My Summer Project

[Collinstheclown]

Need update video!

[NightrainSrt4]

Things have moved slowly, compared to the last few weeks, as the fiancee was on vacation time this week so it isn't visually a whole lot different. I've got the basic inventory menu up and going though.

I'm always a bit hesitant posting these videos as the graphics are just plain bad. It's all just placeholders to make sure it works, and when I have hours to spend on each piece I'll go in and swap them out. The underlying system is what I'm focused on. You guys seem to understand that, but some other people do not, and it is frustrating. I can sit and make each feature work perfectly with perfect graphics before moving on to the next, but chances are when I implement the next thing something from before will have to change, so its a lot of wasted time. I'd rather get things in there, then polish it up, then make it pretty.

But you guys seem to get that, so after lunch I will go through and just post what I've got so far, crappy placeholders and no real measurements on the UI and all, lmfao.

[NightrainSrt4]

As promised:


The jumps in the video are caused by the 30 second free limit on Fraps.

Placement is off of the item draw in the inventory because I just eyeballed the numbers. Working the system, not the polish. Don't want to waste time getting the placement of each perfect just to realize I want to change the entire UI around.

As usual the video looks better if you watch the 720P version on youtube.

EDIT: DigIt is just the inhouse code name. Made more sense than just calling it Game.
I've yet to apply gravity to the items, nor have I widened the aggro radius to make it so you don't have to physically touch them.
Stack quantity is set to 2 to show the stacking system quickly.

[NightrainSrt4]

I coded thinking of this ahead of time so it is simply a matter of switching out the textures and a single variable switch, but I'm pretty sure I'm switching to a 32x32 pixel block vs the 16x16 pixel current blocks.

As it is now, it looks too much like Terraria. I feel this change will bring the game back to its minecraft inspiration, while still keeping the 2D look and feel.

There are several pluses to this as well. I don't have to be so detailed in the art to still have it look nice, which is good as I am no pixel artist. Things like ladders and chests become much easier to implement.

I was already going my own way with warp-able Metroid/Castlevania/Demon's Souls style dungeons, but I think this change not only fits it better for me, but it makes it look different than just a Terraria clone/extension/mod. I want it to stand on its own without being too much like either while still drawing on the same/similar base concept of mining/building.

[NightrainSrt4]

Now that the weekend is over and some personal stuff handled I've got a few more updates.

*There are now wall tiles. So the dirt layer instead of being the back screen, now has dirt wall tiles behind all the blocks. The stone layer now has stone walls behind the blocks in its layer, etc.
*The game now keeps track of the current hotbar slot that is in focus.
*The game currently starts you with a pick.
*In order to mine blocks you must have a pick item in focus on the hotbar.
*In order to place blocks you must have the block you wish to place in focus on the hotbar.
*You can only lay blocks if you have sufficient quantity (1 or more). No more infinite blocks.
*Laying a block decreases the quantity of the stack by 1.
*You can't pick up any more items once your inventory is full.
*Player inventory is now persistent. It saves when you save, loads when you load.

*Currently, inventory, map, player files are all open. My focus for now, while the focus for the game is single player, is that the game should be modable. If a player wants to go through and change the map, hack the player inventory, it is all open. I could spend time locking it all down, but if a player wants to do that in their own game then why not. This is part of the reason for the slower save times as I'm not encoding anything, so it is all plain text. This may change, but for now I am trying to keep everything as open as possible.

[TheMainMan]

Sounds like you've been making good progress! Keep it up!

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. Got a few more things done today.

*Added space for an underworld layer
*Tested with increased world size. Currently 4000 blocks wide x 1200 high.
*If I go with that size or larger I need to rework the save system, as it takes nearly a minute to save (It's saving more than 15 million points of data in plain text . . .).
*Water now spawns in pools on world generation
*Reworked the textures and shapes. A bit too bubbly now, but cleaner looking than before. I've a huge appreciation for pixel artists now.
*Initial spawn now chooses a piece of land in the middle of the map instead of dropping the player from the sky.

I'm sure there's more. That is just off the top of my head and my focus is still on programming right now. That and food. Promised the fiancee I would break for dinner; I often forget to stop and eat.

[NightrainSrt4]

*Added a world choosing system to the menu. So now you can choose between five separate saves/world/character. The character is tied to the save tied to the world, but you get five different saves. That should be enough for now. Kind of like Zelda/Mario where you have a set of save slots.
*You can delete your old save in the menu system to make room for a new one.

And I realized my cave/ore vein algorithm was flawed. I should have seen it earlier as its based on a binary system which worked great for adding caves to the base world, but smoothing when several different block types are adjacent to one another is going to cause problems. I've already started to see anomalies in my short playtests.

I've come up with a base solution to cut save times down. I can save the world in chunks, and only save the pieces the player has modified. The initial save will still be slow for huge worlds though. From there on out it would only need to change chunks you've changed during that play period. Modders could still combine the chunks, edit the map, then cut it back into pieces. I don't know. I'll worry about it later.

[Kayin]

I know I'm having to use scripts in FO to keep loading times down. Dunno if there's something like that you can implement.

[NightrainSrt4]

For now I cut the world size back down. It's larger than I originally had it, but smaller than what I had just had it. It still takes a few minutes to walk from one edge of the world to the other, and this is just the overworld so I don't want it so large that you can't find the dungeon entrances.

The load times are pretty quick, even with the large world, it was the save times that were the problem. If I used a binary stream I'm sure I could cut the times way down, but using a text stream and saving in lines is causing major slowdowns on huge worlds. At the size the world is now there isn't a problem, but the large size was too slow. There are several ways I can still do a large world and fix the problem, I just have to decide if it is worth it, and if the large size would jive with the game.