We have moved!
Hello! Yes It’s been 4 months since the last post, in which I tell of something looming. Well it here now! We have been rebranded, renamed and we’ve moved to www.peripherallabs.com.
Any followers of the site will know this already but incase I thought I would remind any other visiters we have moved and become an awful lot better with peripheral labs.
This is the last post on this site and it will eventually be closed and redirected to the new site.
So come visit peripheral labs!
Something Looming!
Well hello there. Its me again and time for a little update, I’ve only been back from holiday for a couple of days and I have been dropped in the deep end of life. Much is going on and life is busy. I have 4 months left of study and so for the next 4 months you may notice me being rather quiet. Please don’t be alarmed I am still here and I am coming back in June with a full force retaliation as I devote all my time to Scales and Peripheral Games.
I am coming back in June with a full force retaliation
This brings me on to something written in my roadmap from a few posts back (here). One of the things mentioned was a re-branding of the company. This is what is “looming”. I hope to not loose anyone’s attention over the next 4 months but I assure you when Peripheral Games comes back something is going to be very different.
I will leave you to speculate and decide for yourselves what you think is coming next for Peripheral Games.
Other ventures for 2013
So yesterday I posted the 2013 roadmap for PG but I never elaborated on the expanding of the company. For the time being the elaborations are purely for the fun of it and serve no commercial purpose.
Science in all aspects is what the company is going to get into starting with a trip to space. Yes I just said that, Peripheral games is going to the edge of space. The plan is to develop a set of electronics to collect data and send it up under a large ballon to about 100,000 feet up. A hostile place with less than a percent of atmosphere and -60 degrees Celsius.
Yes I just said that, Peripheral games is going to the edge of space.
The current purpose is too use robotics and computers to carry out experiments at the edge of space and return. I am also researching the possibility of sending back images live, these will be broadcast onto the website so you can all watch the flight live.
The other venture this year, is AI used for practical purposes. I would like to convert a radio control car into an AI controlled car, similar to Googles autonomous car, just smaller.
I would like to convert a radio control car into an AI controlled car
I do sincerely hope you are here to enjoy the scientific experiments with us over the next year, and remember to watch our twitter for the bleeding edge of news!
2013 PG Roadmap
Well hello there! It’s a new year, a new year that includes PG’s 2nd birthday! Big news, for various reasons this year will be massive for Peripheral Games.
To start the year I am posting this roadmap for the company which I will strive to complete. Throughout the year I will update this post crossing off what I have completed. So here goes:
Company wide:
- Despite the name the company is branching out to more than just video games. Science, technology and electronics will feature as well
- The company is being rebranded with new logos and a new website design
Scales (engine):
- The engine’s first major stress test
- A high quality art demo for the engine will be made
- The August Ludum Dare will be used for major testing
Website:
- Massive website upgrade in preparation for the Scales subsite
- The PG forums will be introduced for PG and Scales support
- The Scales documentation will be hosted under the Scales subsite
- Weekly updates, videos or not on all subjects as the company branches out to science and technology as well as games
Games:
- A drag racing game is being prototyped for future development using Unity
- An unannounced collaboration with another company
- An unannounced 2D game using the Scales Engine
YouTube:
- Around June YouTube will become more active as I am studying until then
- Programming, electronics, maths and game dev tutorials
- Technology and science related commentaries
- Collaborations with other YouTubers are in the works
CG and art:
- Commercial asset creation for CG and the Unity asset store
- We are working on a kinect mocap system for commercial animation for the mechanim animation system (Unity)
The Scales Website
So Im back again, with much news! Scales is coming along nicely, most hiccups have been fixed and dealt with in a day or two.
As I plan for Scales to be used to make a game for the first time in the April 2013 Ludum Dare, I will also be launching the website and online community for it. I will not release it until I am satisfied it can be used practically and not just messed with.
Anyway the Scales website will for now be a subdomain of this website, as soon as I can I will buy it its own domain name and the viola. The website will be your typical engine website, online docs and a forum. I will do my best to make it nice and pleasurable to use. It is also paramount that the engine have a good manual and reference. This is why I am starting the development on the website so early, because I want to be constantly updating the docs while I am working so that when the engine is launched there will be decent docs to go with it.
Thanks for listening to me, or reading my words, depending on how literal you want to be!
Designing a Game Engine Level Editor
Wow, last post was September? I can’t believe how time has gone so fast these past few months, with other work and studying I have just not gotten around to updating the site. Even our YouTube page has suffered as I just haven’t had time to update it. I do much apologise for this, but I just realised earlier today that writing up a blog post takes less time and effort than making and uploading a YouTube video. So I shall endeavour to update the blog more often.
Enough of that. Recently I have been spending every last second of my spare time working on the engine, Scales. Scales is coming along quite well at the moment. In the last month in fact I have been designing and creating the level editor.
When I started working on the level editor I had no idea how complex making a level editor was. After much experimentation I have made a system were the engine itself runs within the level editor and renders the scene and game view for people to view. However I underestimated how difficult it would be to constantly update the information windows with the entities in the engine along with their position and corresponding info.
I also decided it would be cool to have an active Lua console within the engine. This Lua console links directly into the engines Lua systems, which means you can use Lua commands to control the engine and the entities behaviour while your game is running in the editor. This is great fun for learning Lua and how to use the engine.
I think that’s enough reading for you to…. read. I shall post again in a couple of days maybe with some code samples on how the level editor works, if that’s what people want.
New Engine Entity System
Well what a busy month it has been! For anyone who has visited the site I do apologise for the lack of activity. I have been busy studying and there hasn’t even been time for game development! Shock horror! I think in the last month Ive spent a few days on the engine which is truly awful. What I have done however is completely redesign the engine’s entity system. Also I have removed the component system in favour of a hybrid, inheritance/component system. You now define an entire entity with one script written in Lua! Yes Lua, its so cool typing isn’t enough, so here’s a video:
Also other fairly big news is I finally ported the engine to Mac and Linux, were it works absolutely perfectly.
Anyways thats me for now, I will try and make the next post in less than a month.
Ludum Dare Again, and Scales!
Well its been a while since my last post, and no doubt the sites visits have suffered as a result bet never mind! I have been busier than ever over the past month working on the engine which is actually at a point know when I can show what it does, and so a video:
Please tell me what you think!
On to other things, its time for another Ludum Dare game making event and I am all ready and excited as it starts in a few hours (from time of writing). Last time I was sicker than a very sick person and it just didn’t work out. I also have a friends party tomorrow night, but that wont stop me. The theme is announced at 2am local time(GMT) and so I will do my normal schedule of waking up at 3am and brainstorming so I can be deep into development by morning time.
My tools haven’t really changed very much from last time, I will be using old faithful Unity. The difference this time is I have a Mac and so I have garage band to make some nicer music than last time!
On my Youtube channel I wont be posting a video this weekend, rather a time-lapse and commentary after the weekend so please stick around for that!
Engine Visualization Video!
Hello!
I do apologise for the lack of activity on the site for the last couple of weeks I have been busier than a bee. I have been working 2 jobs other than Peripheral Games and rewriting the graphics subsystem of the Scales engine! But now I am back were I started and the entire system is much revised and has a much better rendering using the new OpenGL 4.2 specification which is OpenGL’s answer to DX11.
I have also been working on the engine visualization video I said I was going to make 2 weeks ago. Well now its done and please enjoy.
This weeks update
Hello! I have been super busy this week with the engine and also the iOS game prototype. Also I decided to move my desktop to Ubuntu rather than windows and the move has been hell! Not Ubuntu’s fault but more my misuse of it.
I’m a few days late this week with the post and the vlog but thats okay isn’t it? I will mention this properly in the next vlog but the Scales Engine will be open source when it is usable so thumbs up for that!
Here is the weeks vlog were I talk about stuff and my recent purchase of Trials, which by the way I have fallen in love with!