Game Update

The Breakout clone looks pretty good now. I spend the weekend developing it. I've improved upon the welcome screen to make it flashier, included the help screen, and coded the gameplay. It has 3 levels, in each level the speed of the ball increases and so do the points you get on breaking a tile.



The awesome thing is that the menu has a GUI, something that I'm doing for the first time. But I have to admit, coding the GUI is boring stuff, it's like coding HTML. Maybe they have a WYSIWYG editor for GUI too, I should probably check it out.

I also tried coding the High Score functionality, but it's not working right now, because I can't figure out how to make the user enter his/her name. Initially I tried coding it using pygame, but then I figured out that GUI would probably be the better way to go.



Other than that, I've been trying to look at some organisations for Gsoc. Thousand Parsec seemed like a good one, but all efforts in trying to contact them have failed so far, and the result is that I've waisted a lot of time doing nothing at all. Their server refuses to run, and noone answers my quiries on IRC and their mailing list. So, like last year, I've almost decided to give it up. I'll probably still apply, but not with my whole heart. I'll probably be developing my own games during the summer.

How to run SVN under proxy server

This is a problem that I have been facing for quiet a while now, and I finally got the solution. Earlier I just ignored it and used no proxy. But now I have got it.

To configure HTTP Proxy for Subversion, open the file ~/.subversion/servers. In this file, go to the [global] section, and edit your Proxy Settings. If you have more than one proxy server, you can make multiple groups, and edit their settings. Now you can use SVN under a proxy server.

Credit goes to this blog, through which I find out how to do it. This has really helped me a lot, since no proxy causes a lot of problems. Some of the sites just refuse to open on it, and I have to constantly keep switching between proxy and no proxy. Also, after using no proxy with SVN for a certain amount of time, I also found that my net would stop working and I would be forced to reboot my PC.

And Back Again ...

So back I am to my projects. I've started studying a bit of Neural Networks (through L Behera's lectures on Youtube) and I find it really fascinating. After studying 2 of them, I was ready to jump into it. I've started a project on sourcefourge, which is basically a Character Recognition Program. It uses the Backpropagation Algorithm. The graphics have been done using Pygame, and its to be written in Python.

I've also started work on another Game Project. I'm going to be cloning Breakout this time. I've made the welcome screen, menu, and a bit of the actual gameplay. It's written in Pygame, and I'm also using PGU(Phil's Pygame Utilities). It contains certain stuff like level editor, tile editor, GUI, State Engine, High Score maintainence etc. This is the first time I'm using a Level Editor, and I have to say, it was really overwhelming at first, but when I finally got it, it felt awesome. I can't help realizing how giant a step this is in game development.

What else I've got planned up? Well, I'm looking for game engines again. And the same old criteria : Python bindings, Map Editor, blah blah. I'm back to 2d games for now.

I also plan to use a Web Framework called Django Web Framework for my website. A Web Framework is to a Website what a game engine is to a game (Most probably, I made this definition on my own). Django is also written in Python.

Here are some of the screenshots from my game :