Joe Pierce and I were interviewed on Joystiq about our game, Here Comes Launchman. As an avid reader of Joystiq, the best video gaming news site on the internet in my humble opinion, for the past seven years, this is extremely gratifying, to say the least. Go hit up the link and check it out!
(Friendly reminder, the alpha demo of Here Comes Launchman is available now for Windows, Mac, and Linux. If you’re reading this blog and yet you somehow you haven’t played it yet, what are you waiting for?)
My friend’s band is in this internet band battle bandy thingy. They get points for ratings and plays and they could use your help. It’s a synth rock sorta dealio, kinda Devo-ish. It’s neat and you should take a listen for them!
I learnt all my life lessons from indie videogames, man. […] And Here Comes Launchman taught me if you want something, you just have to press towards it for the correct period of time before releasing.
Someone said you were doing a documentary. What happened to that?
Anonymous
What? I was never making a documentary.
Here Comes Launchman is your first C++ game? Pretty cool. What tutorials or guides did you use on your learning endeavors?
Anonymous
I’m going to be honest: I really don’t remember a lot. I’ve been studying the C++ language for quite a while before I really started to put it into use. One place I do remember is http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/ — in fact, I did learn a LOT of what I know here. It’s a good tutorial.
Obviously this doesn’t cover usage of stuff such as libraries and APIs (for graphics, input…), which I learned from god-knows-where. Once you’re used to the language, google NeHe OpenGL for some pretty exhaustive OpenGL tutorials I’ve used extensively during the creation of Here Comes Launchman. The rest of my knowledge is divvied up between random searches, the excellent Q&A site StackOverflow, and bugging friends.
My first advice would be to become familiar with an easier curly-brace language first, e.g. JavaScript, Java, Flash ActionScript, or Game Maker Language. While the particulars of every language are different, the basic syntax of curly-brace language families is fairly consistent, and will prepare you better. Before I did C++ stuff I was proficient with the latter two of those.
One thing to note is that it took me a very long time, up until around a year ago, to figure out how to do a properly working game state machine. It seems so obvious in retrospect. (Hint: thoroughly understand functions and their possibilities.)
That’s about all I can give you. Assuming you are actually asking me this question because you’re travelling down the game programmer’s road yourself, best of luck.
Hi Zach, I am a big fan of your redstone block mod for minecraft. I wanted to ask you two things: Can I use your code as a jumping off point for making more basic blocks if I give you credit? Also, I am currently making a GUI for creating new blocks in Spout, and I wanted to know if I could also use your redstone block mod as a base for all of my blocks. I will of course give you all the credit for your code, and submit my work to you for approval before tagging your name. thespislives@gmail
Anonymous
It’s all under the license.
Human-readably: you can do pretty much anything you’d like with the software, so long as you give me attribution, but in a way that makes it clear I am not involved with the project and you are just using my code, and that I am not responsible for any potential damage or harm as the result of your project, yada yada.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
21 plays
I CAN’T STOP LISTENING TO THIS
SDFADSFFDASFDSAAFDSADFASFDSFA
DSAFASDFADFDSASDFFASDFSASDSDF
(It’s “Labyrinth Fight”, off the Cave Story 3D remixed soundtrack by Danny Baranowsky.)
Hinch HQ: A Pictoral History Of Houses I Built In Minecraft Survival Multiplayer
Warning: Minecraft nerdery inbound.
The “Hinch HQ” is a thing I always usually always build in Minecraft servers, and I’m going to be all “for posterity” up in this and post a pictoral history of them. Note that I only count buildings that I either specifically call “Hinch HQ” or were called that at some point in time.
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