If you've been following the blog at all, there's a good chance you know about the mini-game I've been working on.  And, there's probably a good chance many people lost some interest after the multi-week gaps in posts recently.  Looking back I probably should have made an effort to stay consistent with it, but I honestly wasn't sure how many people would even be interested in listening to me ramble on about fixing bugs and trying to balance some seemingly simple game.  I'm back today to correct that mistake.…  More

After a bit of a hiatus, Making the Game is back!  Primal Defense is in a very rough alpha stage, but the game elements are working together and it is playable, though not necessarily challenging yet.  Today we'll take a look at some of the components of the game, and examine ways we can tweak them and iron out some of the problematic parts.

At this point, the game essentially works.  "Works", maybe.  Bad guys make their way through the path, defensive towers blow them away with their various abi…  More

This time on Making the Game, I'll be talking about some of the things occurring behind the scenes of our game-in-progress.  Script handlers for various frame elements allow us to add behavior to them, and objects provide a conceptual middle-ground for us to describe the entities in our game.

Script Handlers and How To Use Them
I mentioned in one of my previous posts that script handlers were one of the forms of event-driven programming present in WoW addons.  Frame elements can have snippets of c…  More

In today's Making the Game entry, I'll be giving an update on current development progress, and talking a bit about some changes and additions to the game interface.

When Can We Play?
Alpha testing is soon... hopefully.  I'm making progress when I am able to work on the game, and there really isn't much ground left to cover in terms of designing the game objects.  After I get the rest of the basic interactions working properly it's really only a matter of adding in some tower abilities, finding so…  More

In this Making the Game entry, I will be covering the first major step in creating our tower defense game: the interface.  Once the interface for the addon is mostly complete, we will have a solid foundation with which we can use to easily implement the backend functionality and begin to give life to the game elements.

Before We Begin: Some Resources
There are a few resources that we need to have before we start digging ourselves too deep.  First, our most important item is the trusty text editor.…  More

For this Making the Game entry I will be giving an introduction to the addon programming environment, and taking a look at the features that we will be taking advantage of to build our mini-game inside of World of Warcraft.  Also, I'm looking for an artist!  More info at the end of the post.

AddOn Basics
If you've played WoW for any extended period of time, it's probably a rational assumption that you've installed an addon at some point or another.  Sure there are some UI purists and maybe a small…  More

In this second post of the Making the Game series, I will present a brief design outline for the game we will be working on, as well as cover a few of the basic technical concepts of addon programming to get us started.

The Design Document

A game design document can be seen as the foundation, or blueprint of the developer's goals for the game.  Our document may turn out to be slightly malleable as time goes on, but a quick outline of it should serve as a good starting point.

Overview
P…  More

This is the first post in my Making the Game series, throughout which I will be highlighting some of the important steps involved with creating a mini-game in the World of Warcraft environment.  To get the ideas flowing and hopefully some bit of direction, I'll be writing about some of the creative design topics that we need to cover before we begin doing the dirty work of coding everything.

What makes a great game?
There's no denying that there are different tastes when it comes to games, and not…  More

For this edition of AddOn Workshop I've decided not to focus on a particular mod, but instead discuss some ideas I've been tossing around regarding the development of mini-games within World of Warcraft.

Why do you like mini-games so much, mister?
I could see this being a legitimate question for me, considering I've mentioned mini-games in a couple posts already.  I'm not really crazy about them.  I don't even play many of them.  However, mini-games are games after all, and we play games to have f…  More

Periodically I'll be highlighting mods that either I am currently working on, or others that have impressed me.  For this first one I'll be talking about my most recent addon, EchoPort.

EchoPort
@ WoWInterface: link



EchoPort is a small addon for warlocks (even though it's a class-specific mod, if you enjoy reading about development, don't leave yet!) that provides visual information about the Demonic Circle teleport.  In the current build, it provides a portal expiration timer, accurate (1 yard pre…  More