Category Archives: Diary

Skyrim – The Horse

Posted by on January 10, 2012 2 comments

Quick story of skyrim bug I penned out today that I figure could be considered blog content.

“I came over a crest to find a fort. I quicksave, as is the eternal knee jerk RPG reaction and proceed to endure battle with the skeletons and magi of the fort. They were strong, very strong. I died repeatedly, but never gave up hope that I could defeat them. Eventually, I decided to attack from a different direction and moved around the fort, while hugging the mountain side. That’s when the horse happened. I hear a thud and turn around. A dead horse is sliding down the mountain path. I look back to where I had left my horse. Phew. Not my horse, then what the hell? Horse aside, I attack the fort. Die. Reload. Attempt the sneak around again, get to the same spot and thump. Turn around, there’s that dead horse again. It was not there 2 seconds ago. Luckily, I die again to the inhabitants of the fort. This time, frak the fort, I sneak around to figure out this horse business. As I approach the spot where this ghost horse appears I make sure to note no horses can be found on the ground and my horse is where I left it. Noted. I step forward and *thump* a horse falls dead in front of me from the sky. No way. I reload and prepare once more for The Horse, and look skyward. Sure enough, as I step forward a dot appears in the sky. It grows larger until it becomes clear that there is a dead horse falling in my general direction. Thump. Yup, same dead horse. Eventually, I got bored making horses appear in the sky and moved onward past this deranged fort that meant only death for wary adventures and flying horses.”

A Star – Is Born

Posted by on December 2, 2011 No comments

Get it?

If not, then the following tech demo will likely be uninteresting to you. It’s a short and poorly coded version of A* that uses a binary heap to sort the OpenSet. There is room for a ton of improvement, but the goal was to make it work! You can select a different Normal Map or Hard Map. Then hit Pathfind. The yellow dot will try to find the green dot and then gobble it up.

If you are a coder, check out the source and cry. Then please help me figure out how to use objects the correct way.

Known Areas for Improvement

  • Nodes do not update if a cheaper F is found
  • The node is not actually checked to be in the closed set, it uses an updated grid value instead
  • Residual paths seem to stick around rather than be reset upon a new path find
  • Due to Manhattan distance, some paths don’t look natural

Now With A Level Playingfield

Posted by on October 13, 2011 No comments

So, if you tried the previous tech demo, you may have realized that it was random every single time. Whatever score you may have achieved really didn’t mean much. I set to work to make things a bit more predictable. You can now try the “Static” map and compare your high scores to that of everyone else as it will be the same “web” for everyone. The web starts up with “Static” as the default. If your curious to other ways of playing you can try the other modes. They are mostly just for fun as they vary from the impossible to the guaranteed success.

I’ve made a few changes to the overall system. Red means that if you activate a cell next to it, it will become click-able. Grey means that it requires at the minimum 2 activated cells nearby. The exact number is a mystery until it becomes red. Again, your score is based on the number of unactivated “open” cells. You will have to post your success until I work out an integrated high score system. My first sub-optimal meander through resulted in a score higher than 250. Remember, no risk, no reward.

In case your browser is made of stone, may I suggest you get one of the following:

Fall Escapism

Posted by on October 7, 2011 2 comments

With all the so called “game development” that I am doing, I can’t help resist the urge of promoting the games that I’m looking forward to this Fall/Holiday season.

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon (like the 12th game in this series)
Might and Magic Heroes VI (this is at least a 6-quel)
Stronghold 3
Battlefield 3
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (the 5th-quel in the series)
Saints Row 3
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (also a 3….)

This year is all about IP. (That means intellectual property and is “slang” for new series. This is clearly sarcasm.)

I realize that the rating on these games makes it so that Liam shouldn’t play them for a long long time. Sad.