Archive for June, 2006

Texas Indie Game Con

Published by
Tony
at June 8, 2006 in Community. 0 Comments

Finally, a game programming conference that I might be able to attend! I’ve always wanted to go to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, but it’s pretty expense and I would have to fly there.

This year, there’s going to be a Texas Independent Game Conference, July 22-23 in Austin, TX. I can easily drive to Austin for a weekend. Early bird registration is only $90 and they offer a student / academic rate of only $75.

Details are slowly being added the website about what is actually going to happen. So far Warren Spector and Greg Costikyan are going to give keynote speeches. Roundtable discussions have been added to the program as well as a Game Demo Party on July 22nd.

I’ve attended a few other geek conventions (Bar Camp and SXSW) and I have to say that they are worth the money. Reading about something online or in a book is totally different than actually hearing someone talk and being able to interact with them in real time.

So if you’re going to be anywhere near Austin on July 22, check out the Texas Independent Game Conference. It should be a lot of fun. And if you can’t attend, check back here for my full report.

Game Programming Contests

Published by
Tony
at June 5, 2006 in General. 0 Comments

GameDev.net has announced their fifth annual Four Elements Game Programming Contest. If you’re not familiar with this contest, every year they come up with four different “elements” that you have to use in a game.

This year the elements are Emotion, Emblem, Economics, and Europe. Entries must use all four of these elements. Entries are due November 30, 2006. So far there aren’t a lot of prizes, but hopefully more will be added later.

There are very few limitations on the entries in this contest. Basically, they just have to work on a Windows PC. They can be written in any language — C++, Java, Flash, etc. and can use any framework you like — DirectX, OpenGL, SDL, etc.

If you’re interested in game programming contests, you might also want to look at the Ludum Dare 48H Contest and the 72 Hour GDC. These contests focus more on making a game in a short amount of time — 2 or 3 days.

Let me know if you enter any of these contests. I’d love to feature your entry here.

Robocode

Published by
Tony
at June 2, 2006 in Java. 0 Comments

Are you a beginning Java programmer looking to improve your skills? Or maybe you’re an experienced programmer looking for an easy way to test some new ideas in artificial intelligence? Robocode could be just what you’re looking for.

Robocode is an educational game originally developed by IBM to teach Java programming. Players in Robocode develop autonomous robot tanks and pit them against each other. Tanks drive around the arena, scan for opponents, and fire at other tanks.

If you’re interested, first make sure you have Java installed. You can get it from java.com. Then go to the Robocode site linked above and download the Jar file.

On Windows or Mac OS X you can double-click the Jar file to install it. On Linux I had more luck installing it from the command line with this command:

java -jar robocode-setup-1.0.7.jar

Here’s a screenshot of the game running:

Robocode

You can see my robot, Killer, in red fighting against one of the sample robots named MyFirstRobot.

What started out as a pretty simple game to teach Java programming has now grown into a challenging world-wide competition. There are some amazing artificial intelligence programmers working on these robots.

A great place to start learning more about Robocode is the RoboWiki. I recommend the Robocode Beginner’s FAQ. The also have a big list of open source robots that you can test against your robot and study for inspiration.

Robocode is a great way to expand your Java programming skills and learn about artificial intelligence programming. It might also be the perfect environment to test the enemy AI for your next game.