Blade Edge

Computer software | Video production | My life in general

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Particles! Oooohhhhh!!!

January 26th, 2006 · Software

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I spent last night and today working on the particle effects for the game’s explosions. There are two times during the game that something explodes. One is when a player places enough planets in a system to expand, in which case the planet blows up and seeds the 4 adjacent systems. A less common event involves the solar body special system, when it reaches a critical mass (after 7 planets have been placed or seeded into it) it goes supernova and wipes out any planets in all 8 surrounding systems regardless of player color. I used two particle effects that shipped with T2D for these explosions. The effects actually fit the bill perfectly, but I’m sure our artist will still want to play around with them

I also added support for the rest of the special systems in the game in addition to the ability to show and hide special systems. Hidden special systems appear as empty systems in the game until a player drops a peice on the system, revealing the hidden special system. Just another way to design challenging maps.

Additionally, I’ve tested the game out with 3 and 4 players as well as planets/stars exploding in a chain reaction. In short, the only thing I’m really missing is a test for victory conditions!! Holy crap but Conquest mode is almost done Once Conquest mode is fully tested I’ll work on the in-game menus before starting work on the rest of the game play modes. looking well on-track I must say…

Anyhow, here’s the gallery – enjoy!!


This is the game editor with the new special system visibility icons in action. They’re small and hard to see – I’ll make them bigger though and I’m sure our artist will give me a better graphic to use too, haha. You simply Ctrl+left-click while the Systems palette is chosen to toggle the visibility of the special system on (icon showing) or off (no icon)


Here’s the same map shown before in the editor loaded in the game. Notice how the special systems that didn’t have an eye icon on them are now hidden from view


Aha! We found one! Placing a planet on a hidden special system reveals that system and takes action on it just as if it were visible anyway, which means you still complete your turn. This sucks for black holes, asteroids and (maybe) solar bodies, but is a nice surprise for space dust and nebulae


Here’s the map with the rest of the special systems revealed


Ok here I’m setting up the board to demonstrate some game play. In the center of the map we have a blue planet with 3 rings around it. This blue planet is adjacent to 4 other systems (up, right, down, left). Therefore we need to add one more ring to this planet (by dropping another peice on it) in order to expand…


Like so! Notice now that the system where the planet used to be is empty (explosion not shown), but it seeded the adjacent systems (all the planets have an extra ring now – the one at the bottom has two extra because I placed one there the turn before to cycle through the red player). Note also that they are now all blue planets. This is how you take over other player’s planets and force them out of the game. If the system that had exploded had been on the sides of the map (3 adjacent systems) or a corner (2 adjacent systems) – it would have taken less rings to expand.

Now if you’ll direct your attention to the top-right corner I’m going to drop a couple of planets into that solar body and…


Nova!! Big boom and shockwave particle effect sets off as the planets surrounding the star all burn and die. You have to watch out for solar bodies cause they can really ruin your day


After the planets burn away the solar body returns to its starting state. The one in the bottom-right is about mid-life and the one in the upper-left is one planet away from going nova, so players do know how close stars are getting. Being an astronomy buff I had our artist make the star stages transition from blue (young) to yellow (mid-life) and red (old) before exploding. Always nice to put a little educational material in


Check the bottom – left for a planet in the middle of getting ready to blow up


Here’s a shot of a planet exploding. There’s also a shockwave you can barely see going vertically. I want to add a horizontal one as well, that would be perfect. Note the planet below is getting ready to go too – when planets explode they seed adjacent systems which can in turn cause those systems to explode. Chain reactions like these are a major part of the game.

Oh and in the explosion screenshots, the map may look like it has artifacts but it’s just the slight camera shake that accompanies the explosions.

So there you go! Hopefully by this weekend I’ll have the victory, end game and in-game menus all wrapped up. Then what?? How bout an alpha release?? Let me know if you’d be interested!!

Till then…

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We have game play!

January 23rd, 2006 · Software

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I was determined tonight to get the game play working to at least the extent of being able to take turns placing peices on the board and do so properly. Since I had the maps all set to go once again I whipped up a testbed map in the editor and started working back on the game play code – loading the map properly for ingame play, setting up the players, etc. Behold the fruits of my labor!


Here’s the game loaded up with the testbed map I created in the editor. The main thing to note in this shot is the system in the lower right corner of the inner square. That’s a nebula hiding an opponent’s planet – you can see the faint outline in it


Unlike a previous entry where I showed off a map loaded in the game, now the cursor also recognizes when you’re hovering over a planet that is not your color, and won’t let you drop a peice there as well as anywhere on the board there are no squares and on asterioid fields (not shown in this map)


So the blue player places a planet on the board and the game passes control over to the green player. Note how now the blue player’s planet hides behind his nebula while the green player’s planet becomes visibile


Green places another peice over the one existing in the nebula, which sends control back over to blue


Blue takes control of the last empty system and pass control back to green – we now see that he has two peices placed in one system, as evidenced by the single ring around the planet. You can get up to 4 rings on a planet before…

Well that would have to wait until later now won’t it? I can’t tell you guys everything about the game all at once now can I? Where’s the suspense in that? But don’t worry, I plan to implement that part by or on Wednesday so you won’t have long to wait. I’ll also get to start playing with particles!! Wheee! I also have to add functionality for more special systems not shown in that map, although the ones that are shown (black hole and nebula) are functional.

In other news, I added a white board to my workspace

Save me some notepad paper! 😛

Also, I cleaned up my comps memory a bit today and I can totally tell the difference. I use AVG for virus scanning and I finally decided to turn off the resident shield and email scanner and all that crap – I know what to open and what not to open regarding emails and I haven’t had any sort of serious virus on any of my computers since those blasted boot sector viruses back when people still used 3.4″ floppies. Plus I do weekly scans anyhow. Secondly I discovered that MS Money 05 leaves these apps running after it shuts down that do nothing I care about – so I searched online and found out what to set in Money so they wouldn’t persist after the app exited. That saved me freakin ~20MB of memory for cripes sakes. Word of warning to any MS Money 05 users out there. Finally, I shut off a few of those uneeded XP services to free up a couple more megs. The result is that when the system loads I now have half of my RAM available (256MB) whereas beforehand I had closer to only 1/4. Yipes.

But that’s all for now – as you can see by the time I kind of want to go to bed… specially before my girl wakes up and yells at me. Women More updates hopefully by Wed!

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Right back to where we started…

January 22nd, 2006 · Software

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Okay so I finally got some time this weekend to return some attention to GC. GG released Alpha 3 of the engine at the end of last week so I downloaded that and updated my project files. My main task, however, was to fix what I wrote about in my last entry, which was having too few tile layers on the maps. That was a royal pain in the ass but I got it done. Now special systems and planets are controlled separately by the editor – which changed a few things about how you edit maps, so it’s actually a good thing I never bothered with that help text, cause I would have had to rewrite some of it. I think it’s actually a lot more flexible now and I kick myself yet again for thinking of combining these two classes of game pieces on the same layer.

I also spent some time fixing quite a few things that mysteriously broke since I last touched the code. I love it when that happens. Not. Who knows why but some stuff just didn’t work the way it used to, and I don’t think all of it was from me tampering with other areas. I may have screwed up a few things during my doco run over vacation. But everything’s all fixed up and purring right along once again. It was a bit frustrating having to go back to the map editor in order to implement the extra layer, but at least now I can return to the game play code knowing that the maps function properly.

Oh yea and I also added tooltips to the mini conquest menu, something I had spoken about before.

Right right right, I’ll shut up now so you can look at pretty pictures. Vultures


Here’s a look at the two layers in action. Space dust and nebula both now appear under planets as they should


Here’s a close up of a tooltip in action

Righty then, that’s all for me. Stay tuned for more GC this week, as well as our first batch of IGF interviews hopefully!

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Back to the daily grind…. and then some!

January 17th, 2006 · Software

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I got back from my vacation on Saturday. It was a good time, but I wish last year when I told my parents I’d be okay with going at this time I had realized exactly what this time of year entails. The pre-GDC period of Dec-Mar is always hectic for me, mainly with IGF interviews but also just general conference planning with the rest of the staff and laying out schedules and whatnot for myself and others. Now on top of that I have a game to complete (to a point) in order to show it to a potential publisher/distributor at GDC and I have this new GI project that I also have to get off the ground and running by GDC so that I can spend time there pushing it to developers. So I have one whammy of a freakin deadline in just over two months!

So while I was away I didn’t get as much work done on GC as I wanted to. Yea big surprise you may think, being that I was on “vacation”, but really it was because of a semi-major flaw I overlooked in my original design that sorta got me down for a bit. When I created the maps for the game I made them have 4 layers: Layer one just held a single tile that stored the map properties data. Layer two was the layer that held the shaded squares for the Imperialism games. Layer three held all the player pieces and special system tiles. Layer four was an overlay layer used by editor to show brush shapes and the game to flash over a tile where the AI placed a piece during play. HOWEVER I realized last week, much to my dismay, that space dust and nebula tiles have to have player pieces appear over them. This means I need to add another layer to the map. It also means that when placing pieces I have to query two separate layers instead of just one. It’s not a really really big deal, but I was a bit bummed about it because I had already coded a lot for that single layer and now I have to go back and redesign some aspects of the game code. So instead I just put that off till I got back home and spent the rest of the time documenting the code and tidying it up.

So in short, no new pretty pictures to show off. But I’ll have some soon, hopefully by the end of the week. I just need to work out how I’m going to balance GDNet, GI and BES evenly from now until GDC and get everything done, but I’ll do it.

So I guess that’s all for now. Be back with updates as they are warranted. I still wanna flap my lip about the goings on at GI but not yet. Soon… very soon…

Later.

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Full Disclosure

January 5th, 2006 · Software

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Quote:


Original Comment by Trapper Zoid on Jan 5th
I’ve always wanted to make my own simple 4X game, so I’ve been following the development of your game for a little while (and I’m impressed with the style you’ve chosen for the game!).

I’m intrigued by the next stage on your checklist; players get to place planets? Is the construction of the galaxy part of the gameplay? This sounds rather interesting; how are you planning to make it work?

I guess it’s time I explained what Galaxy Conquest actually is. GC is a turn-based strategy game. The title derives mainly from the single-player campaign mode, where you conquer a galaxy by beating AI opponents on various maps. These maps are like what I’ve been showing off so far. What I’ve been developing so far is the “quick play” version of the game, used for battling AI opponents or hot-seat multiplayer action (online play will come towards the end of development). The basis of GC derives from an Othello-like concept – you want to change other player’s peices (planets) into your color in order to acheive certain victory conditions. You do this by placing a peice on a square (system) to claim that square on the board. Placing 2-4 additional peices will cause that system to explode outwards, clearing the system and spreading the extra planets to the adjacent systems, converting any opponent planets in the process. It’s all rather vague and hard to envision – I’ll provide a more detailed description once I have the gameplay implemented and I can use screenshots to illustrate the concepts. A variety of victory conditions spice up the gameplay – You have Conquest mode, where you simply have to eliminate all other players from the board by taking over all their planets; Domination mode determines the winner after a certain number of planets have been placed (15, 30, 45 or 60) based on the player with the most systems controlled; Likewise, Equilibrium is the same except based on scoring to determine victory. Points earned for taking over a rival planet is based upon that player’s prevalence on the board, hence balancing out scoring since the less planets a player has on the board, the less they will be worth to take over; Imperialism is the same as Conquest, except systems become shaded the color of a player’s planet, and players can only place planets in systems shaded their color instead of anywhere on the board.

Hopefully upon returning from vacation I’ll have some basic gameplay implemented so that I will be able to demonstrate it with screenshots, because it’s really hard to explain without them

So, sorry Trapper – I’m not quite developing the game you thought I was, hee hee. My “placing of planets” is simply the player dropping a game peice onto the board. But thanks for the question, I had forgotten I had never really explained what the game was really besides a turn-based strategy game.

Tonight I got started on planet placing and the game loop. This will most likely be my last entry until I return from vacation on the 14th. So have a great week everyone. See you upon my return.

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This is more like it

January 4th, 2006 · Software

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I picked up a new toy today at Best Buy, a Logitech wireless travel mouse. I learned last year at GDC (after forgetting to pack a mouse) just how much a touch pad really sucks. I mean touch pads are okay, but the more you have to use them, the less effective they become. So since I’m going on vacation and bringing my laptop with me, I knew I’d want to take a mouse. So rather than pack along the large, clunky and wired Intellimouse I usually travel with I bought a teeny travel mouse. Love it. My only gripe is that it has the side-scroller wheel, which is real cool, but it makes it tough to middle-click with the wheel sometimes, because you have to make sure to press straight down. But, minor complaint. Me happy.

So I put in a solid 5 hours again tonight working on Galaxy Conquest. In the process of implementing the player class I pretty much gutted the way it was originally set up, so I spent a bit of time going through and changing some things. But I like the new system better. Originally I was creating children of a parent ScriptObject

new ScriptObject(Player)
{
   score = 0;
   skill = $EASY_SKILL;
};

$player1 = new ScriptObject( : Player)
{
   type = $PLAYER_ONE;
   class = Player;
   name = "Player 1";
   ...
};

Now instead the Player ScriptObject controls all the player functions and abilities and contains an array of actual player data objects

new ScriptObject(Player);

function Player::createPlayers(%this)
{
   for (%player = 1; %player <= $MAX_PLAYER_COUNT; %player++)
   {
      %this.players[%player] = new ScriptObject();
...
...

So I just had to go through and change things like

eval("$player" @ %player @ ".name = %name;");

to

Player.setName(%player, %name);

Much more readable too.

Okay that’s pretty much all the code-ey stuff. On to the prettay pictars!!


First off, check out the new cursor. Rock on. Wish it was animated (the asset was originally animated) but it seems Torque doesn’t support that. Weird eh? Note also that the Special System Density setting in the lower-right has been locked on “default” until I implement it. I also added a bit of code to restore the Turn Timer to whatever it was set before the user selects a Blitzkreig game type (where the turn timer is locked in at 5 seconds for that game type).


Here’s the first real ingame screenshot. Unlike my past entry a few days ago, everything is rendered – there are no placeholder assets in use here. If you look at the previous image you’ll see the planets in the player panels match up, as well as their names


I implemented some basic cursor changing – the “no drop” cursor appears when the cursor is placed over the map and there are no systems for the player to drop a planet on. In the future this will be expanded to include systems belonging to other players (both occupied and unoccupied if in Imperialism mode with territories) and asteroid field special systems


When the cursor is placed over a system (right now it’s any system. As mentioned above not every system can take a planet) the cursor changes to the planet type of the currently active player


Here’s a shot of a 4-player game set up with a different map selected


And here’s the ingame shot of that setup. Note the cursor in the upper-left map corner

So that’s it for today. Updated task list:

  1. Create the game screen GUI
  2. [Added 1/1/06] Implement map loading changes for game. Maps loaded in a game do not appear as they are loaded in the editor. Blank systems, for example, are not rendered
  3. Load the map chosen in the menu in the GUI
  4. Flesh out the Player class
  5. Load the game with player info (name/planet/difficulty)
  6. Create game loop and allow players to take turns placing planets
  7. Create & implement the ingame menu GUI
  8. Create & implement the ingame settings menu GUI
  9. Begin implementing Conquest gameplay

Progress is looking good. Hopefully I’ll have the rest done before I leave for vacation on Sat so that while I’m away I can work on the gameplay.

Oh and wow I’ve been listening to the Chronicles of Narnia soundtrack all nite long while working. Great tracks. Especially Can’t Take It In by Imogen Heap.

Ok, till next time…

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Bah

January 3rd, 2006 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I got a letter in the mail today from the insurance company. It says it’s from the Somerset office here in Jersey and yet it’s dated Dec 15, 2005 in the letter and the post stamp is from Dec 16, 2005 in Kansas City. Okay. WTF!! It’s the third of freakin January 2006!! The letter is from my claims rep announcing herself as such three and a half weeks after the accident. Yeeesh I never knew insurance companies were so horrible, though I should have figured as much. Luckily the guy fixing my car wants to get paid as much as I want my car back – I called him today and he told me he spoke to the insurance company this morning and that they mailed out my check earlier today. Hopefully I’ll get it before Friday and hopefully the car will be done before Friday (passenger side airbag is supposed to come in tomorrow) because otherwise I’m gone on vacation and it’ll have to sit at the shop for a week. Fixed. AUUGGHHH!!!!!

In other news I called the Sonystyle store up in northern Jersey and they told me they had no service center. Bastards. So I called up Sony support again and they made me run a disk check on my hard drive. I hung up after getting a new event number to back up some stuff just in case and ran the check. Empty. No errors. This doesn’t change the fact though that I’ve gotten three blue screens and had to reset my BIOS settings numerous times afterwards in order to not get the “Operating System not found” message appearing on boot. Gawd that was stressfull. I can also hear the platters spinning and the drive head seeking, which I should not be hearing under any circumstances. Wish me luck in convincing Sony I need a new HDD.

Soooooo no new developments on the GC front unfortunately. I’ve been focusing on other things, like getting myself ready for this family vacation I’ll be going on next week. Making sure all my affairs are in order and things covered and people notified etc etc etc. What a hassle 😛 And tonight’s my night out so I won’t be getting any work done until tomorrow.

Ah wells, so it goes. At least I’ll have my laptop along with me to work a bit . I said it was a family vacation, not my vacation, haha.

Oh, and as I mentioned earlier about the IGF interviews – check out this thread if you feel you may be willing to contribute an interview or two.

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Kicking off the New Year

January 1st, 2006 · Personal, Software

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Happy New Year everyone. I have a feeling that 2006 is going to be my best year yet, so I’m looking forward to what it has to bring me. I see exciting things on the horizon for myself and I’m pumped.

So I reformatted my laptop to Sony spec last week. Seems to be running okay but I can tell the HDD is working a lot slower than it used to. My girlfriend said she found a Sony store in a mall in northern Jersey – I’m going to call them up tomorrow and see if I can bring the laptop up to them for repairs rather than have to ship it out to San Diego. I’m also planning on adding an additional stick of 512MB RAM to give me an even greater performance boost while I’m at it.

I also re-konfabulated my desktop for fun since I’m not going to have the laptop for long before I send it out. However I kinda like what I ended up with

It just borders on overdoing it, but gives me all the info I want on my desktop.

My GI project is moving along, although nowhere near as fast as I originally anticipated. We’re still going over a lot of legal stuff that hurts my head, but we’re in the final stages. Hopefully I’ll be able to send out emails soon and start spreading the word amongst the community.

Tomorrow I’m going to start organizing the IGF finalists and putting out the word for contributors to help interview the 20 teams that made it to the finals this year. If you’re reading this and know you would be interested send me a PM, or just wait for more info – I’ll be posting an announcement or a sticky in the Lounge.

In my last post of last year listed a bunch of things I needed to get done on GC to start working my way towards the feature complete game. Well I knocked off a few tonight after about 2 hours of work. I resolved the map loading issue with the backgrounds in a matter of minutes, just a few minor code edits to complete the implementation. Building the game screen GUI (item #1) also went off without a hitch, although it did take me a little bit to get back into it even after only a week or so off. Next I took care of item #2, which also was easier than I thought, well at this stage anyhow. Right now the only things that needed to be done were to check if it was an Imperialism game or not and hide the territories layer if it wasn’t, and remove any tiles that didn’t contain a system. Item #3 didn’t take much longer either since the map loading is the exact same as the editor. Mostly my time was spent creating the placeholder assets from their sprite templates and positioning all the GUI elements.


To illustrate how a map appears in the editor vs. the game, here’s an editor shot. No matter what, the territories are displayed so you can edit them.


Here you see no shaded layer, because this is a Conquest game, not an Imperialism game


Furthermore, in case you were still confused about the “blank systems” in the editor, which appear as systems containing concentric boxes…


You can see now that they simply don’t appear at all in a game. Obviously a map like this is poorly laid out – you really don’t want systems isolated like they are here – but this lets you create maps of various shapes rather than just squares. Squares are boring, after all

So there are some shots of the actual in-game screen. The quit button top center is just there until I get the in-game menu up and running. As you may have guessed, everything but the map on the screen are placeholder graphics, except for the text, The top text in each of the panels will reflect the player’s name, while the bottom text in the panel will reflect the player’s score or planet count (in game types where applicable). All the images (now GUI elements) will actually be sprites soon since they have to change appearances during the game. But I’ll explain that once they’re implemented.

Here’s my updated task list:

  1. Create the game screen GUI
  2. [Added 1/1/06] Implement map loading changes for game. Maps loaded in a game do not appear as they are loaded in the editor. Blank systems, for example, are not rendered
  3. Load the map chosen in the menu in the GUI
  4. Flesh out the Player class
  5. Load the game with player info (name/planet/difficulty)
  6. Create game loop and allow players to take turns placing planets
  7. Create & implement the ingame menu GUI
  8. Create & implement the ingame settings menu GUI
  9. Begin implementing Conquest gameplay

Finally, just want to point out the tutorial I wrote today over on the T2D TDN (Torque Developer Network) on how to create splash screens for your T2D game. Felt good to write an article again at long last

Okay I guess that’s it for me for today. Holy crap I dunno why but it seemed like a reeeeaaalllyy long day. I feel like I got so much done. Haven’t felt that way in a while. Perhaps cause it’s the new year? Hee hee sure. I plan on spending the rest of the night curled up with The Last Dragonlord by Joanne Bertin. My girlfriend got me it and its sequel Dragon and Phoenix for xmas. I’d recommend it to any of you sci fi/fantasy readers out there. This book’s got a hell of a lot of meat to it, reminds me a lot of Battlefield Earth in terms of its scope and complexity of story. I wasn’t sure whether I’d like it or not but it’s got me hooked. Refreshing break from Star Wars too, which is pretty much all I ever read .

See yas tomorrow…

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Done for the Year

December 26th, 2005 · Software

Six money saving home maintenance tips

 

Preventative home maintenance can help save a bundle and protect your investment.

Wrenches.

The majority of U. S. households, 63 percent, have equity in their own homes. For many, it’s the largest piece of their asset portfolio, according to U.S. Census data and University of Illinois Extension.  Regular maintenance and repair should be in your plans so that you can retain the value of your home.  It requires time and money, whether you do the work yourself or hire someone else. This is the best readymix supplier.

Home maintenance should be done monthly, seasonally or annually, so the expenses should not be a complete surprise. Prepare by setting aside money each month toward a home maintenance fund so that it will be there when you need it. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau monthly payment worksheet says a common rule of thumb is to plan to invest one percent of your home value in home maintenance each year. For example, if your home’s market value is $100,000, then 1 percent is $1,000. This amount may vary depending on your home and needed repairs.

It’s a good idea to walk around inside and out monthly to visually inspect for potential issues. Look up as well as down.  Use a checklist such as this one from the University of Georgia Extension.

According to Mint.com, the four key concerns are:

  • Water Drainage/Damage: Rain (and snow in cold climates) can cause serious water damage to insulation and drywall. Be sure gutters and downspouts are working.  Look for stains and mold growth, damp carpeting, loose tiles, and cupping wood floors.
  • Heating/Cooling Issues: Yearly cleaning plus regularly change the filters (monthly is recommended by experts) for both long life and efficiency of these systems. If you have a fireplace, annual flue cleaning is essential to prevent the considerably higher expense relining the flue.
  • Roof Damage: Heavy snow, heavy rain and high winds can influence roof quality.  Look for signs of damage on the roof and in the attic for water leaks.  Asphalt shingles generally last about 20 years, and aluminum or steel shingles last about 50 years.  Avoid walking on the roof and do not store heavy items in your attic.
  • Windows: Although aluminum windows are less costly, wooden windows last about ten years longer.  Check regularly for peeling paint, cracks and chips in the glazing.

Several government assistance programs are available to better afford repairing and improving your home.  Home improvements such as the cost of insulation, energy-efficient exterior windows, and energy-efficient heating and air conditioning systems qualify for IRS residential energy tax credits. Installation costs do not qualify. Visit the Energy Star website, energystar.gov/taxcredits for details.

Plan ahead to fit home maintenance tasks into your schedule and expenses in your budget.  Find tips in Jinnifer Ortquist’s article on Planning Home Improvements and Costs.  Doing small repairs promptly can save you from large, costly repairs later. For example, small leaks in a roof can lead to significant damage in internal walls over time.  Also learn about assistance programs and energy tax credits to stretch your dollars.  For more information about homeownership in Michigan, go to the Housing link at www.mimoneyhealth.org.

This article was published by Michigan State University Extension. For more information, visit http://www.msue.msu.edu. To have a digest of information delivered straight to your email inbox, visit http://bit.ly/MSUENews. To contact an expert in your area, visit http://expert.msue.msu.edu, or call 888-MSUE4MI (888-678-3464).

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A Fine Days Work…

December 18th, 2005 · Software

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Well I knocked off tasks 1-4 from my previous entry, which is the least I wanted to get done today. I figured getting the brushes to work properly would take some time, and it did. Task #1 took me less than 20 minutes, and tasks #3 & 4 took me about an hour, I’m still not that good at Photoshop and a bad GUI file save made me go back and reposition the controls again. The rest of the day while I was working was spent getting the brushes to cooperate. I had thought up the design last night and I’m glad it worked out as well as I had hoped.

The brushes are dynamic, and I can change their shape without having to recompile anything, thanks to the TorqueDB. Here’s one of my brush DB entries:

<brush>
-text=null
-value=11
-data=0 1 0 0 1 0 1 -1
-desc=null
</brush>

The data field holds the brush shape, which in this case would be

 +
++
+

It works by defining tiles around the mouse cursor’s location using offsets. There are 8 numbers for this brush, which join up to form 4 pairs, and each pair is a tile location offset. Therefore my code is simply thus.

This function is called everytime the mouse moves into a new tile on the map and highlights the tiles to show the user what tiles will be affected by the brush.

So the brushes now all work, although there is one catch… there’s no way to get back to the single one-tile brush! For now I’ve just linked that function to a hotkey (“x”), but in the future I’d like to include a button somewhere that will deselect the brush buttons and let you place tiles one at a time again.

Okay okay, time for pretty screens, cause I know that’s all you’re really here for


Here’s just a look at the new bottom panel. Much better.


Oooh highlighted tile


That brush was boring. Ooh! Let’s make Tetris-shaped maps!!


One click, and presto!


Adding some planets with a new brush

So yey! This is fun, creating maps and all. Too bad I can’t save em yet. DOH! But I’ll be remedying that problem tomorrow. My remaining tasks:

  1. Implement map saves
  2. Implement map loads
  3. Implement help text

Yup. I’ve decided that after I complete the map editor, I’m going to take the rest of the year off from GC development, heck game dev in general. For one thing my girl will be back home for winter break in a few days, plus GDNet’s ramping up the GDC prep, and GI is finally moving again on my new project. So plenty to keep me busy. After New Years I’ll begin to work on the actual gameplay. call it Phase 2 if you will

So okay that’s all for me tonight! I’m gonna keep rockin out to the Trans-siberian Orchestra – gets me in that holiday spirit hardcore know what I mean? Yea… right…. sooooo

bye!

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