Run away before it’s too late!

Hello again and welcome to this; the next thrilling chapter in the development diary of Last Lap. Today I want to give you a little information on some of the tools that I will be using to make this game with.
Before I do that, I would just like to say a little something about my recent lack of activity on this game and website. Since the last major post to this website, I started to play ‘skill games’. This is where you can play computer games for money. I just happened to be very good at it too, netting myself a small fortune in the process. I even managed to obtain a 3rd placement in a big competition, winning myself $7,500 (Around £5,000). However this time has now come to an end and it is now time for me to go full steam ahead on this game now!

Graphical tools

A rule of modern computer game’s, is its not complete without some eye candy to look at. I plan on this game not being an exception to this. I have two programs that I use to generate the graphics files needed. Let me first introduce you to the wonderful world of Blender.

This is Blender; the blurb from there website reads “Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License”.
It is a program that lets me generate computer calculated images and animations such as those seen in movies like ‘Toy Story’, ‘Finding Nemo’ and ‘Shrek’. In simple terms, this is done by placing a camera, lights and objects in a 3d computer world, then having the computer render what can be seen from the camera depending on the direction it is facing. The best thing of all about this program is that its free to download and keep.
My main use for Blender is not for generating these types of files, but instead for the building of 3d objects that I will use in the game. One such 3d object is this car I have constructed under.

Something big is kicking off in Blender land right now. That is the development of the next version, known as Blender 2.5. This is a complete re-write of the program with some major changes and improvements. Here is a screen shot of the work in progress and because its open source you can download it yourself to play with.

I wrote about blender 2.5, because by the time this game is finished, I imagine that it will play some part its development.

Next program I would like to talk about is one called Photoshop. Now this program is the best image/photo editor that money can buy. It is used by most the professionals out there and is worth its weight in gold. However if you wanted to play around with an application like this, then you could always try one of the open source programs like gimp or paint.net.
My main use for this type of application is for the painting of images that wrap around the 3d objects inside the game. These are usually referred too, as UV maps.

Later in development, the application will be used to generate other graphical elements like title screens, head up display elements and menus.

Programming tools

BlitzMax is a programming language developed for the purpose of building games. I have had many years of experience with this development environment and have even been part of the beta team that helped test it. To me, this is the ideal language to build a game in. To quote from their website; “BlitzMax is a cross platform programming language based on BASIC, but with many weird and wonderful additions”. Due to the cross platform nature of the programming language, it could be possible that this game will turn up on other platforms. For the record, at this moment I am only planning on getting the game working on PC.

Another programming language that will be used is Python, the main reason for that is because it’s used as a scripting language for Blender. Without this, I would not be able to export my models with custom information that’s unique to my game.

SVN is another great bit of free software that will be used. Through evolution of the game, this bit of software will help keep track of changes and give an ability to revert to previous versions should something undesirable happen. Also to note, should this project obtain another programmer then this tool can aid in the collaboration between them!

Audio tools

This is something I am going to skip at this moment in time as I really have no idea on how I am going to go about making music and sound effects for this game. Some could be bought as stock files with effects may require myself recording it from different sources in the real world. I hope to have a future dev blog post up about this, so stay tuned!

Custom tools

Sometimes it requires a new application in order to produce the required data. In other words, not everything can be done by an existing application. One such file that I figured I would need is a terrain data. To this end I coded up a tool that lets me map out ‘Terrain information’. This is a program that lets me assign polygons over the top of a base image. The polygons can be given values that are used to define what is found on that place in the image. This is useful for mapping out walls, tarmac and anything else that I decide to put into the game. Here you will find a little screen shot of the application that was programmed in BlitzMax.

Other times a script can be built that will let an existing program export the desired data. Another tool that I was working on was this one.

It’s a plug in for blender that lets me exported more then just a 3d object. The purpose of this exact build is so I can export information on dented and damaged cars (so I can show damage on the cars as they crash and bang into things in the game world). This plug-in was programmed in python!

Other hardware!

A notepad, pen and calculator will also be used extensively in the production of this game (also not forgetting a huge volume of tea!).

If you got here, then I guess you didnt run away!

This above list only touches on some of the main application that I will use to develop Last Lap. Hope you had fun reading and by all means leave me a comment and let me know what you think!

posted by Stephen Greener