My Summer Project

[NightrainSrt4]

Did some texture work. Going to remove the grooves on the edges of the textures and keep them flat. Will emphasize that it is an edge with the art within the tile.

*Ladders can now be placed above or below another ladder without the need to have a solid block adjacent to each piece of ladder. As long as one piece has a solid block adjacent, the entire vertical stack is free to build on. Ladders that used to have a solid adjacent block still keep their position. Haven't decided if a ladder without a block or wall to tie itself to will fall apart or not.

*Ladders no longer stop damage from large distance falls. Can no longer toss a piece of ladder at the base of a pit to prevent damage.

*Fixed a bug with torches being placed on an invalid block location.
*Fixed a bug tied to the above, where this invalid block location would not show a texture for the torch, but would still give off light.

[billygoat333]

I really enjoy this thread. We get to see the process of building a computer game! very cool thanks for sharing!

[NightrainSrt4]

Thank you. I enjoy sharing. When I started this I never thought I would have anything near what I have, nonetheless all the things I have plans for and know I can do now.

[NightrainSrt4]

I spent all day working on tiles and only ended up with a slightly better dirt block. I guess all the practice will pay off, even if I can't (won't) use most of it.

[NightrainSrt4]

Made a wood block I'm relatively happy with.

Wall blocks are already in the game, I just have to code a function to check if you have a wall block equipped and if so apply it at the correct index. Then define an item type that can break the walls down. Once that is done, you'll be able to place walls / backdrops manually.

[AmEv]

Looking better by the minute!


Got a level editor in the works?

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks.

Not currently. Everything is stored in text now, but will all be converted to binary when I'm done. Either way, I won't do any special encoding, so if you know all the ID's for the tiles it wouldn't be difficult to make. I was thinking about doing it, as it was on my original list, but I've got to worry about more important gameplay aspects first. Limited time plus feature creep is a developers enemy.

When everything is done I may come back to it and write a quick level editor. Thing is, very few people are going to want to populate a huge world by hand, so I'll probably have to expose some of my internal cave system algorithms / functions and include those with the editor. Click and drag a region, type in the base type, the number of cave systems, etc.

I don't know. I'm worrying about game stuff for now, don't want to get to distracted. I might just make a level design mode that you can select when the game runs. I could have it ditch all the usual UI stuff, and when you open inventory just display a huge selection of blocks. Turn on no-clip and let the player fly around and have at it.

Not really sure yet. I want to get an actual game before I worry about that. If I don't get around to it, and somehow the game magically becomes popular, I'm sure modders will make one at the very least. Not that I would rely on them and just brush it off and leave it to them, but a collective group of people could probably make a better app than me with splitting my time up.

[Kayin]

Do you want me to take a look at doing some graphic work for you? I did all my own sprites for FO as well as some of the tiles. If you're using GraphicsGale it'll be no problem at all.

[NightrainSrt4]

Thank you for the offer. This is probably going to be the biggest piece on my resume / portfolio, so until I land that first critical job I want to keep everything just me.

I've been flipping back and forth on putting out feelers for art donations, but I don't know. I'm also not sure about any of the legal stuff if the game ends up being something I can go commercial with when it is all done.

If you, or anyone, has any ideas or wants to draw up some concept art or tiles I suppose it can't hurt to post them up. I can't guarantee that I would use them, but if something really jives then maybe we can work something out with formal credits / thanks in the game or something. Many people here I can trust. Other places, and even with my own brother when he was doing some art, I would have to worry about scouring the internet to check and make sure each piece wasn't ripped from something else.

As you can see, I'm torn about it. I don't see how it can hurt if any of you guys want to post any art up though that may or may not be used or edited, etc. I'm not ready to make any formal commitment to anyone, but if there is something posted that really works then I suppose we could talk when that time comes.

[NightrainSrt4]

You can now place background walls. I still need to define which item breaks them down, but placing works correctly. Select the item in the inventory and place just like any other block.

Again, I thought to darn much when I was putting this in. It wasn't working , so I started scouring my code for an hour again. All the signs slapped me in the face and I still went with thinking that something critical with my engine code must have been wrong. Nope, when I made the call to place the wall I accidentally called it with the x and y indices in the wrong order. So it was working, just placing and drawing the blocks in the wrong locations, lmfao.