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Posts Tagged ‘Blood Soaked Deadly Dungeons of Doom!’

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.

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..

Wooosh… that’s the sound of another gale force great idea blowing around.
Yup, they’re pretty much everywhere at this time of year. Annoying, persistent, unformed, and generally really exciting!

The thing is, they’re always much more exciting and enticing than what you’re doing ‘now’. Especially if what you’re doing now is rewriting something you’ve done before, in a new engine. In the last 3 weeks I must have changed my mental description of what I’m working on half a dozen times. Each new project, idea, or whim is a terrible distraction that’s so much fun to just dive into.

Because for me the best part is the initial rush of putting ideas and framework into place and start various parts gestating. So when I haev nothing but a couple months of grunt work (asset managers, re-inputing pathfinding algorithems, importing graphics, dealing with text input etc) it is so easy to want to start over and tackle an enticing problem and find out how various systems would interact.

Hell, at this point I’ve practically convinced myself to ditch BSDDoD! and hop into making ‘Irismel’ – the fantasy village simulator instead.  I’ve even started making some basic tiles and mock screenshots.

That’s gotta stop.

It’s time to get excited about BSDDoD! again.  So I’m laying off the big coding for a bit and painting some assets, concept art and visually interesting things.

The upside is that I’ll have things to show before too long and I can get the show back on track.

I am, however, thinking of changing the title from Blood Soaked Deadly Dungeons of Doom! to something more palatable and url worthy.