It's Happening Again

Wow, I can't believe I'm writing this post.  I haven't touched Sever in so long.  For a long time, any efforts on any of my projects were short-lived, but this year I've put alot of work into both Idea and Sever.  You can look at my Idea blog to see what's going on there.  I'm a bit stumped on a few things, so I thought I'd give Sever another shot.  It's looking a ton more promising than it did in the past.

I just wrote the collision testing math today.  I haven't applied it to everything quite yet, but the hard part is over.  So far, there are only nodes and segments, no geography of any kind.  However, I've set up a robust system for handling the route systems and the people inside them.  It's simpler and better than anything I've written in the past.

I'm reusing bits and pieces of my previous code, like certain formulas I used.  However, there is one hefty bit of code I took and polished up.  It was a grid system.  Rather than collision testing every single object on the map, the map is split up into a grid, and each object is stored in its respective square.  When collision testing, only the relevant squares are tested.  That way, alot of processing time is saved.  It's a complex system, and I'm so glad I already had most of it written.

Things are working pretty well so far.  There are still some basic things I need to code before I really start moving forward.  I want to start on the network code fairly early on.  I also want to code some basic AI just for testing and fun.  I figure the earlier I start on these things, the earlier I'll find out I need to rewrite something.  It should save trouble later.  I made that mistake in the past, and I won't again.

The graphics are terrible, but that's placeholder graphics for you.

In the past, I was using Microsoft XNA for the graphics, but Microsoft has dropped support for XNA.  I tried looking around for an alternative and found MonoGame.  So far, it's good.  It doesn't do "everything" that XNA did,but it hopefully it will with future updates.  Plus, it's cross-platform, unlike XNA.  All that matters to me, though, is that it's doing what I need it to right now.

Anyway, thought I'd write an update.  Thanks for reading!

clevceo