Knoxville Game Design

Overview of encoding characters and letters into their numerical and binary values. Explanation of how to use bitwise operators to change case of characters. Links and Notes Podcast theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Overview of how parallax is used and implemented in 2D video games. Links and Notes Demo code – https://github.com/levidsmith/KnoxGameDesign/tree/master/parallax Podcast theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Overview of grid based games and implementation of checkers in MonoGame/C#. Links and Notes Checkers demo code – https://github.com/levidsmith/KnoxGameDesign/tree/master/gridbased Podcast theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Knox Game Design Spring ’23 game jam entries Links and Notes Podcast theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Walkthrough on how to create a basic falling block line clearing game using MonoGame. Project code – https://github.com/levidsmith/KnoxGameDesign/tree/master/falling_blocks Links and Notes Visual Studio Community – visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community MonoGame – www.monogame.net Podcast theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Overview of game engines and development libraries. Links and Notes Godot Engine – godotengine.org Unity – unity.com Unreal Engine – www.unrealengine.com GameMaker – gamemaker.io Stencyl – stencyl.com Scratch – scratch.mit.edu SDL – www.libsdl.org Allegro – liballeg.org MonoGame – www.monogame.net Pygame – pygame.org Pico-8 – www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php OpenGL – www.opengl.org Podcast theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

How to create vector graphics in the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format by text editor or Inkscape. Demo code – https://github.com/levidsmith/KnoxGameDesign/tree/master/svg Links and Notes Podcast theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

How to create a simple space shooter web game using Javascript and HTML Canvas, as well as drawing the Tennessee state flag. Demo code – https://github.com/levidsmith/KnoxGameDesign/tree/master/javascript Links and Notes Javascript reference at Mozilla – https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference Canvas API at Mozilla – https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Canvas_API HTML Canvas reference at W3Schools –  https://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_canvas.asp Podcast theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

A look at various approaches for keyboard input and graphics display in QBasic. Demo code – https://github.com/levidsmith/QBasicShooter Links and Notes QBasic.net – https://www.qbasic.net/ ASCII character chart – https://www.qbasic.net/en/reference/general/ascii-table.htm Keyboard scan codes – https://www.qbasic.net/en/reference/general/scan-codes.htm DOSBox special keys – https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Special_Keys QBasic advanced memory functions  – http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/memory.htm Sprites in QBasic – http://www.tedfelix.com/qbasic/sprites.html Introduction to QBasic – http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/dandd/ WikiBooks … Continue reading QBasic IO and Graphics, Knox Game Design, December 2022 →

Overview of number systems, including decimal base 10, binary base 2, hexadecimal base 16. How to convert between the number systems.  Explanation of addition and subtraction in binary. Links and Notes Podcast theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Knox Game Jam games Old Timer Peg Game by Levi Other games by Knox Developers Caverns of Evil (Steam) by Jared Labyrinth (Steam) by James Gospelgo by Danosono

Explanation of how to read text files to display objects to the screen in Unity, GameMaker, MonoGame, Godot, and SDL. Demo project – https://github.com/levidsmith/KnoxGameDesign/tree/master/textreader Links and Notes Podcast theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Introduction to the Logo programming language.  Useful for teaching functional programming to beginners.  Explanation of using “turtle graphics” to draw various shapes. Demo project – https://github.com/levidsmith/KnoxGameDesign/tree/master/logo Links and Notes Berkeley Logo Download – http://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/logo.html Logo Manual – http://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/downloads/ucblogo.pdf Logo Tutorial – https://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/what_is_logo/logo_programming.html Logo Quick Guide – https://www.tutorialspoint.com/logo/logo_quick_guide.htm Snap! – https://snap.berkeley.edu/ Software Coding for Kids, Logo … Continue reading Logo – Knox Game Design, August 2022 →

Overview of four types of curves that can be used in game development.  Basic parabola for moving objects in an arc.  Sine function for moving objects in a wave motion.  Physics using velocity and acceleration for simulating actions such as jumping and falling.  Bezier curve for moving objects along a curved path.  Examples of functions … Continue reading Curves – Knox Game Design, July 2022 →

Overview of I-frames, invincibility, stun lock, and knock back. How these are implemented in games, statistics from examples of classic games, and demo project showing various methods for implementing invincibility time. Links and Notes Demo project – https://github.com/levidsmith/KnoxGameDesign/tree/master/iframes Podcast theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

This month’s Knox Game Design presentation topic is Enemy Behaviors. This is a look at various enemy behavior types: Back and forth (timer / collision based) Alert and chase, using distance / timer for stop chasing Move random direction and wait Orbital children, with varying radius length and orbit speed Behavior combination (orbital children and … Continue reading Enemy Behaviors – Knox Game Design, May 2022 →

Games created by Knox area developers for Spring ’22.  Theme was “delay the inevitable”. Links and Notes Cult of the Furnace by Jacob – https://gamejolt.com/games/furnace_cult/706365 Possum Blitz by Levi – https://levidsmith.com/games/possum-blitz/ Podcast theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Explanation of calculating collision between basic 3D objects (rectangular solids/cubes and spheres). Methods used can be applied to any programming language or game development environment. Review of demo Ruby code to detect collision between rectangular solids and spheres. Links and Notes Ruby 3D collision calculator – https://github.com/levidsmith/collision3d Caverns of Evil on Steam by BlackJar72 – … Continue reading Basic 3D Collision – Knox Game Design, March 2022 →

Explanation of 2D collisions for points, lines, rectangles, and circles.  Overview of each collision type along with examples and code.  Explanations are general in nature so that they can be implemented in any game engine or programming language.  Demonstration of Javascript web application that calculates collisions between the four types of objects, along with review … Continue reading 2D Collision – Knox Game Design, February 2022 →

Explanation of Dijkstra’s algorithm for finding the shortest path in a graph based on a selected starting node. Walkthrough of an example of the algorithm. Demo of implementation of Dijkstra’s algorithm in Unity and C#. Dijkstra Demo in Unity (Unity WebGL) Dijkstra Demo Source Code Links and Notes Dijkstra’s Shortest Path Algorithm – https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dijkstras-shortest-path-algorithm-greedy-algo-7/ Dijkstra’s … Continue reading Dijkstra’s Algorithm – Knox Game Design, January 2022 →