pique your interest, enjoy, and please come back to let me know what you think, and what I could do to improve them! If you know C++, the source code for every project is included in the download. Some of my more recent projects require PDCurses to compile; there are instructions in the "Tower of Azari" v0.30 README file on how/where to "install" PDCurses to work with my projects.
In addition to the source code, I've included the Code::Blocks (or for more recent releases, Visual Studio C++, Express Edition) project file, so if you're using Code::Blocks (or any other IDE that can open a Code::Blocks project file) you should be able to simply load the project, and all the files and linker/compiler settings will be loaded for you as well.
I keep a "DevBlog" of my progress in a Wordpress blog as well as here, on the Bay12 forums. The only difference, is that discussion between releases takes place here on the forums, while the DevLog is reserved for announcements. You can find the DevBlog
here.
PROJECTS
Tower of Azari Tower of Azari is a Rogue-Like project I've been working on since early October. It started out as a generic rogue-like, and has since developed into more of a rogue-like engine. Most of the information is loaded from text files, and eventually almost the entire game will be modifyable though those files, similar to Dwarf Fortress.
Warlock Spell Parser I've recently grown rather fond of a browser-based game called "Warlocks". It's a very strategy-oriented game, that requires the player to try to anticipate their opponent's moves. Unfortunately, the sheer number of possible moves is incredible, and trying to figure out each possible move before weighing them is difficult. Warlock Spell Parser allows you to input your opponent's previous moves, and it outputs all the possible actions based off those moves, allowing you as a player to concentrate on deciding which is most likely, and how to counter it.
Warlock Spell Parser was actualy originally distributed only on the "Warlocks" e-mail loop. The e-mail was rather long, and I'm not sure if it ever got sent out (No replies, may have been blocked by the mods or something), so I posted it here. A copy of the e-mail can be found below:
Hello, I started playing "Warlocks" on games.ravenblack.com yesterday, and had something I'd like to share, as a sort of thanks for all the work that must have gone into this awesome game. But first, a little back-story on the project (or you can just scroll to the bottom for the link and instructions...)
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During my first game, I found myself often referring to the Quick Spell Reference table quite often, not just to see what spells were possibly and to double check the commands I was entering, but to compare to my opponent's last few moves, and see what they appeared to be doing.
After the first few turns, I realized I would almost always miss at least one of the possibilities if I tried to find all the possible moves in my head, so I started opening note-pad each round, and comparing my opponent's commands to the spell list, writing down each possible spell and going back to compare them to previous turns, to try and guess what he or she was thinking.
Of course, this got very tedious, very fast. So I spent this afternoon working on a small project of my own, that would help me narrow down my opponent's possible moves a little quicker, so I can concentrate on my strategy. Basically, I can input a sequence of gestures (say, "SD") and it brings up a list of all the spells that use that pattern of gestures somewhere.
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When the program starts up, you will see a console window with:
"WARLOCK SPELL-PARSER, vX.X
By Timothy Sassone"
printed across the top. Press any button to start the program.
At this point, you can type in any pattern you want (using the same notation at the website, with capitols for one-handed gestures and lower-case letters for two-handed gestures), then press enter and it will bring up a list of spells using those gestures. If you press enter without entering any gestures the program will display a full spell list.
When you're done looking at the spells, you can press any key to return to the input screen, so you can enter new gestures.
WARNING: WHILE THERE ARE NO VIRUSES IN THE PROGRAM (I wrote it, I ought to know...) I STRONGLY SUGGEST YOU SCAN THIS FILE, AND ANY OTHER FILES YOU DOWNLOAD, BEFORE YOU RUN THEM!!!
Download (55.5KB): http://www.4shared.com/file/151161017/56d65401/WSP.html
Thanks again to all those involved in Warlocks, especially the developer(s)! Thanks as well to my first opponent, "larspcus2", for making my first game such an enjoyable experience.
Timothy Sassone
Sudoku Solver Sudoku Solver is a none-too-creatively named utility I wrote that solves Sudoku puzzles. It's the first program I've written to use a graphical user interface, through wxWidgets. wxWidgets is a multi-platform library, so it should compile for Linux or Mac, should someone have the time to compile it for me. I didn't really know what I was doing, working with wxWidgets, so the code is rather messy, but it's functional.
When the program starts you will see number-boxes in the shape of a Sudoku puzzle. It starts with an example puzzle already typed it (0s represent open squares), but you can enter your own as well. Once you've entered all the information you have, click the "Next Step..." button, and the program will run through several solving algorithms, filling in the squares along the way. Each algorithm is only run once though, so you'll have to click the button multiple tiles to solve the puzzle fully.
Dwarf Caretaker Dwarf Caretaker is a text-based sim game based on Dwarf Fortress. You control a single dwarf, having them perform jobs, buy food, spar, etc. There aren't any real goals, but there are a number of random events tied to the various actions, and some that can happen at any time. This was the first game I finished on my own, without following a tutorial, so it's far from perfect, but I find it fun anyways.
SPOILER WARNING: There is a Dwarf Fortress spoiler in Dwarf Caretaker, so if you want to discover Hidden Fun Stuff™ on your own in Dwarf Fortress, don't have your dwarf mine in Dwarf Caretaker. The rest of the game contains no spoilers, and mining won't usually, but one of the random event's related to mining does.
After finishing "Craps 2.0" (see below) I decided I would design a game myself for my next project, instead of following a tutorial. I had some trouble coming up with a genre and theme, as Rogue-likes were a bit out of my league at the time, and I don't have the creative writing ability required make a decent text-adventure. While browsing for ideas I noticed a lot of fan games are attempts to merge common favorites, and decided I would make a Sims style game based on my personal favorite PC game (take a wild guess...). I didn't care for the name at first, but it's sorta grown on me...
Minor ProjectsCraps 2.0 One of the first games I made was a text-based version of "Craps" (see below), made during a tutorial section in the book. I was a little unhappy with the result though, each time it looped it would re-print some of the instructions, as well as the "What do you want to do?" prompts, which ended up looking really bad and scrolling the console window. So I did a bit of googling and rewrote the program to clear the screen at the end of each loop and output the information in a smoother format.
Download - 111KB
Hurkle Hunt A remake of the (very) old DOS game. Or, at least, the version of it I found (now when I look for it I find newer versions with graphics...). Gameplay is simple. A hurkle is hiding somewhere on a 10x10 grid. You get 4 chances to pick a location to search, and the game lets you know which direction to need to look in (assuming you didn't find it). Something to remember, the top-left corner of the grid is 0,0.
Download - 103KB
Mugwump Hunt A far more complex and difficult version of the above game. You now have 25 turns to locate the mugwump, but there's a catch. The grid is now 100x100, and instead of a direction to look, you're given the distance to the mugwump. This is definately a game best played with some graph-paper nearby.
Download - 103KB
Snake Having gained a fair amount of experience with simple text-based games I decided to try one with graphics. This is an incredibly simple version of the game "
Snake". The game isn't really finished, and I don't plan on continuing it since I learned what I wanted to about graphics. There are no dangerous tiles to avoid yet, and you can still move backwards into yourself, but it's playable, so I figured I'd release it. If the game doesn't work make sure you un-zipped it, it needs access to the .dat file to be able to load the graphics.
Download - 27KB
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Topic: My C++ Projects - Tower of Azari v0.31 - "I'm not dead yet." (Read 50328 times)