Index of posts

Open this post for an index of most of the posts on this blog, organised by subject.

eBooks

I have collected many of these posts into a few ebooks. If you are starting out, I recommend reading the Lua book first, then Codea.

Lua for beginners
Codea for beginners (unfinished because there is SO much to cover)
Shaders
Lighting

WordPress Posts

Basics
The first few posts starting here.

Codea
Editing in Codea
Fun with the keyboard
Debugging your code
Various tips

Physics and gravity
Applying gravity
More physics
Learning from popping balloons
Creating physics objects for strange shapes
Sliding puzzle (physics and tilting)

Creating a physics engine like the one in Codea
Introduction
Forces
Managing multiple objects
Friction and drag
Ballistics
Collisions
Adding touch
Smoke particles part1 and part2

Step by step projects
Projects that take you through creating something, one step at a time.
Lunar lander (revisited here and here in 3D)
Sliding puzzle (physics and tilting)

Programming techniques
Something you must read
Things I would have liked to know sooner
Editing
Timers
More on timers
Coroutines
Handling touches
Managing parameter lists
Closures
Loose coupling
Fonts, character, printing
Lessons from a simple board game – part 2
Lessons from a joystick function
Building a game in Codea with demo
Lessons from demo projects
Getting the most out of demo projects
Talking to the internet
Anonymous functions and the mysterious _G
Playing with functions
Some useful Lua tips
Reading and writing data files

Tables
Tables
A lesson from the roller coaster demo
Using tables as parameters
Tables and pointers
Metatables
Why tables and classes are so useful

Classes
Classes
More classes
Class inheritance
Practical example
A little note on classes
Why tables and classes are so useful

Games
Making your game multiplayer with sockets
Lessons from a simple board game
Lessons from a simple board game – part 2
Shooting gallery
Shooting gallery – part 2
Creating playing cards
Creating playing cards – part 2
Recreating Threes game app (4 posts)
2D Sidescrolling game (9 posts)
Game development resources on the net
Game templates
Navigating round a 2D screen
First person shooter
Pool/snooker simulation (first of four posts in a row on this)
A variation on pool
3D moon lander
The L game
Don’t spill the soup
A game development blog
3D racing game FAQ

 

Graphic techniques
Colours
Where to store downloadable images
Playing with images
Getting the colour of a screen pixel
Blending two images
Downloading images on demand
When 2D rotation goes weird
Ray tracing
Ray tracing in 3D
Navigating round a track
Refining
The Matrix effect
Tweens and more tweens
Great lighting effects
Simulating asteroids and shooting at them
Calculating orbits with simple trigonometry
Magic eye (stereoscopic pictures)
Using “noise” to tile images
Tiling images from a spritesheet (using a shader)
Creating a “seamless” image
Why Codea saves 2 copies of images
All about 2D vectors
Locating the 2D position of a 3D point
Locating the 3D position of a 2D point
Figuring out the borders of a 3D screen
Locating the 3D position of a 2D point with math
Shortest distance from a point to a line – explanation here
Looking at objects in 3D
Turning to face an object
Dot products
Cross products

Utilities
Creating a maze
Using A* to solve a maze
Game templates
Timers

Camera
Camera – motion detection

3D
Meshes – what are they?
Meshes in 3D
Drawing a cube
Drawing my own cube
3D tabletop racer
3D Racer – part 2
First person shooter
Asteroids in 3D ..and again
Star Wars theme ..more
3D moon lander
3D world of Codea users
3D sky and horizon
Importing 3D Models
Shooting at a 3D target by touching the screen
Flying a 3D model – here and here and a library explained here
Another 3D flying project!
Understanding 3D camera settings
3D tabletop
A series of about 20 posts on creating a 3D tabletop scene. It contains many good tips, including drawing buildings and roofs, drawing (and walking over) 3D terrain, drawing 2D images to look like 3D images, making light and dark, and much, much more.
3D Dungeon
A series of posts on creating a 3D dungeon, complete with 2D and 3D monsters
A series of posts on creating a 3D walk through castle
Series of posts on creating a World of Warships game
FAQ on a 3D racetrack game
3D Lighting
A series of about 10 posts on how to do lighting in 3D.
How to create 3D Text – here and here
Animating 3D characters
3D animation editor

Shaders
A series of about 10 posts explaining how shaders work and showing some useful effects.
Optimising shaders