Close to Testing

Nearly the entire day was spent on Sever. Anything else was an interruption. I think I'm getting too impatient. Every second is Sever. But it feels so good. I'm making so much progress in so little time. Every day I try something new and succeed. Success used to be foreign to me, but Sever gives me success on a daily basis. I can't wait for the day I release it.

The next milestone is to get a game started, displaying everything on-screen, camera movement, etc. No mouse interaction yet, but that will come soon thereafter. Right now, I'm just focusing on making that first step. Once I'm there, I can finally test and debug. All this time I've been coding in the dark. It compiles, that's all I know.

The networking code is mostly done! I actually did it! It was easy! I created a separate class for each type of packet. I hope it works.

The player classes are getting closer. I'm at the point were I'm no longer building, and instead filling in the holes. The problem is finding them all. For now, I'm just doing the ones I can find easily. I'll let the others show up when I start the testing. There's going to be alot of debugging before I get the first node on-screen. It's discouraging, but I've beaten it before. I can do it again.

I'm making a loading screen. In the past, the loading was so quick and simple that it was done all in one quick method when the game started. Now, with networking, there's some extra stuff to do, such as getting all players on the same page before the game starts. It's still going to be short. In fact, for all I know it'll display for only a few frames. Nonetheless, it makes it easier for me to put all that code in a separate state.

I redid my camera code from the last Sever iteration, which was borrowed from the before it. Yep, I said I would eventually redo it and I finally did. It was messy. It supported rotation, which required alot more math and is useless in Sever, so it was tossed. The class is now simpler and cleaner. However, instead of doing it from scratch as I have with everything else in this iteration (aside from the GUI and Input libraries), I still borrowed generously. It was alot of trial and error initially and I know it would be again if I didn't borrow. Besides, with a little tidying it's still good code.

I've been thinking about music, and I've realized that unless I either a) find someone to do it for me, or b) learn to myself, I'm not going to have any. I would very much like to find someone to do it for me, but it's unlikely and I don't want to take that chance. Therefore, I've taken it upon myself to download Anvil Studio and compose a diddy-a-day. I have four short songs so far. Later on when I'm ready to start on the music code, I'll use the least terrible song for testing. Hopefully I'll improve. That's the intention anyway.

Suggestions? Questions?

clevceo