Captain Courgette Page
The Captain Courgette Readme
SONGS
cant stop this rage
forget
zij kan doen
fallen scene
judas
butterfly
winter2006 spring2006 summer2006-07 autumn2007
PSP flash applications 1.3mb, you will need flash enabled with your psp for these to work
10 june 2007
ive been neglecting the updates the last time, heres some recent screenshots
graphically theres not much difference but gameplay wise theres been much improvement, ive seperated the flying from the aiming which in a sense is a bit more complicated but its now way more fun (im actually enjoying playing, something that i couldnt say until recently), now u just line whatever enemy u want under the cursor + let rip, this sort of game really suits the ps3 tilt controller. also ive reverted back to letting newton do the physics instead of my own (less accurate but way faster physics) true theres occasional instances where a physics update on my machine can take ~20msec which can make the framerate a bit jerky but hey its bareable. also ive made the aliens much easier to kill, ie turning the whole thing into a more wanton fragfeast. framerates pretty good at the moment, i should be able to achieve 1920x1080 @ 60fps in the final version (geforce7600)
10 june 2007
movies ive watched in april| the dark crystal | 7 | i remember it from years ago, why they didnt make more films like this i dont know |
| Maquinista, El | 8 | amazing transformation makes de niros boxing one look weak |
| anacondas | 4 | not as good as the first. main actor guy was terrible ( but they all were pretty bad ) |
| mirrormask | 3 | a very boring film to watch |
| Hauru no ugoku shiro | 8 | excellent except for one of the worst endings in recent memory |
| xmen the last stand | 3 | terrible shite |
| phorpa (the cup) | 3 | weak stuff |
| resident evil apocalypse | 3 | hopefully the 3rd film theyre making is an improvement |
| escape from LA | 7 | great stuff, russell surfing on that wave after that car raises the carchase idea to a new level |
| Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta (Laputa: castle in the sky) | 9 | very close to being a 10, just needed some more quirks |
| the adventures of ford fairlane | 7 | cult classic that was bette than i thought |
| Espinazo del diablo, El (the devils backbone) | 7 | not as good as i thought it would be |
| Majo no takkyûbin (kiki's delivery service) | 7 | one of miyazakis worst |
| resident evil | 5 | better than the sequel |
| scream | 7 | quite good but not as good as the hype |
| mccinseys island | 4 | this whole film is amazing a definite must watch, im gonna rewatch this a few times i can tell |
| tell your children (reefer madness) | 1 | meant to be funny cause of the misinformation but just terrible |
| Kurenai no buta (porco russo) | 8 | could have been his best film but didnt quiet make it |
| santa with muscles | 3 | should be more like this |
| Carlito's Way | 7 | not so good overall, but has some good scenes |
| candyman | 8 | brilliant horror film |
| cars | 8 | perhaps pixars best |
| teenage caveman | 1 | one of the worst films ive seen in recent memory |
| big trouble in little china | 6 | good fun, another great carpenter russell collaberation |
| call of the wild | 2 | amazing, the songs were better than the film |
| jeepers creepers | 7 | excellent first half (featuring the ultimate for a horror film dont do it dumbness scene) |
| 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain | 2 | more hulk hogan needed |
| jeepers creepers 2 | 2 | huge let down, a bus load of teenage colledge kids is not a good start |
| Delicatessen | 7 | not as good as the hype |
| cabin fever | 6 | better than hostel |
| the crow | 8 | the film brandon lee died in, one of the best comic to film transitions |
| the princess and the warrior | 6 | a few major plot holes |
14 june 2007
link"So what is going to be the next big thing - the "son of Sudoku"?
Maki Kaji showed me "Slitherlink", a new game in the latest issue of his magazine.
There is a grid made up of dots and the numbers 0, 1s, 2s and 3s scattered across it.
You have to join up the dots around the numbers but you can only use the same number of lines as the number they are next to.
You have to join them all up like a snake.
"This is fantastic," he beamed. "But it is really just for people who are puzzle fanatics. It's not like Sudoku which has universal appeal. Sudoku is enjoyed by people from five to 90."
un-fucken-belivable, i invented this game in feburary of this year (it was gonna be in my flash collection, my version is called connections (yes very unoriginal) though
btw Maki Kaji was the inventor of sudoku,
21 june 2007
ive made a new alien
btw can someone from nelson city concil, why some busy suburbian thorughfare streets are unlit at night, yet ive seen another fully lit one (closeby), the diference is this one is a deadend street with zero houses on it!, hmmm could it be that theres ~12 housesections for sale on it. hey nelson mail newspaper theres a story there, corruption in local council.
24 june 2007
made the player model something else, ill turn the previous model into an alien
1 july 2007
a couple of new aliens also ive decided to remove the shield from the planet + have given it an atmosphere instead, ill prolly stick a graphic up to denote how much health the planet has
2 july 2007
films i watched in june (a few repeats seen that month)| new dragon gate inn | 7 | much better than i thought |
| rocky | 7 | yo adrain |
| yu yu yakusho, ghost files (1992) | 4 | i was wanting the kid (complete prick) to lose his soul |
| dog soilders | 7 | not as good as the hype but one of the better werewolf films |
| el cid | 3 | i loved the guys arms |
| Otets i syn (father and son) | 2 | WTF |
| tsotsi | 8 | went exactly how i thought |
| the queen of shebas pearls | 3 | very boring |
| siones wedding | 4 | cliched story, can see how it done well at the nz boxoffice (didnt deserve to) |
| alien | 9 | its been a few years since i saw this |
| the plague | 3 | had the makings of a good horror at the start but went downhill |
| sinbad | 5 | reasonable animated film, a bit predictable though ( exactly the same story as yu yu yakusho, shows the limited ideas ppl use) |
| capturing the friedmans | 8 | amazing film, the father obviously was guilty of something (perhaps not what he was tried for) + should have been put away but the son was 99% chance innocent, a good example of how mistrails occur due to personalitys |
| zathura | 6 | quite a good family film, acting a bit weak though |
| assault on precinct 13 | 7 | same music as escape (though this was first), good shit still, a few lookalikes play in it (at least 3), ben stiller, |
| bangkok dangerous | 7 | stylish film (in the east asian style) by the guys that done the good horror film 'the eye' |
| the texas chainsaw massacre (2003) | 7 | not as good as the original (illogical anyways since the original is one of the top3 horror films all time), story is very different, jessica biel also plays ( prolly the best looking actress at present ) |
| The Island of Dr. Moreau | 6 | as crazy as it sounds this is brandos best acting ever, he wasnt trying for perfection like he normally does just having a good time. actually the film is quite good, it failed cause of 2 things the english main actor + ppl thought that human/animal hybrid was stupid, ppl say the lionwitch + warddrobe was an allegory for the new testament well this is more so |
| nightstalker | 6 | bad camera work, trying to be artsy, failing but suceeding in being wanksy ( camera work improved later on ) |
| halloween 2 | 3 | pretty boring i can remember watching this years ago |
| mad dog morgan | 7 | best acting ive seen from hooper, film quality not the best. worth a watch, certainly better than ned kelly |
| creep | 4 | reasonable horror, except for the 'baddy' |
| russian ark | 4 | a 90 minute film with a cast of ~2000 shot in a single take (camera doesnt stop moving during the single shot), although accomplished not as difficult as it sounds cause it has absolutly no storyline (some flimsy thread about russian history + europe) |
| dont look down | 7 | a nice wes craven suspensful film, pleasently surprised |
| true lies | 6 | whilst arnie cant act,he does make the films he appears in |
| rocketeer | 4 | reasonable premise (except the bad guys were nazi's now how many films does that make now) |
| eight below | 6 | a bit cheesy, acting not great and needed to be cut 30-45minutes but still ok, dates were completely fucked though, eg they had to evac the base at the south pole cause of a huge storm (in the middle of summer), and couldnt come back cause winter was coming on. actually the whol;e film was riddled with holes like that, its like they didnt even give a shit about accuracy |
| tremors 2 | 2 | whilst the first one was entertaining this was just crap |
| joesph king of dreams | 4 | cartoon fodder |
| aliens | 9 | dont know which is better this or the first |
| the cell | 6 | bummer realised within 5 secs once it started ild seen it before (on a plane i thnk) a movie length music video |
| the howling | 6 | saw it many years ago, but forgotten everything except for the last scene |
2 july 2007
a new alien, this time inspired by one of my favorite aliens from defender/stargate (the dogfighter, attacks in packs) nothing beats the feeling of blasting apart 30aliens in a couple of secs, also ive decided to stick a health guage above the planet, and to jump opn the global warming bandwagon ive decided the atmosphere serves as a buffer zone (absorbing bullets) once its gone, damage gets inflicted on the planet untill it explodes
3 july 2007
implemented allowing the user the ability to control the camera, first in any direction they want (but in the heat of battle it makes it nearly unplayable, ie they have to aim the weapons, aim the spaceship + aim the camera, so ive just mapped a key onto changing between the forward and afward(?) viewpoints.hmmm btw these aliens cant aim for shit, ill have to improve that
4 july 2007
fixed up the aliens targeting ability, the problem was i was targeting when the player was at that moment + not where it expects it to be, theres still a slight problem in that theres 1 sorts of weapon aiming, fixed position (eg straight ahead) cause the alien will be trying to intercept the player at X meters/sec but its weapon's typically move much faster (though not as fast as real life, trying to dodge something that moves at lightspeed, whilst realistic aint fun)6 july 2007
definitly much harder designwise to make a shootemup in 3d than 2d, eg weapons in a traditional 2d shootempup the player might have weapons that can shoot behind him or sideways. of course in 3d aliens can attack from any angle eg above or below right behind, thus to get the same bullet coverage u need to send ~10x the number of bullets out8 july 2007
mucking around with the camera controlling again. originally i was doing something like this. flipcode article but then went onto the lerp method (which i mention in the above article, from 6 years ago, shit time flies :( ), now a even better method is the followingfloat amount = DOTPRODUCT( return_VECTORS_normal( actor_pos - camera.cameras_position ), camera.forward_direction_vector );
float lerpamount = 0.95 - ((1.0-amount)*0.35);
this way the actors always onscreen no matter how fast the player turns + but also get the camera lagging back
11 july 2007
managed to score 3 wagner operas from the warehouse (occasionally u find gems amongst the dross), tristan, meistersinger + one that i havent heard before :) lohengrin, listening to the second act at present, he reused some of the music in tannhauser. unfortunatly all the recordings are from the late 30s + early 40s thus sound quality is a bit suspect.11 july 2007
a new alien, beams in if the players taking to long to complete a level, to give them the hurry up ala the UFO in defender/stargate
24 july 2007
captain courgette through the ages
2002/03
Running on a nvidia gf2mx, realtime deformable terrain, upto 12 lights onscreen (only the sun cast shadows, note the gf2mx doesnt support shadowmapping). gameplay revoved around flying over a planet shooting aliens + whilst destroying bases. the viewpoint was 2.5D, essentially the player/aliens were on a fixed xz plane above the terrain, the game was quite playable but pretty boring. spent the next couple of years in oz (not programming).
late 2005
Back in nz, working with shaders for the first time, i upped the light count to ~16 onscreen (each single casting dynamic shadows), no other game then (or even now a couple of years later) i believe has been this extreme, the problem was i was so caught up with the tech behind this that the game was not fun to play, the spaceship was very hard to control (it was now a fully 3d game 6dof), aiming and shooting at targets was too difficult. i should of quit this earlier but was to enamoured with the graphical beauty. link to ingame video
early 2006
to make it more fun i decided to revert to a topdown 2d game + whilst it definitely was more fun, it seemed a shame to waste my engine on such a plain looking game
late 2006
thus back to 3d again :( fuck, still to hard to play, i tried every trick in the book trying to improve it + whilst i did make slight improvements to the playability, for a shmup, the 3d concept is very flawed. eg having the player being able to shoot in other directions than in front (in the sights) is a complete lottery, ie aliens are most likely on other planes. the majortiy of aliens are not gonna be in the front field of view of say 60degrees, but say they are now if they shoot at the player theyve got ages to dodge the bullet since its most likely shoot from miles away, aha the solution is to increase the bullets speed i hear u say, tue that works for the bullets from the front, but what aout the bullets from the side/behind the moment they enter the scene cause of there great speed the players got 0.01 seconds to dodge them ie unplayable, theres heaps of similar issues like this, i suppose u could have bullets with variable speeds but incredibly messy.
2007, definitly the last incarnation
reverted to 2d only again, bugger it if it doesnt look as impressive, its fun to play, has the shmup elements of dodging bullets (something thats both too easy + at the same time too difficult in 3d)
25 july 2007
im guilty of over engineering my alien behaviour methods, as well as my particle system (might of mentioned that before). basically ive made them to flexible + powerful, ie designed for the 5% of cases + not the 95%30 july 2007
i had this great idea of implementing the radar as little icons on the outskirts of the screen + not having a 2d map (great as in it doesnt take as much screen realestate in use) unfortunatly as often happens in reality it played worse than having just a typical small 2d radar map , the reason being the data was to spread out + in gameplay it wasnt as intuitive, the moral of the story always hack your ideas in, cause often they dont pan out to be as good as u imagine15 august 2007
saw bob dylan last weekend in wellington, shit weather as normal, from the ~15x ive been to wellington, something like 14 of those the weathers been crap. wanted to go to kapiti island as well but the wind was to great thus the ferry over to it wasnt running, to rub salt in the wounds, saw attenboroughs 'life of birds part1 last night' which had about 10minutes on kapiti.17 august 2007
decided to show an outline of the players craft if it becomes obscured (eg behind a wall/rock etc), i tried the standard technique of moving the camera so the player becomes visable, but it detracts from the gameplay.
21 august 2007
the 26 films i watched in july (without doubt Lik wong was the standout film)| dragonheart | 5 | too sentimental |
| the legend of Suriyothai | 3 | way overlong, without a solid story |
| silent hill | 7 | one of the best films made from a video game (never played the games though) less weird than i thought it was gonna be |
| near dark | 4 | ive wanted to see this for years but found it overrated with the supidest vampires in history with a huge number of goofs on the brightside the bar scene was very good, paxton + henriksen were good |
| the ladykillers | 7 | one of the coen bros worst |
| boogeyman | 4 | i could see it was filmed in nz pretty early on, which spoilt the feel a bit, standard ghost flick |
| fearless (2006) | 6 | reasonable but like a few semi-recent chinesse flicks is a bit to nationalistic |
| five children and it | 3 | born outta some producers mind no doubt |
| once upon a time in china | 6 | overlong + to incoherent |
| long time dead | 6 | actually quite good has a similar feel to a lot of the recent british horrors |
| looney tunes back in action | 7 | enjoyable kickstart to the looneytunes unfortunatly was a box office failure |
| torn curtain | 3 | one of hitchcocks worst, overlong |
| life in the undergrowth | 7 | not as amazing as i was expecting |
| the shawshank redemption | 8 | my 3rd of 4th viewing of it, like the godfather im still trying to see why ppl like it so much (better than the godfather though) |
| zatoichi | 4 | overrated not up to kurosawas standard |
| pocahontas | 4 | gah another animated story with songs in them, not particulary good either |
| duma | 5 | slow cliched film |
| alien3 | 4 | the worst of the 4 aliens films (discounting alien vs predator) |
| Lik wong (story of ricky) | 9 | B grade campy kung-fu film, with over the top gore. one of the best lines ever, this guy sticks a blade into his stomach + then pulls out his intestines + then starts to strangle another guy with them, someone else watching saiz 'that takes a lot of guts'. i see the main baddy was actually female ( i thought she was a bit to beautiful ) |
| the mirror cracked | 4 | films stars galore in this miss marples whodoneit |
| the emperors new groove | 7 | actually not so bad considering the amount of moralizing crap in it, the main guy got on my nerves though fuck |
| sunset boulevard | 8 | similar to all about eve, in theme + it stands the test of time |
| the woods | 7 | starts off very slow but atmosphere is great |
| alien resurection | 6 | this and the 3rd film shouldnt of been made |
| the aventures of sharkboy and lavagirl | 5 | middle of the road childrens tale |
| piorot - sad cypress | 7 | quite a good whodone it |
25 august 2007
due to the fact im gearing up for a demo release (aiming for end sep) its time to enable/test some things, heres the spotlights reenabled in my game, the reason i removed them a couple of years ago was glsl shader compilation was a lot slower than it is now, thus slowing the program startup time. (each sec saved is very important when youre developing, since youre often restart the same app 100s of times in a day)spotlight video
30 august 2007
gameplay's coming along well, im working on the second stage at present, each level is devided into 4 stages.A/ protect the planet from alien invaders
B/ inside aliens spaceship, where u have to destroy it
C/ defeat aliens on their homeplanet / rescue ppl etc
D/ mother boss battle
(pehaps also a challenging stage as well as E)
#B focuses on the dodge-em part of shump's, where u have to thread your spaceship through hundreds of bullets, (ive also added some obsticles as well to sex it up)
09 september 2007
ok been trying to upload my vis to a few sites today, google video/youtube/gametrailers (+ a couple of others) all were crap eg heres the youtube version of one link(thats best quality) ill post a link to the original in a couple of days (that im forced to host myself since none of the free services are up to the task)10 september 2007
the 29 films i watched in august ( quite a few good ones watch though der untergang would be the standout film )| poirot - after the funeral | 6 | pretty good whodoneit, which i didnt guess (should of though) |
| wrong turn | 5 | standard cliché film of kids meet a bunch of homicidal hillbillys |
| walace and gromit curse of the were-rabbit | 8 | enjoyable film certainly heaps better than chicken run |
| alien vs predator | 5 | lived up to my expectations which were pretty low |
| emma | 7 | took a while to get into but certainly worth a look (better than the book) |
| red eye | 5 | quite a bit different than i thought it would be, second half petters out |
| the searchers | 4 | rated as one of the best westerns ever, personally i thought it was pretty shite |
| Boia scarlatto, Il (bloody pit of horror) | 3 | must be seen to be belived |
| superman returns | 4 | yawn |
| james and the giant peach | 7 | apart from the songs this is a great family film |
| nine lives (2002) | 5 | surprisingly paris hilton wasnt the worst actress in this, actually this horror aint as bad as ppl say |
| population 436 | 6 | reasonable horror not very suspensfal though |
| grizzly falls | 7 | quite a good 'disneyesk' film |
| the simpsons movie | 6 | couldnt live up to the hype, impossible task really |
| broken flowers | 3 | not as bad as lost in translation the ending was pretty good though |
| dead birds | 4 | looks like the read the book of how to make a horror + followed it to the letter, kids with long hair covering the face (check), looking into a dark area + something grabs u (check), monsters with munch mouth (check), person lets out sigh of relief by window + then face appears there (check), all accomplnied by the standard horror soundtrack |
| open water | 8 | good film made on a small budget |
| the hills have eyes (2006) | 6 | unlike texas chainsaw massacre this is essentually a remake of the 1977 film (departs a bit in the middle), though not as good overall its definitly a worthwhile remake |
| catch that kid | 3 | billed on the cover, as spykids meets ... , dont know why theyld write that cause spykids was crap |
| piorot – the hollow | 5 | ok manner to pass 90minutes |
| grandma | 6 | doco about grandma the oldish observed albatross still breeding in her 60s |
| the wicker man (2006) | 4 | actually not as bad as its portrayed, what with the golden raspberry nominations etc |
| the last horror movie | 8 | series 7 meets man bites dog, hmmm not as good as series 7 (better though than MBD which is overrated, though still good) |
| the hazing (dead scared) | 6 | better than i thought, a homage to evil dead (noticed they had a photo of bruce in there) |
| millennium actress | 5 | not as good as it aspires to be |
| transamerica | 7 | worthwhile watch, ppl rave about the actress pretending to be a man acting as a woman, whilst good it wasnt the best performance of the year |
| assault on precinct 13 (2005) | 3 | not as good as the original, though the premise makes a bit more sense than the original |
| poirot - The Mystery of the Blue Train | 4 | elliot gould was fucken terrible, the worst acting ive seen for months |
| der untergang | 9 | prolly the best war film ever made |
11 september 2007
as promised here are the ingame videos from the second stage set inside the alien spaceship, videos had to be captured in 30sec bursts since fraps only lets u record 30sec at a time
basically it highlights the dodge the bullets part of shumps, movement is a bit jerky since im controlling the player with a mouse (ie cheating)
14 september 2007
saw this story tonight
now thats a head aye, obviously photoshopped on