Contrivia

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

No, I didn’t get all the goals completed this week, but I did do several extraneous things so I’ll just call it even.

Finished:

-Add damage display effect on parts [x]
-Reduced grid background brightness.
-Add indicators for which grid’s turn it is [x]
-Added new buttons.[x]
-Added all parts to test grid. Also added temporary stat boost parts. [x]
-Updated animation. [x]
-Fix shield flickering on selection bug [x]
-Revise grid positioning [x]
-Fix crash on picking empty slot [x]
-Fix minor bugs involving selecting multiple grids at once when they’re all zooming out (probably have them start out zoomed out) [x]
-Speed up hint boxes / text display (4sal) [x]
-Fix crash on opening part delete (middle click) [x]
-Fix wires flickering after being attacked [x]

Goals for next week:

-Optimize selection rendering
-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

All the goals were accomplished (sort of), I apparently went a bit too far this week since in order to achieve it there are half asses and bugs all over. I bet you can guess this week’s goals will be. Besides that, the goals were accomplished with the pierce, acid, freeze, and shield parts though a great deal of revision is necessary to call them completely finished. Besides that, you can see the sexy new battle interface which zooms in on whichever grid the mouse is over (a necessity for screen space, this game is a real hog in that regard). It’s not entirely complete but it’s mostly there. Good enough.

Goals for next week:

-Optimize selection rendering
-Have battle bar move with zoomed in grid
-Fix minor bugs involving selecting multiple grids at once when they’re all zooming out (probably have them start out zoomed out)
-Fix shield flickering on selection bug
-Test/fix multiple shields
-Fix crash on picking empty slot
-Add variable damage and attack reduction to acid effect
-Add effect display on parts
-Add krypt’s new part graphics
-Add damage display effect on parts
-Spped up hint boxes / text display (4sal)
-Add attack power manipulation to effect processing
-Fix crash on opening part delete (middle click)
-Fix crash on placing acid part to attack line without enough power.
-Fix grid alignment to handle entities dying.
-Add indicators for which grid’s turn it is
-Fix part animation for being un-disabled so it no longer freezes into its disabled view when it has been re-enabled.
-Add support for on-attack effects instead of the current status effect effects. (I should’ve used a better word
-Apply recharging to pierce and display the charge
-Fix attack effects to compensate for zooming
-Add sliding transitions for zoom bar.

All goals completed for this week. If you look closely in the first screen you’ll see that the weapons system in the left enemy has been totally knocked out, disabling it. While in the second screen you’ll notice that the right enemy has been destroyed. Besides that you can see my craptastic attack effect in both screens. Battle system is very nearly playable now. All that remains is proper implementation of the rest of the parts and attack effects. Ignoring, of course, the worst part of all: AI.

Incidentally, we’re going back to 800×600 soonish, 1024×768 pushes it a little too far to have all the effects we want. This, of course, has created new issues in where we’re going to put all the grids on screen. Current potential solutions are tabs and zooming, but neither is ideal.

Goals for next week:

• Implement at least 3 attack effects
• Implement at least one other battle part (probably shields)
• Add grid zooming + 800×600 layout

Ideally I’ll have more than just the minimums done, but I’m not pushing the deadline too hard.