The players can now sever each other's routes. Also, if one severs the other's source route that connects his two central nodes, the victory screen now pops up with the players' statistics. There are a few more tasks to complete concerning player interaction before I move on to the next step, which I think will be fog of war. But you never know.
clevceo
Friday, April 27, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Vista, Busy
Vista is up and running just fine. The only trouble I had was connecting to the VPN at work, which I finally figured out was a problem with the firewall. I tested the game and it ran flawlessly.
Finals week is coming up, so time is precious. I've been pretty busy lately outside school as well, so I haven't made any progress in over a week.
Hopefully I can soon get back to work. I'll first allow interaction between players, and then I'll get started on the fog of war. That's the plan for the next few weeks. Comment.
clevceo
Finals week is coming up, so time is precious. I've been pretty busy lately outside school as well, so I haven't made any progress in over a week.
Hopefully I can soon get back to work. I'll first allow interaction between players, and then I'll get started on the fog of war. That's the plan for the next few weeks. Comment.
clevceo
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Vista
I haven't had time to work on anything lately. Hopefully I'll find some moments here and there. I just installed Vista Business (in 15 minutes!) and I'm currently reinstalling all the software I need. I haven't yet tested xna on Vista, but I assume that when they say it's totally vista compatible that they mean it, especially since they're both microsoft and both brand new. Thus, I'm not worried.
Many of my friends think Vista is satan-spawn, but they haven't yet given me any plausible reasons why. So far, I like it. I haven't hit any ruts yet and it looks great. But only time will tell.
clevceo
Many of my friends think Vista is satan-spawn, but they haven't yet given me any plausible reasons why. So far, I like it. I haven't hit any ruts yet and it looks great. But only time will tell.
clevceo
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
"Multiple Player Support"
Phew! I just finished the "multiple player support". It took some real thinking and some real doing to get it up and running. I also had to redo the controls, which are now much more flexible.
I also began a method to display custom text on the screen. I drew each character manually, but it wasn't so bad because they were all block letters, so I used GIMP, created a 20x20 brush and snapped to the grid, which was also spaced 20x20.
After I complete the text display code, I'll probably implement a pause menu, then go right into the fog of war, which will probably take a little time to figure out.
Things are going well so far. Please comment.
clevceo
I also began a method to display custom text on the screen. I drew each character manually, but it wasn't so bad because they were all block letters, so I used GIMP, created a 20x20 brush and snapped to the grid, which was also spaced 20x20.
After I complete the text display code, I'll probably implement a pause menu, then go right into the fog of war, which will probably take a little time to figure out.
Things are going well so far. Please comment.
clevceo
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Screenshot, Multiple-Player-Support, Multi-Player
First screenshot. If you'll notice, the left half of the route system is being retracted. The big white spots are destroyed nodes and the little ones are people. Normally when you retract, you salvage most of the people, but in this case, there was a traffic jam, so few survived.
The Y's are switches, which split the route in two. The +'s are the central nodes, which slowly generate people. The little dark ones are the sub nodes, which are basically cheap waypoints. And the lightning bolt is an accelerator node, which boosts the speed of the people passing through it. It's great for building a long road real fast, for scouting.
I've begun implementing the "multiple player support" as I've coined it. Not multiplayer, but multiple players, as in a human and some ai players.
During my little "vacation", ideas came and went. I've been thinking about how I'll implement the fog of war and I have a pretty concrete idea. Also, I'm going to allow the user to map the controls how he/she sees fit.
Since multiplayer isn't an option at the moment, I might implement a split-screen option where multiple players can play on the same computer (with multiple gamepads or something).
I've been thinking about the graphics and how they'll look in the end. I want something unique and interesting.
Anyway, that's about it for now. Comment please.
clevceo
The Y's are switches, which split the route in two. The +'s are the central nodes, which slowly generate people. The little dark ones are the sub nodes, which are basically cheap waypoints. And the lightning bolt is an accelerator node, which boosts the speed of the people passing through it. It's great for building a long road real fast, for scouting.
I've begun implementing the "multiple player support" as I've coined it. Not multiplayer, but multiple players, as in a human and some ai players.
During my little "vacation", ideas came and went. I've been thinking about how I'll implement the fog of war and I have a pretty concrete idea. Also, I'm going to allow the user to map the controls how he/she sees fit.
Since multiplayer isn't an option at the moment, I might implement a split-screen option where multiple players can play on the same computer (with multiple gamepads or something).
I've been thinking about the graphics and how they'll look in the end. I want something unique and interesting.
Anyway, that's about it for now. Comment please.
clevceo
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
New Graphics
I felt it was time to have something more than the mere placeholders on the screen, so today I created some nifty .pngs with Inkscape. They're simple, but attractive. However, I'm unsure about the central node's pic. It just doesn't fit.
Anyway, the game is a little more presentable, which is good because I'm going on a trip to see family tomorrow, and I'll probably end up showing it to a few.
clevceo
Anyway, the game is a little more presentable, which is good because I'm going on a trip to see family tomorrow, and I'll probably end up showing it to a few.
clevceo
Main Menu
The Main Menu is up. However, there is currently only one option: Play. However, it's set up in such a way that I can easily add more options, so it's still a big step forward. And one option or not, it feels great seeing the game come closer to completion. It was also refreshing to be able to work on something other than the gameplay for once.
clevceo
clevceo
Monday, April 2, 2007
Multiplayer, AI, Retracting, Main Menu, Indie Games
I did some research on multiplayer support and I discovered that XNA, the framework I'm using for the game, does not yet directly support it (XNA is only 1.0), but they intend to address it in the next release. Thus, multiplayer will be pushed to the end of my list of things to do. I hope 2.0 comes soon.
Since multiplayer is being put off, I began reading into AI last night. I have a book called Programming Game AI by Example, by Mat Buckland. It had good reviews and so far it's good. I'm totally new to AI, so I hope it's not too hard to pick up. I hope that the simplicity of Sever's design will make the AI easier to develop.
Earlier today, I added the ability to retract your own routes instead of severing. Retracting takes a while to complete, but you are able to salvage some of your people. However, if you need to get rid of it immediately, severing is the way to go, even though it means losing everyone in the route at the time. Sometimes sacrifices must be made.
After that, I cleaned up the code that handled the controls. I sorted them out and organized them to be much more flexible and useful.
After that, I was going to add the ability to have more than one player on the field, but I put it off because it's too tedious. I know exactly how to do it, but it means twenty minutes of running through my code and making a thousand tiny changes. Thus, I instead began the implementation of a main menu screen. At the moment, all I have done is the restructuring of the game loop, but I'll have the menu up and running in no time.
In between "coding sessions", I sometimes play some other indie games to better see how games work. My current favorites are Darwinia and Defcon by Introversion, and Bullet Candy by Charlie's Games. Darwinia won the McNally Grand Prize at the IGF in 2006, and it deserved it. Play it. Defcon is simple in a grand way, which is what inspired Sever. Bullet Candy is really fun if you play the Survival and Asteroid modes (play it with a gamepad).
clevceo
Since multiplayer is being put off, I began reading into AI last night. I have a book called Programming Game AI by Example, by Mat Buckland. It had good reviews and so far it's good. I'm totally new to AI, so I hope it's not too hard to pick up. I hope that the simplicity of Sever's design will make the AI easier to develop.
Earlier today, I added the ability to retract your own routes instead of severing. Retracting takes a while to complete, but you are able to salvage some of your people. However, if you need to get rid of it immediately, severing is the way to go, even though it means losing everyone in the route at the time. Sometimes sacrifices must be made.
After that, I cleaned up the code that handled the controls. I sorted them out and organized them to be much more flexible and useful.
After that, I was going to add the ability to have more than one player on the field, but I put it off because it's too tedious. I know exactly how to do it, but it means twenty minutes of running through my code and making a thousand tiny changes. Thus, I instead began the implementation of a main menu screen. At the moment, all I have done is the restructuring of the game loop, but I'll have the menu up and running in no time.
In between "coding sessions", I sometimes play some other indie games to better see how games work. My current favorites are Darwinia and Defcon by Introversion, and Bullet Candy by Charlie's Games. Darwinia won the McNally Grand Prize at the IGF in 2006, and it deserved it. Play it. Defcon is simple in a grand way, which is what inspired Sever. Bullet Candy is really fun if you play the Survival and Asteroid modes (play it with a gamepad).
clevceo
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Rumble, Intersection, Sever, Death
Last night, I finished up the gamepad rumble support. I now have a queue of rumble "requests" that expire after a time. The highest rumble intensity of course is the one sent to the controller. After that one expires, the next one kicks in. Or I can set a continuous rumble at a certain intensity, but I have to remember to turn it off when I'm done with it.
After that, I worked on detecting line intersections when the user tries to build a route over an existing one. I'm pretty good at figuring math out on my own, so I tried to do it myself, but after a few hours (maybe four) of frustration, I threw my hands in the air and googled it. Sure enough, it's some complex equation that I never would have figured out, so I'd wasted four hours for nothing. But I did figure out how to detect whether a line intersects with a circle (route crosses a node).
You see, I graduated highschool in only Algebra 2, but I was placed in Calculus in college, so I skipped everything in between. I've had to teach myself a whole lot. I think I've become a little too self-reliant. But when it comes to indie development and all I've got is myself, self-reliance is an asset.
Most of today was spent getting the routes to retract correctly after they're severed. The biggest challenge was managing the people in the routes as it happened. When the retracting route outruns the people, they die. I had bug after bug, but it's finally solved. However, severing at the moment is done only by the player to his own route (right-click). The only time when a player would sever his own route is in an emergency when he needs to do something else with the route really fast.
When you want to salvage the people in the route, you can suck the route back in at the speed people travel so that they have a chance to evacuate (some may still die if there's a traffic jam). This could come in handy when you're attacking the enemy; you can retract one route as you build another so you never run out of people. This function is my next project.
After I fixed the severing, I had to work on displaying the "dead" people. When people die, I add them to a list of dead people, each with an expiration. As they near the expiration, they fade. However, I wanted them to be distinguishable from the live ones, so I made their blend mode additive, which really made them look cool. Then, I decided to do the same for the destroyed nodes, only with bigger white circles. Finally, I made a big intricate route system, and severed it, just to watch the chain reaction. It was great.
Soon, I'll be adding some screens of what I've done so far.
clevceo
After that, I worked on detecting line intersections when the user tries to build a route over an existing one. I'm pretty good at figuring math out on my own, so I tried to do it myself, but after a few hours (maybe four) of frustration, I threw my hands in the air and googled it. Sure enough, it's some complex equation that I never would have figured out, so I'd wasted four hours for nothing. But I did figure out how to detect whether a line intersects with a circle (route crosses a node).
You see, I graduated highschool in only Algebra 2, but I was placed in Calculus in college, so I skipped everything in between. I've had to teach myself a whole lot. I think I've become a little too self-reliant. But when it comes to indie development and all I've got is myself, self-reliance is an asset.
Most of today was spent getting the routes to retract correctly after they're severed. The biggest challenge was managing the people in the routes as it happened. When the retracting route outruns the people, they die. I had bug after bug, but it's finally solved. However, severing at the moment is done only by the player to his own route (right-click). The only time when a player would sever his own route is in an emergency when he needs to do something else with the route really fast.
When you want to salvage the people in the route, you can suck the route back in at the speed people travel so that they have a chance to evacuate (some may still die if there's a traffic jam). This could come in handy when you're attacking the enemy; you can retract one route as you build another so you never run out of people. This function is my next project.
After I fixed the severing, I had to work on displaying the "dead" people. When people die, I add them to a list of dead people, each with an expiration. As they near the expiration, they fade. However, I wanted them to be distinguishable from the live ones, so I made their blend mode additive, which really made them look cool. Then, I decided to do the same for the destroyed nodes, only with bigger white circles. Finally, I made a big intricate route system, and severed it, just to watch the chain reaction. It was great.
Soon, I'll be adding some screens of what I've done so far.
clevceo
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