Category: Game Development
Posts about creating video games.
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Sargasso: A Realtime WebGL2 Ocean Topography Simulation
Embedded above is something I’ve been working on over the past couple of months that I thought people might find pretty interesting to play with. This is a WebGL2 simulation of the topography of an ocean simulated via Gerstner waves, rendered entirely on the GPU. My project is called Sargasso and the source code can be found on Codeberg (and on GitHub if you prefer). The initial idea that got me interested in building this was that I needed a way to play with the very complex parameters for Gertner wave simulations to try to create realistic and interesting ocean…
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Going Upon the Account
“Going upon the account” is what it was called when people people decided to embark on the dangerous journey of joining up with a pirate crew during the Golden Age of Piracy. Most of those who did it had been experienced sailors who had been successful privateers or soldiers during the wars that preceded the era, but found themselves unemployed and cast off without much in the way of a soft landing. Merchant captains were notoriously brutal and paid very poorly, and some decided they’d rather live a short life, and a merry one. Well we’re in a rough economy…
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Ludum Dare 41 Postmortem
Ludum Dare 41 came to an end just a little more than a week ago. I believe I’ve finally recovered from the mayhem and come through the better in the end. Project Status Unfortunately, my Ludum Dare 41 project, a “turn-based AI battle-royale game” called “Turn-by-Turn Deathmatch” was not finished when the 72-hour deadline hit. This was, unfortunately, my expectation for this one. I may continue working on the game in the future, but I am particularly averse to the theme and not satisfied with the idea that I was able to come up with. The Theme My struggle for…
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The Scourge of Global Mutable State
I’m not a perfect programmer, but I like to think that I’m getting better every day. I’ll admit that one of the things that I’ve had the most difficult time adapting to was what I perceived as other programmers being somewhat pedantic about avoiding what they called “global state” or sometimes more specifically “global mutable state.” In the past, I held onto some conviction that while this is something to be avoided where possible, there are actually cases where it is appropriate. Recently I’ve decided to not only better conform to this well-known best-practice, but also to understand why it…
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Ludum Dare 38-40 Postmortem
It’s been nearly a year since I participated in Ludum Dare 38, which was my first ever game jam. I finished the game, and received decent ratings (I mean, not great over all, but given it was my first one), placing me between the 500th and 700th place in the rankings. I also participated in Ludum Dare 39, which unfortunately never made it to the playable stage by the 72 hour deadline. Ludum Dare 40 I likewise did not finish, however it was much more finished than 39, and was more technically advanced than either of the previous attempts. Ludum…