For the preprocessor definitions, it can help to have your own windows header, e.g.

Code:

// my_windows.h
#ifndef _MY_WINDOWS_H_
#define _MY_WINDOWS_H_

// Include real header
#include <windows.h>

// Remove conflicting defines
#undef near
#undef far
#undef LoadLibrary
// etc.

#endif

You can add the namespace, and the windows configuration defines, and so on if you want. Then include this header instead of <windows.h> and update it when you find a new name that it's stomping on.

[edit] Here's the one I actually use:

Code:

#pragma once

/**
 * \file windows.h
 * This file wraps the Win32 API to strip little-used code and prevent macro
 * pollution as far as possible.
 */

#include "sil/main.h"

// Limit the amount of crap
#define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN
#define NOCLIPBOARD
#define NOMETAFILE
#define NOMINMAX
#define NOOPENFILE
#define NOSERVICE
#define NOSOUND
#define NOCOMM
#define NOKANJI
#define NOHELP
#define NOPROFILER
#define NOMCX
 
// Use strong handle (etc.) type checking
#define STRICT

// Remove our interface keyword
#ifdef interface
#undef interface
#endif // interface

#include <windows.h>

// Stop Windows from spoiling our function names!
#undef CopyMemory
#undef ZeroMemory
#undef DELETE
#undef LoadLibrary

Will

Hey. haven't been working on GridSpace recently, but have been working on something a little more pixel-ly:

That looks really interesting - like a low-poly sci-fi (?) roguelike. Lots of information conveyed in very few pixels there - nice work. Do you have any more information about it?

Will

Is it really pixel art? 

I asked that the first time I posted it. It's the right size to be a background ship in a shoot-em-up but the style is very un-pixelly. Except perhaps the metallic bits which were drawn as individual pixels. Quite happy to put this stuff elsewhere, assuming I do more

I think I preferred how the old engine jets seemed like they were coming from the inside of the engine block.

Hmm. I think I maybe agree. The reason I added the nozzles was to reinforce the nozzles on the front section and make it look more like it was an independent ship. I guess we'll see when it's set up how the final vfx might look, which might well mean removing the nozzles again.

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions.

[BEFORE:]

little 2 panel comic I made to practice pixeling.

I really like the muted palette, the stylised ground and clouds, and the glint on the sword. I'd be tempted to lose the highlight & shadow on the background rocks in panel 2 and on the left of panel 1 to push them further away. At the moment they have more contrast than some of the foreground elements.

I've been tweaking the spaceship I posted earlier during odd moments this week, I'm much happier with it now:

BEFORE:



AFTER:



I've tried to make the back and neck feel more solid, reworked various details, and cleaned up some of the messier bits. I also added a big beam laser turret. Maybe a bit too big since there were supposed to be two originally! The VFX are just a quick experiment, I think the beam would be more animated in game but it's tedious doing the animation in Photoshop...

Here's the 24-bit image as well, since the GIF is a bit grainy.



Cheers,

Will

[@Will Vale:]

Thanks for the kind comments! Any tips on making vertical shapes read better in plan views? I added some soft shadowing but I'd like to convey that e.g. the bronzey pipes by the engines don't come as high up as the engine tube.

@Will Vale:
What does 'only a coder' even mean?

I don't know - I said 'really a coder' - I don't have any inferiority issues I guess what I wanted to say was that I don't have enough time to draw to get good at it, so what I produce tends to be sloppy. I think I'm decent at detailing and colour, but not so good at overall form.

I have been trying to do a bit more sketching and doodling this year, that's probably helping. My pixelling experience is mostly from hobby projects 20-odd years ago, so rather out of date!

FWIW I think the recent posts from Tomkinson, leonelc29 (and Shiny's edit) are better examples of good pixel art - they display more craftsmanship and discipline in the use of a limited palette and work area. I like mine but it's much less disciplined - I didn't use a palette, and did a lot of hacks with adjustment layers (e.g. the armour is greyscale, tinted with a gradient map ) to save time.

Cheers,

Will

I'm not sure about the wolfman's walk - not hunched/springy enough maybe? - but I love the gilly swamp thing. Huggable!

I'm a bit hesitant to post this here as I'm really a coder, and this isn't really polished enough for pixel art. But it's too small to be any other kind of art



A friend of mine entered a game jam at the weekend and I couldn't go owing to looking after my daughter. Instead I offered to do some artwork for his game on the Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon.

It was going to be longer, but I ran out of time. I've also worked on it a little bit after the deadline to try and make the cockpit/lifeboat make more sense.

I'd like to improve the "neck", which looks rather stuck on, and the bland bit at the back of the armour around the engines. Also some big guns to go on the big circles.

Will

The DLLs are still a problem sometimes. It's easy to make a small installer which will download and install the redist, and from VC10 onwards there's a reliable registry check so that you can skip this if the redist is installed.

So far so good. When it's a problem is things like TIGS compos, where "has installer" can (perhaps reasonably) be a synonym for "do not want". I guess you could write a bootstrap in something simpler (VC6? NSIS?) which would effectively install what you needed to run the game, clean up after, and make it look like you were just running an EXE from a folder?

Will

If you can find cheaper platform anywhere else, stand on it!

Great pastiche. I can hear Cheech saying that

Try opening your file in binary mode - "wb"

(0,0) is the top left corner of the screen.

...for certain values of 'up'.

My asset library is now a single disk file, a single memory block, supports streaming audio and can 'wake up' assets like textures so that their dirty D3D innards get created on load. Joy joy joy!

If I didn't like coding so much I might actually manage to work on Gasbags some more...

Will

Suppose you realise you want every call to a particular three-parameter function in your project to take a fourth parameter.

That sounds like the kind of thing I'd use regexp search & replace for in Visual Studio. I admit that it can be clunky but it mostly works.

The main advantage is not having to move your hands over to the mouse whenever you want to change to another position in the text.

I mainly use a mixture of keyboard text navigation (CTRL-arrows, PageUp/Dn, F3/SHIFT-F3) and mouse selection, but it really depends on the context. I've had problems with RSI in the past and it seems to go better if I flit between keyboard, mouse and tablet rather than using just one.

I think one of the reasons I like Visual Studio is that I did my first serious (post-BASIC) coding in Turbo Pascal (that'd be 20 years ago now - ouch) and I really liked the Borland IDE. Visual Studio feels like a continuation of that in some ways.

I used emacs when I started working (since it was the most familiar-feeling editor available on X - i.e. it wasn't vi) but I never really explored the cool stuff it could do. I might bite that particular bullet if I ever get to doing some Mac development.

Will

I get that emacs and vi* save loads of keystrokes, but I've never found typing speed to slow me down much. Do they still give you an advantage if you're a touch typist?

Will

I've found time-per-frame more useful, since it gives you a better measure of what effect individual bits of the program have.

I'd recommend this approach as well. At work we usually talk about execution times either as
percentages of a target (typically 30Hz) frame, or as microseconds, depending on the scale.

Will

Well done! And to the other deserving games at the top. I am (as ever) very happy with my one vote since I didn't cast it

Congrats on getting a job - and I totally understand how this can be a bit of a time sink Are you able to say where you're working?

Great idea - like a test for your sysadmin powers. I can see this being quite entertaining drunk, with the added risk of doing something bad to your PC... I also like the presentation - both audio and video make quite a dry game a lot more entertaining.

I came across a problem on my Win7 laptop, which popped up this dialogue a couple of times:



The game carried on OK though. Not sure what you were up to in System32?!?

Will

I tried this in SP and enjoyed it a fair bit - the progressively bigger waves make for a good challenge. I was delighted that beams were in although I did find it hard initially to spot which beams were mine. The enemy AI (get on your tail and shoot) works nicely too.

I played with the ship customisation and did get the hang of it but I think I was initially confused since the changing letters on the modules were quite subtle.

Are you going to add more stuff? It seems like you have the germ of a great Star Control type game here and with a bit more variety and personality it should be awesome.

Cheers,

Will

You can if you pay for the full version of VC2010 - maybe I should bite the bullet and do that. There's still DirectX to worry about though.