Hi! My name is Michael Lucarz and I am currently pursuing a degree in Computer Science at the University of Toronto. In my spare time I enjoy programming casual games in Java :)
I have made a little progress with the bat game and it’s turning out to be more of a headache than I anticipated. The game engine is more or less done other than optimizations that need to be done. Right now the engine renders 256 tiles as well as 12 trees each of which has 40 limbs and it seems to be running rather slowly. I don’t know whether it is all the computation that is slowing it down or if it’s all the shapes being drawn. Either way I’d like to know how well it performs on your computer as I’d like to have an idea how heavily I have to optimize the engine. Continue reading »
I decided to take a break from my main project by starting a new project XD. It’s a new game where the premise is that you are a bat (the flying rodent, not the piece of wood) flying around eating bugs and avoid hitting obstacles. The catch is that you have to use echo location.
As you can see by the demo, the game will be in 3D and the trees will be randomly generated fractal trees. I’m a little worried how my implementation of the echo location will turn out. I have a couple of ideas how I will program it, though I’m not sure how well flash will be able to handle them speed-wise. This project should be complete soon (if my ideas work) since there is very little artwork to be done other than the title screen which I will attempt to do on my own.
Here’s a small demo of the isometric tile engine I am working on. The depth sorting seems to have worked out pretty well. Currently it uses a basic breadth-first search algorithm though implementing A* shouldn’t be a problem. The source is getting pretty messy so I’m going to refactor everything once I get the time. The animation for the moving block is done completely in AS so it isn’t very nice plus I hacked it together really quickly because I wanted to release this demo as soon as possible. In fact, the entire demo is done in AS including the drawing of the tiles. The shading on the tiles is done procedurally so you can choose any basic color for the tile and it will compute the colors for the shadows and mouseover highlights. This feature probably wont be necessary as I’ll have custom graphics for each tile (still looking for an artist!). Continue reading »
Seven years ago, I first started programming in ActionScript v1.0. Now, a couple days ago I started learning ActionScript 3.0. There have been a lot of changes and at it’s current version it resembles Java quite a bit. Furthermore, it supports aspects of functional programming which makes it a bit more fun. I decided to relearn flash because I wanted to post my games to some of the flash game portals in order to get some exposure. I am currently working on my first game and the engine is going quite well so I should have a small demo up soon. I am still looking for competent artists and animators for this project so if anyone is interested, let me know. Also I have ported a simple version of my 3D engine to AS3. It is very minimal so I have dubbed it BareBones3D or BB3D for short. Continue reading »
I haven’t posted in a while so I thought I’d share the result of today’s coding. It’s the real time Phong shading engine for a pool game I’m gunna start working on. At the current stage, you can place multiple light sources in 3-space each of which can have a unique color, as well as an ambient, diffuse and specular aspect to them. The balls have a texture associated with them as well as a material which has the same properties as a light but also a shine element which gives it the glare. The texturing of the balls is anti-aliased, though I still have to incorperate anti-aliasing to the outside edge of the balls. Continue reading »
Finally finished the game last night. Now it pretty much plays like the original game, other than the special gems. This feature wouldn’t be difficult to add because of the use of bit masks to represent the board and moves. But since I don’t have appropriate animations for each special gem, I won’t be adding this feature. Furthermore, I couldn’t find any good, free sound effects for my game which I think would really bring everything together. When playing the original game, it is quite satisfying to hear the gems disappear. If anyone knows a good source of free game sound effects, please let me know. Continue reading »
I had a few free hours last night so I decided to start on a clone of probably the most popular casual game ever. Rather than use Java’s built in graphics, I found a free gem graphic and edited it for the necessary amount of colors. I didn’t have much time last night, plus this game is slightly more complex than the previous games posted, so it is not quite complete. Most of the mechanics are finished, but I need a few more hours to bring everything together. Continue reading »
While watching TV, I saw a cartoon that looks sort of like a flip book style animation. The lines were all squiggly and constantly moving. This gave me inspiration to create a game with a similar style. I chose snake because the game play is very simple which would allow me to focus on achieving the desired effect. Continue reading »
This is the first game I created for my blog. The first couple of games will be chosen such that they can be played on a cellphone as I am contemplating learning J2ME or maybe the new iPhone SDK. Dad’s Puzzle in particular would be best suited for an iPhone due to the mechanics of sliding the tiles/furniture around. As well as designing the games for cell phones, I will be keeping them fairly simple. This is mainly so that I can demonstrate my abilities in as many demos as possible. The faster I can finish coding a game, the faster I can start on a new one. I intend to keep development time for each game between two and four hours for the first few games. Ideally, each game will have a focus where I fine tune an aspect of the game. Continue reading »
Hello everyone! Welcome to my game blog. The purpose of this blog is to showcase games that I have developed in java as well as provide the source code. Note that most of the games presented will be incomplete. What I will usually do is code up the game mechanics to showcase the game play, but will usually omit any sort of introduction/game over screen or fancy graphics.
I already have two games complete and will post them shortly. If you have any suggestions as to what game I should code up next or if you enjoyed playing any of the games I created, please feel free to leave a comment.
I have made a little progress with the bat game and it’s turning out to be more of a headache than I anticipated. The game engine is more or less done other than optimizations that need to be done. Right now the engine renders 256 tiles as well as 12 trees each of which has 40 limbs and it seems to be running rather slowly. I don’t know whether it is all the computation that is slowing it down or if it’s all the shapes being drawn. Either way I’d like to know how well it performs on your computer as I’d like to have an idea how heavily I have to optimize the engine. Continue reading »
Here’s a small demo of the isometric tile engine I am working on. The depth sorting seems to have worked out pretty well. Currently it uses a basic breadth-first search algorithm though implementing A* shouldn’t be a problem. The source is getting pretty messy so I’m going to refactor everything once I get the time. The animation for the moving block is done completely in AS so it isn’t very nice plus I hacked it together really quickly because I wanted to release this demo as soon as possible. In fact, the entire demo is done in AS including the drawing of the tiles. The shading on the tiles is done procedurally so you can choose any basic color for the tile and it will compute the colors for the shadows and mouseover highlights. This feature probably wont be necessary as I’ll have custom graphics for each tile (still looking for an artist!). 
I haven’t posted in a while so I thought I’d share the result of today’s coding. It’s the real time Phong shading engine for a pool game I’m gunna start working on. At the current stage, you can place multiple light sources in 3-space each of which can have a unique color, as well as an ambient, diffuse and specular aspect to them. The balls have a texture associated with them as well as a material which has the same properties as a light but also a shine element which gives it the glare. The texturing of the balls is anti-aliased, though I still have to incorperate anti-aliasing to the outside edge of the balls. 
Finally finished the game last night. Now it pretty much plays like the original game, other than the special gems. This feature wouldn’t be difficult to add because of the use of bit masks to represent the board and moves. But since I don’t have appropriate animations for each special gem, I won’t be adding this feature. Furthermore, I couldn’t find any good, free sound effects for my game which I think would really bring everything together. When playing the original game, it is quite satisfying to hear the gems disappear. If anyone knows a good source of free game sound effects, please let me know. 
While watching TV, I saw a cartoon that looks sort of like a flip book style animation. The lines were all squiggly and constantly moving. This gave me inspiration to create a game with a similar style. I chose snake because the game play is very simple which would allow me to focus on achieving the desired effect. 