JAKAMY Mohammed

What's your favourite Fruit?

2010-02-02T00:04:00.002Z

A lot of time passed by :-(
I was then (and still) wrestling the bad job market in my home country trying to find a graduate rewarding job :-(
Of course I used the time to learn more (never ends guys ;-p )
So I took on ObjectiveC ,iPhone SDK 3+ and Xcode quite bare handed at first I have to admit.
Since I had, as a requirement to start coding iPhone applications, to invest in a MacBook (OS X 10.6.2 :-) )"how about a job first :-( "
Anyway... As of Today I am an official iPhone developer. The future applications Ill post will be under my name (just use JAKAMY as keyword in Appstore Search :-) of course not before I put there my first app :-p )

Normally iPhone Apps will have a general 1 month dev to store time-line (not like games that can take up a year+ :-| )so I expect to release quite a few :-)
PS: to those interested into iPhone dev you will need not only to learn what I stated above but also to get a Mac and an iPhone since You can't test the interrupting phone-call situation with an iTouch(which I own :-p ) nor test the camera gps ....
and of course add to it an enrollment fee as an official developer in order to put your app for sale :-)

From Editors to level Debug :-)

2009-09-04T00:16:00.003+01:00

The truth is that level debug starts gradually since the creation of the collision layer, but for this case its after setting up the level items :-p.

Levels never click right from the first design there is always something to fix to tweak to replace or delete :-p

I really hope you enjoyed the gradual steps to the creation of a platform level. Suprisingly this is not known to the grand public and remains shrouded in mistery :-o

had to learn on my own (T_T) . I hope Ive seen these Vids before :-p haha

My Scene Editor :-)

2009-08-26T20:44:00.002+01:00

After the level is finished, comes the need to populate it with Items, enemies and smart Objects ;-)

Items are in fact very complex objects that are definied throught their ID (in other words they can go from being fruits to moving plateforms or any other thing very easily and with minimal code).

My Layers Editor :-)

2009-08-18T19:42:00.002+01:00

This came a long way from the rudimentary version I had used for the first engine demo (Prehistoire By JAKAMY) :-)

Now It can created and manipulate layer size on the fly.

I can either edit one layer alone or load all the scene defined layers at once for real time impression of what I do :-p

the scene layers are defined as this starting from the top most layer (of course this is a developer preference and can be altered very easily :-) ):

2 "overall" plant layers, 2 after entities plant layers, grass layer, rock layer, pre mountain layer, mountain layer,sky layer. and of course the Data layer which is invisible.

A total of 10 layers (didn't counted prelayers, since they are mostly for rain, fog ... effects).

As I wrote the number of layers used is a developer choice since the engine can handle as much as you want (of course the hardware must cope with it too ;-) ).

Entity Editor:

2009-08-18T19:32:00.003+01:00

This editor is for entities's animation extra data. Like Sprite boundaries (Body circling rectangle)

and like lethal areas (lethal red boxes on dangerous parts of the sprites like fangs and claws) which can be numerous and defined per animation or per frame.

of course debug mode shows all extra data rectangles in real time :-)

My Sprite animations Editor :-)

2009-08-18T19:29:00.001+01:00

The Editors sprite's editon is in fact an animation data creator (frame per second, frames...) through the spritesheets I get on build time.

this video shows how to add a new animation to the SaberTooth. Which is much more quicker and incredibly easier than before I created the editors :-)

My Editor Mode :-)

2009-08-11T18:22:00.004+01:00

Graphics are Ugly but very functional, after all its for developers only (for now ;-p ).

in creating my editors I choose to use my current Game engine to render it because I already made it flexible and multi purpose.

I needed then a menu like which I added as a three auto hide menus (plan to add a new bottom one later).

I needed too a system to read user's data through the keyboard (had to do my own key reading :-( [spacebar for example is reported in strings as 'SpaceBar'! ]) which I made as a multi question and answer reader.

and since I wanted everything to be mouse controlled I made It so that not only the cursor position is for the screen position but also at the same time when needed to be the loaded Inlayer position :-|

I finally sent my Microsoft challenge build :-)

2009-08-10T19:48:00.007+01:00

Finally after nearly a 5 months every day marathon and few hours before the time limit, I managed to send a not Buggy build (to my knowledge :-p )of my game.

This year the challenge have seen many companies participating which will make it hard for the judges to chose their winners since after all companies have budget money, salaries and manpower....

while the majority of the others (me included :-p ) are on our own :-)

here's a screen shot of the tutorial level (the most nearly finished level :-p ) and a night effect (all shader magic :-) ) plus a support for XBOX360 Avatars(3D) :

the link to my project at microsoft's web site is: Amazi'n'gh roots

and a video of a fraction of the gameplay in is in my Youtube Channel wich have other very interesting videos on how the game's levels were created ;-) (what you never get a chance to see since its generally for companies use only!)

Coming soon on my next post : Comments on Editors videos :-)

PS: for the lazy :-p

The Submarine Emerge after a whole 3 months!

2009-07-05T22:13:00.002+01:00

I can't believe it!. I lost all my free time ever since I registered to Microsoft XNA contest!!.
I didn't even create the game editor video (beleive it or not I didn't had any free evening this whole 3months :-( ).
as a status update:
the game editor is now very complex and at the same time easy to use :-)
the game engine is now very optimized and have new stunning effects.
the monsters animation and sprites are now in HD and fluid ;-)
Various mouth dripping fruits are now added to gameplay to aim for high highscores and 1ups.
Multiple AI per enemies (beside 2 of them).
2 Totally different gameplay( Normal pace, ala shinobi. and Very fast pace ala RunOrDie(sorry no game analogy cames to my mind now ;-p ).

I have to admit that I tried yesterday the demo I released many months ago and was shocked to feel how big the gap is now. Everything Is better and 'RockSolid'!. Graphics, animations, effects, levels diversity, enemies, gameplay, AIs.... Ever since I started creating the game editor I focused on reliability and retail-like quality. Which, by the way, was very tiring and hard but definitly worth it :-)

After the registration periode, the 7 of July will see the start of the project submission weeks. I am still far and yet close to the final build I want to submit. I really can't beleive how hard it becomes to work on a project when we came close to the last lane :-o

Since Ill be very busy to prepare my project submission, Ill again be unable to post, but as soon as I submit it, ill upload all the videos and write posts about all of it :-)

PS: sorry no pics yet(don't know If its by the contest rules to show visual progress or not :-p ) Thanks for you patience ;-)

When Time Runs Out!

2009-04-11T20:17:00.002+01:00

I received my "visit your web host account" alert email today as I set it up to happen every 2 weeks, but to my astonishment my website disappeared to a 404 website not found error!??
Even my account got deleted and no email received to notify as to why, how or else ?!(I do respect all their rules though!).
Anyway I'm re uploading the website again under the same address and account :-p
also Id like to use this post to explain my lack of news... I finished the engine tools, they are incredibly efficient, easy to use and time saving :-))
I planned to do some video captures of them but didn't find time yet :-(...because I started a FULL XNA GAME development! :-)

Ill try to take a day break in the coming week and use it to create and upload the videos, posts and else :-)

PS: I compiled an XBOX 360 version of the demo(in 5mn!) and it ROCKS!!

Tabula Rasa !

2009-03-12T00:42:00.011Z

Tabula rasa (latin: blank slate):
When I discovered what was causing the demo to crash in french PCs(see older post), I smiled, not only because its a dumb visual studio bug, but also because I was already working on striping the file system and replacing it with an efficient (but no more human easy ;-p ) XML system in order to prepare the engine to the coming Editors.
putting in the XML system made me redo nearly all the loading calls from the ground to the managers, which was heavy :-| (a partial Tabula Rasa :-p ).
Still now that I already started working on the editors, I can't be less amazed at how little I have now to do( I don't even look inside the created data files anymore :-)) everything 'VISUAL' and automatic :-))) ).
I decided to ditch the idea of a windows editor( would have to code again layer displayers.................), in favor of an inEngine editor. However, I needed to create my own menus , buttons, questions answers popups....in short my own GUI! (Using it is fun ;-p ).
OF course its relatively 'Ugly' because its for me only not the players (maybe Ill make it prettier if I decide to create an 'editor' DLC after the full game release ).

I dedicated the Right menu (shows when mouse cursor is in extreme right)

to the already present layer editor and added many easy functions like increase layer rows, column...

.

a very simple multi question multi answer popup.
in addition to a visual report on errors like 'file not found' and a Process abord manager (for no more crashes or reloads :-) )

The Left menu is for the entities, I still added only 2 functions but It will be populated soon.

Like the creation of the collision rectangle with
the mouse :-)
(here I do 3 clicks per animation sequence 2 for rectangle and 1 for save datafile ;-p )
(It took me before at least 15mn per sequence calculating and trying the crop :-| ).

and This is the demo in DEBUG mode where I can spot bugs and errors visually.

The truth is there will be a Top and Bottom menus Ill be talking about in due time.
Right now I paused the Entities Editor development to do a complete overhaul of the Lethal areas system(add multi areas per seq and per sequence frames if needed) in order to create Better and Crazier Big Bosses like for example a giant Cracken for the full game :-))))
(hehe a mini Tabula Rasa again for the Lethal area system :-p ).

PS: 3 posts in a row, which are posts I redid because of the format

:-p

Unrelated Post 1: TPM nightmare

2009-03-12T00:04:00.008Z

This post have nothing to do with my development project, still its a way to let of some steam caused by everyday errors :-(.
As you know I posted a Youtube video and gotnvery encouraging comments and private messages to which I happily replied. But since last week I can't reply or post comments anymore on my own videos!!???
I click the bug reporting button without success till now :-( 'I can't even post a comment saying that I can't answer to my video comments :-p ).
This was for youtube.

the real cause that made me type this post is the 'TPM' risk.
TPM is a chip in new notebooks that store a 256bit Key used to encrypt your hard drive. Thank to which if your computer get stolen, the thief wouldn't be able to read your harddrive data even on other machines :-)
BUT, If anything happened to the boot loader you can kiss your data goodbye :-(((

This is what happened to me! I enabled the TPM and encrypted my harddrive(created a recovery USB). then turn off my development notebook.

the next morning I had a safeboot error about the bootloader(turned out it was an incompatibility bug in 2 HP apps (safeboot and drive encryption)). the only solution available was a complete FORMAT!!!

I learned then 2 very important things for those who want (and will in the future. can't avoid it!) to encrypt their harddrive:
1st : never use(up to today) any other encrypting system other than Microsoft's Bitlocker(It have a dozen of fixes for catastrophic scenearios !!!!).(This, of course, as long as you create a recovery USB and burn it to a dvd to be safe :-) )
2nd : If you DARE to encrypt your harddrive, do it after creating a 'bit by bit' backup!

PS: hopefully for me I backup the sources everyday.
(Now since I can't yet do a full harddrive backup, I decided to use HP's 'folder only' encryption with a 2048bit key! :-) ).

From 3Hours to 3minutes.

2009-03-10T21:20:00.007Z

This is my first post for the second phase of my engine development :-)
The demo proved that the engine is mature enough to start creating a full game.
Still, many necessary redundant tasks took me a lot of valuable time.
Like: increasing the layer size, calculating its parallax scrolling values, creating animation's sequence data, editing per sequence crop rectangles and many many more.
hopefully I had already created a decent layer editor, but if it proved enough for a 1 level demo, it won't be for a full game :-| .

This is why since February I started the second main phase of my plan, which is to create mouse controlled editors for everything. This way Ill only need the Frames files to create in minutes what took me from several hours to days calculating :-))
This way I can finally go to the final phase ;-)

French users Demo is OK!

2009-03-03T19:13:00.004Z

Finally I have gone trough Microsoft's Bug. Now the demo don't crash at the level loading for the French users anymore :-)
The web site links have been updated with the new version and zshare mirror link is now a rapidshare link as requested ;-) (zshare was great but now its crap :-(
here is the Rapidshare link: http://rapidshare.com/files/204862306/PrehistoireByJAKAMY.zip
also I added a gameplay video in YOUTUBE for those who don't have a decent Graphic card :-( here: www.youtube.com\JAKAMYmed
a youtube player is on the bottom of my blog's page (till I find how to reorganise my posts :-| )

This is my last post related to the demo!
as of the next one, my posts will be about the new project I'm working on :-)

Thank you for your diverse emails, posts, comments and encouragement I received as answer to this demo trought the different forums, blogs and websites :-))

The Break is over! :-)

2009-03-01T05:13:00.005Z

I didn't post anything new on my blog since 2k9 started. Sorry for that (T_T). The truth is Ive taken a month away from programming as my santa's Gift :-p. After all the demo release was a planned midgoal from which I would choose one of the preplanned paths Ive thought of :-) .
Before an update on what I did this Ferbruary I want to give a temporary solution to some french users who got the demo crashing at the level loading:
IF YOU SEE THE MENU OF THE DEMO BUT CAN'T START PLAYING THE LEVEL(crash), PLEASE SET YOUR REGIONAL LOCATION TO "ENGLISH USA".
this crash is not a CODE bug, its an XNA bug which reject the dotted decimal values if you set your region to 'France' (require comas instead of points).

An international version of the demo(and the last) which will avoid this XNA bug will be upped soon too.

At first I thought it was a Graphic card problem, but If you can see the menus then you can play the demo!! (Waterfall, fire... are all PixelShaders effects!! :-) ) .
So after trying to recreate the Bug, it took me a total of 4 windows installations on 5 different Machines to finally miss setting to English the regional settings at the installation. A happy miss since Ive FINALLY recreated the bug which then took me only 20mn to nail ;-p .

Happy New Year 2009

2009-01-01T19:15:00.002Z

-to all who visited my Blog from more than 28 countries thank you and Happy New Year 2009

-a tous ceux qui ont visité mon blog depuis plus de 28 pays, merci et Bonne Année 2009

-ila couline man zara Blogy moundo actar min 28 douela, shoukrane wa sana sa3ida 1430

Today is GO!

2008-12-27T16:49:00.008Z

Finally today I officially launch my XNA game Prehistoire By JAKAMY's website: Http://PrehistoireByJAKAMY.007sites.com (click the picture)

The website weight 2MB, have a full screen, mute button and comes in French and English :-) .
Inside are a friendly description of the game, its origins, who I am and the downloads links needed.
you can download the game directly from my skydrive here: the Skydrive folder have also all what you need to run it and more :-)
the RapidShare Link(only the game setup)

PS: if you don't have Microsoft dotNET3.5 installed the setup will download the updates you need and install dotNET 1,2,3,3.5 if you need them too....so it may be a LONG install (for those who didn't use windows update regurarly :-p ).

NB: in case of bandwidth limit reach this BLOG top banner will have an updated web address for the game :-p (this happens when you use free web hosts (T_T) ).

and a video is coming as soon as I find how to do a descent capture :-)
a quick screen of the game ;-)

All is READY!!

2008-12-22T19:18:00.006Z

Finally everything is ready (T_T) :-) .
and as promised here is first a screen shot of an old version of the game (engine test version)
Besides the *UGLY* test background notice the bounding boxes used for cropped collisions and sprites real borders, and the debugging text on the left, which is very important :-p
this test version don't use yet a fixedgamestep and dont have vsync, still my development tablet-pc have a very shameful(bad Intel, bad!) weak graphic card (gma 965) which can't get me more than 70-40fps in HD(1280x720) resolution. In comparison my rather weak(todays graphic horsepower :-p ) Geforce 7600GS and Radeon 9700 Pro had a 400-300 fps on this same version!!.

and also here is another old version of the website:
here Ive updated and animated the top InfoTitlebar and kept the category selection menu. still its not pretty :-( [besides the title bar of course ;-) ].

Some may have noticed my webStore Ad on the top of my blog :-).
it wasn't easy but still I managed to add 3 Test items as it takes time to seek the original very high resolution art from my archives and adapt it to the main public.
Ive also added a friends snow like effect on the blog which increase the flocks number as we get close to the new year :-) ho ho ho

I plan to officially launch the 'ready' website in the coming 2 or 3 days, so stay Tunned :-)

WebSite now in final beta test :-)

2008-12-07T20:43:00.002Z

It took long enough <(T_T)>, and finally my flash web site is running well :-).
It now requires to have at least flash player 7(better have 9+) on your computer ( sadly can't test it with it :-( as the flash-folks didn't allow to try old flash player versions to test it with), but only exotic machines may have a problem if they don't yet have an updated version of flash (PSP?).

Of course its in English and French(easy flag switch :-p ) and supports FullScreen Mode(button don't work on internet explorer only because of protection measures, but F11 do the trick).
no javascripts (personal choice, because I was getting an authorise dialogue box which may bother the new to internet folks :-) ) .

my web host now is 007sites.com, they offered me 7GB of bandwidth and storage per month, which is decent for a 5MB website. Yet, If I reach the 5.5GB before the end of a month I'll then put a redirect on my index page so that I avoid a suspended account he he.
One bad points are that '.txt' are not accessible(one whole day of debug to notice :-p ) nor exotic file format like '.txj'. And the last one is that sometimes on Google CHROME my 50KB! photo Gallery don't load!...After a long code optimization for nothing :-( Ive discovered that Its the webhost which gets a freaking slow upload (not even enough for the 15KB preloader!) for small files. the fix is to hit another tab and try again :-( well that's the free host for you! .

my web site is natively for 1280x800 (frame 1280*720)(16/9) but It auto resize depending on your screen resolution. Dont't worry it looks and reads very well even on 640x480 screens.

And now thanks to Microsoft I am the owner of a 25GB hard disk on the cloud(net) with no bandwidth limit!!! Welcome personalised folders for download hehe.

As promised here my first (UGLY!) web site design... haha the next post will have the second less Ugly one and so on till I officially launch the final web site :-)

(Should entertain and reveal how we better ourself as we learn and assess more) .

Half Bad News :-(

2008-12-03T22:01:00.001Z

Sadly, I couldn’t acquire the XBOX360 elite this week as I had planned. Blame it on new French VISA regulation that was enforced :-( (need to update your staying VISA every 6 months instead of every year, and only on the French territory or paperwork can crush you and have you miss reentry schedule :-p ) .

Anyway, the good part is that even though acquiring it is now planned for in between the months of January and February, I’ll very likely have the new ’JASPER’ revision :-).

This new revision have a 65nm GPU and CPU which don’t overheat and consume less power ;-).

Its very important for me since where I live I get a 40+ degree Celsius! on summers.

Ideal Web Host

2008-12-02T15:03:00.000Z

Never, never start creating a website before having a trusted and working web host (the free kind :-p). This is what I've just learned after all this time developing the flash website :-( .
After all, its a sound advice since the web host is the one setting the important rules:
-web host's annoying ads...(preferably none!)
-website nature(personal, business...)
-website space(1-35mb...)
-website database(business needs it ...)
-short and easy to remember address....
-[my most important rule] DURABILITY! I want a free webhost that stays there for ever! :-p or 20years...(its been more than 10 years and my brother's webpage still hanging in there !).
It may seems trivial but the 'web host startup' can pop out of existence (your website and its address too) just like that!. Especially in this world state of economic depression.
-BANDWIDTH (the most important one) ...
and since I've developed a flash website that's in the 5MB size, it will mean that in a month of 200visit(normally you use a million visit for safety :-p ) the bandwidth reaches 1GO. In other words it means that starting from the 201th visitor, there will be instead of the website home page a suspended account page :-( .

Maybe I'll go for a free address forwarder( keep the same website address wherever you put its files :-) ) so that in case of over bandwidth problem I can switch the web host easily without loosing its address....

But, forwarder also uses bandwidth....
Truly a chicken and egg puzzle.

How Much is Too Much ?

2008-11-30T03:23:00.000Z

My actual flash website design is finally the right one. Not only does it looks pretty, but it have,in my experience, some 'coolnpretty' ideas totally new :-) .
Still all the effort to catch the eyes comes with a cost :-( .... SIZE!
right now(no media page yet :-p ) the whole website(HTML included) is 3.7MB
I've emulated loading it with a bandwidth of 512kb, and it took One Minute! to load all the pages (cumulated :-p )
Of course I've added loading indications but still...I hope its not too deterrent to visitors.
Oh, I forgot to mention that the native web site resolution is the browsers full screen of 1280x720. But don't worry guys, not only it is
re sizable(screenres) but also(soon) auto cropped so that the heart of the page fits natively on 800x600 screens ;-) .

P.S: why isn't there auto layers effect and easy drag and drop scrollable textboxes, picture galleries....
I had to program everything( pff.. ) ...Oh well....

What's Kaway?

2008-11-28T05:57:00.000Z

It's puzzling. how do we know that a web site looks pretty or(and?) appealing?...
I am now at my 3rd web design! Even though, all I seek is an ok website. nothing fancy, but still I'd say, easy on the eyes.
And its that easy on the eyes goal that keeps adding to my task list with a lot of do and redo...
Funny, it was the same for my game engine, still that was a priority!...
This time I keep screen shots of the design iteration of my website project .
It will be interesting to see what web design was aborted by fate(?) :-) hehehe.
I'll then post them with the link to my finished game website very soon.

WEB WALL !

2008-11-24T16:55:00.000Z

Never taught that creating a web page is so confusing!. Especially when you want an animated web page. I settled for a flash web site(had I the choice?) and started learning about flash script. Flash script is pretty simple, but the catch is that the beloved Microsoft intellisense and msdn isn't for it :-( so I felt going back to the prehistoric age of learning programming languages again (hah my demogame is set in the prehistoric age too ;-p ).

here is the best flashscript website ever: www.actionscript.org and some at the script section of www.swishmaxtutorials.com .
My web site animation, sound and script is 90percent ready, now the harder part is coherent pretty graphics... well... kinda have to be done :)

My First Blog

2008-11-18T20:32:00.000Z

Finally, my XNA first level demo is over (PC). So as planned my Internet conquest is starting TODAY!!. Ill acquire shortly an XBOX360, which will help me convert my XNA Project to it(after all, this hard work was for that development platform). Of course Ill have to find a way to become a premium member at the XNA Creators Club in order to be able to port it, and it will not be easy since only USA, CANADA, FRANCE, SPAIN, ITALY and GREAT BRITAIN can pay to register (T_T) .

For what is XNA and all related matters, visit : http://creators.xna.com

Screenshots, videos, and the demo(PC) will be posted soon ;-)