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Bits N Bobbins

Short post on progress things.  Things have just been lots of grunt work and non pretty things.

Will have things to show real soon.

Honest.

  • basic player object ..er.. exists and rotates properly.. mostly.  need to knock out some better test sprites and stuff to be able to make things actually ‘work’ together, but the fundamental concept of 8 direction independently moving head, torso, arms, lowerbody seems to work and will look pretty cool.
  • monster entities can be spawned and basically kept track of.. no AI or whatnot but still it’s a start.
  • Implemented basic box2d physics for player and monsters. this will have all sorts of fun payoff later I hope. Force waves, shapnel etc 🙂
  • Got the macro tiles wired for a* pathfinding.
  • Got the World generating a Maze and then replacing it with matching macrotiles that randomly match the exits of the cell.
  • started on map rendering
  • camera instance screen objects so I can have a smooth moving controllable camera that chases the player.
See.. lots of neat stuff… however nothing that you can actually look at other than a bunch of  diagnostic log output.
Performance wise it seems to be running at ~240 fps on the low end test machine and ~somewhere over 3,000 fps on the new machine.
So I might need to add in a ‘laptop’ mode which disables the whiz bang pretty stuff I hope to get put in.
and damnit .. http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque-3d the introductory price will be ending soon.
So I’ve got to grab that soon.
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Building Better Tools

So, basic progress is in swing.  There’s a bunch of stuff I can port over from the GarageGames Torque Game Builder version that I was working on, however, there are a bunch of things that I didn’t need then or just do not have access to in Java or just don’t integrate with Slick very well.  So with that in mind.. I’ve been digging  into Pre-Pre-Production.

To that end I’ve stated building a toolbox. Figuratively, of course.  Here’s a few of the silly things  that are a pain to write but very useful to have.

  • AssetLoader – based on the slick tutorial this little thing lets me have a loading bar on a title screen while the game loads every asset it needs.
  • OptionsController – manage loading and saving user settings and profiles for resolution, sound, and player name.
  • InternetFile / InternetString – for pulling a string (current version) or file (updated assets)  This makes keeping the user informed of latest news/ updated versions a snap.  Since Minecraft came out with an auto updater, it’s been glaringly obvious that at minimum having a latest version check is a MUST Have feature.
  • Movement Library – a pile of functions to take two points, and interpolate between them,given a method speed and time elapsed and whatever else that comes up.  I expect this to grow for some time.
  • ImageCounter widget – display a number with a series of images. Like hearts in zelda. Supports horizontal and vertical orientation, whole and partial increments etc.
  • Basic Image Button – yup it’s a simple little button made out of a bunch of images, it’s self contained and easy to use and change.
  • State Based Button – also called a modal button.  Essentially displays several options on a button bar and you can select one.
  • Text Block – an angelfont based text block widget , hand it a block of text, an AngelFont, and give it a max size.  It auto animates the display, pagination etc.
  • Text Entry – an angelfont text entry widget.  easy and simple..
and as I find things that would be handy in future projects I’m adding them to it.
So it turns out that making little widgets is actually really kind of fun.  Much like building the IrisEdit level builder tool that I’m using to build the levels.
And with those tools in hand, I’ve created the game Launcher / Version Checker,  Here’s what it looks like without the Launch Game button (it goes in the middle)