Contrivia

Polished up systems but not to satisfaction. After discussion with Sew, the game has changed fairly radically. We are too slow and there is not enough time.

I finally fixed the physics to my satisfaction and have moved on to the movement of the other character which is turning out to be quite tricky of how I even want to handle it.

Gruedorf is starting to lose its purpose when I’m beginning to consistently forget to update. It’s not that I’m not doing anything, it’s that I completley forget to update. Anyway.

New game:

http://www.stellarx.org/sdhawk/jimmy.zip 

It’s sort of relevant only in the context of the community it was released for, so..

In other news, XNA game is going great in that I’m actually working on it and part of the mechanics are now functional though it’s somewhat slow going due to the undocumented physics libray.

Tiny amount of code progress and general familiarization C#. I almost forgot to post this, whoops.

I sat around and read C#/XNA articles all week without actually doing anything. This is going just like the last time I tried to do this contest. I’m buying a 360 tommorow while the $300 pros still exist, hopefully the new gadgetness will prompt work for me to work on it (running on the 360 is a contest requirement as well). More than likely I’ll spend two more weeks playing Blue Dragon instead, but a man can hope.

We’re putting Contrivia on hiatus.

It’s being replaced by an XNA contest entry, because 40,000 hamburgers is hard to say no to.

These entries are going to be as vague as Ustor’s for the next 3 months.

This week, I’m getting a grip on this nearly completley undocumented XNA physics library. It does what I want, but has no documentation to speak of so it’s rather annoying.

Ain’t gonna lie, this week is a disaster. My time line estimations are way off on account of two things: I’m having a hard time getting myself to work, and any given thing takes 3x longer due to my inexperience with wxwidgets.

Goals accomplished:
-File format saving/loading
-Persistent data across items

Goals for next week:
-Load/Saving in DB Editor
-Cut/copy/paste tree items
-Custom table editors (would have been tonight but I have to redo serious parts of the grid code to get this done)
-Add in-game data loading
-Start on event editor

It’s quite clear at this point that GRAPES isn’t entirely the small, short break I was hoping for. Crap.

We finally decided on a team name: Dwarven Forge Games. Above is the concept art for our logo done by x.

NOT AS MUCH DONE AS I WANTED. DB editor is quite a ways in but lacks saving and copy/paste functionality as well as loading the data into the game. WILL GET ENTIRE EDITOR DONE BEFORE NEXT POST. Special thanks to WIP for his awesome model code for handling things. Also, temporarily on the default wordpress theme since the old one was constantly breaking with big images.

I needed a break from Contrivia pretty bad. But I didn’t want to not work on it. So, I compromised. I worked on a tool for it.

GRAPES is a very old project I’ve wanted to make for several years now. In the simplest form you could describe it as applying an RPG Maker interface over ika. In reality it’s just a flexible game data editor with minor visual game scripting. I’ve felt for a long time the main thing missing from ika/sphere/verge etc is that there’s no proper editors for game data and it’s one of the biggest things holding games (especially RPGs) back. I also feel opening up a simple visual scripting side to it will allow passing on plot events to other team members who aren’t programmers (along with allowing them to work with data management). Besides that, provided a flexible enough library it would be possible to allow non-programmers to make complete games in ika without worrying about programming. But mostly, I want this for my own games.

Aside from the screen shot below I also hammered out a design doc for the system. It’s largely notes for myself than a detailed plan but so be it. My approach to this attempt at it is that of simplifying the programming job. I’m not even bothering to implement the fancier GUIs that RPG maker uses for data editing, I’m just going to apply grids to data editing and trees for managing. I’m also not even trying to have to apply to every case, just enough of what I need right now. My priority is just to make the damn thing work.

The editor side of it is split up into three editors: Type Editor, Database Editor, and Object Editor. The type editor defines the properties of Objects/Data and is what you see below. The database editor handles the specific data in the game- item statistics, character statistics, enemy statistics, initial flags (mostly so objects know where to look), etc. The object editor handles the specific objects, their property data, and contains their visual scripts. It’d be used for, say, scripting an NPC’s dialogue.

Specific to Contrivia I plan on using it for handling: Part variation data, event scripts, dialog scripts, and particle scripts (the artist needs to these and this is the best way to get the tools to him). Beyond that, this will be useful to just about every project I do in the future. I want it up and running by next week.

One week you’re making 10 midis, filming, making tons of Contrivia, done with homework early. The next, no midis, no filming, no Contrivia, behind on homework. In my defense, my desktop died and I wasted several days futilely in its repair. Against me, my laptop was still working though it’s choking on Contrivia (though really, my goal should be to optimize it to run on it).

Goals accomplished:
-Optimize selection rendering [x]

Goals for next week:
-Have battle bar move with zoomed in grid
-Test/fix multiple shields
-Add variable damage and attack reduction to acid effect
-Add effect display on parts
-Add attack power manipulation to effect processing
-Fix crash on placing acid part to attack line without enough power.
-Fix grid alignment to handle entities dying.
-Fix part animation for being un-disabled so it no longer freezes into its disabled view when it has been re-enabled.
-Apply recharging to pierce and display the charge
-Fix attack effects to compensate for zooming
-Add sliding transitions for zoom bar.
-Fix grid juttering when clicking on power router
-Fix grid juttering in editor
-fix overloader