Well it should play very similar to the demo's you guys saw before but written in C++ with OpenGL. The initial platform for the game will now be PC for free and I hope to port the code over to run on iPhone/iPad since i'm still able to use C++/OGL I think.

The editors interface is pretty straightforward, at this stage though I can avoid adding the tile and item sub-editor as they'll both be parsed from the image file. I'm working on my emitter placement editor which is quite simple...

You press on the particle button to take you to the sub-editor, you select from a list of emitters (using simple icons) for fire, smoke, mist, rain, snow etc. you place the icon of that emitter on a tile, you can add or a remove an emitter tag as you would a tile, the only weakness is you can't place multiple emitters on the same position. The same simple idea will be used to place enemies aswell, you select the enemy you want from a list of icons and place it on the grid, add or remove to taste and only one per tile. Emitters and Enemies can be placed over tiles whereas items can't since the player would need to collect them.

The editor itself is quite simple, probably alot simpler then what I did before...

I already have a particle emitter database filled with effects from my fireworks program, when a user wants to put an effect, they simply select emitters and place them on a tile.

The tile editor gives you a few tools to use like before, pencil (for placing a single tile), auto-fill (simple region fill algorithm), empty box, filled box and eraser. The level itself will start at the maximum grid size and you just place the level anywhere, when it saves it works out how much of the total grid to save so it only saves relevant geometry. There's only one type of tile and the game uses the auto-tile algorithm to finish off the rest of the level graphically, each tile (you select a tileset and not an individual tile) has a corresponding background image and mid-ground parallax scrolling set of graphics which it will load automatically when the level is previewed.

The item and enemy editor uses the item and enemy database of behaviours, you just select the item (start and end pos, health and fruit) and the enemy placement you select the enemy you want and place it on the grid square.

This is then all saved to a file and an image file and requires the appropriate game specific databases

sounds like a big job, but its not too bad compared to what i've been doing at work lol

I loved playing Crack. Been playing alot of Echoes+ recently aswell and it's still a great game, I actually prefer playing the longer classic Echoes game to playing the regular Geometry Wars game mode lol

Sounds like great progress though

I'm currently working on a level editor, but the draft levels are drawn up using MS Paint to quickly load in, auto-texture/tile and auto collision map my game world, a different colour was used for the enemies and items, start and end level marker.

I've made myself some simple gui elements and hope to make the editor nice and simple. doing an editor would give me some more control over an image as it would allow me to place multiple object on the same position, which is something i can't do with just a picture on its own. luckily for that robot project i had a go at making an editor so its not like its my first go at doing one, should make building it a bit faster aswell hopefully

all this just for a game where you fly a bat around a cave collecting fruit lol

Porting progress going well, i'm getting alot better at sensible object creation aswell as the idea of producing a game instead of a code base, which is something i'm certainly guilty of doing before...

Looking forward to plugging the game back together but not looking forward to designing levels

Sounds good that fog, DUO was always a great game

Hey, thanks folks

Yeah lots of stress but i'm finally all settled (after nearly 3 months).

Well, the Twitter app i'm writing is pretty straight forward.. I basically saw the end credits for Tron: Legacy and thought i'd make a great effect when it comes to displaying tweets with a few different effects. My friend has coded the backgrounded Twitter API stuff and i'm just working on making the front end nice and pretty, which at the moment it does. I'll take a screenshot when I get home and upload it if I remember.

Looking forward to doing more work on bat game, the last i remember doing on it was sorting out my enemy system, then i just needed to modify my level parser to load all of the enemies in. Will see anyway as i'm returning home this weekend to collect the code Its funny really as bat game was originally intended as a test application for my major platformer project Escape from Robot Factory!

I'm not dead!

Hey folks, with working i've been fairly busy recently which is going fine. I've finally got to the stage where I can code for fun again.

I am currently working on a project for my housemates at the minute, which is a visible twitter implimentation with a twist (which is very nearly done).
I'm still porting all my useful and relevant C#/XNA code over to C++/OpenGL to aid my production of tech demos and hopefully games...
and when I next head back home I hope to collect all of my Bat Game project to bring to the new house and see about finishing that off!

Hope you've all been well and although i've not been posting I have been reading as a guest!

Sorry for being so quiet recently what wth the move and the new job etc.

Have a merry christmas folks and a happy new year!

Sounds like good progress

Thanks for the encouragement folks, I start on Monday so hopefully it goes well!

For fun though, making my 2D stuff in OpenGL alot more manageable, basically as much like my XNA dabbling as possible but making use of the C++ ness of the stuff i'm doing. So i've written a simple SpriteBatch, ContentManager and a better interface for my KeyboardState and MouseState classes so I can grab info as and when required. My Camera is already 2 or 3D depending on what the projection matrix is set too so i'd be about at the state where I could develop something if it wasn't of OpenGL's lack of knowlede on what text is, so i'm thinking about using my spriteBatch and making it place a series of quads (with text or numbers) as a mono-spaced font...

I'm also dabbling in 3D still, have my Mesh loader working well and rendering stuff as expected. I'm in the process of writing 2 lighting shaders and removing my Lights from the fixed function pipeline. The shaders are Per-Pixel lighting and Bump Mapping as they'll be fairly useful. For fun i'm in the process of writing a Fur shader aswell!

Thanks folks, won't say whom but it's a company in Birmingham and it's game related but you won't have heard of them.

Forgot to say it was good enough for them to offer me a job so i'm in the process of sorting that out.

However since it was something i'd had fun producing i'll continue to tinker with it and upgrade it as expected with sound, multiple pre-defined spawn points and backgrounds, before improving it further to 3D.

I'm currently tinkering with my old 2D physics Engine that I made in the latter part of 4th year but specifically the Soft Body stuff as that interests me far more than rigid body physics and is also much much easier to code lol

Then I hope to get back to Bat Game eventually, where my aim is to finish it completely for WP7 release it in some form then port my tile engine to ++/OpenGL.

This project looks great Masked, keen to see how it pans out!

Finally added the code to actually apply the forces to my particles, so they do fall to the ground, infact the forces are applied to every particle except rockets even though they look good with curve, they don't actually reach the intended destination. Some effects look alot better, others don't... so I can just remove the bad ones ready for uploading the next demo lol but replace them with some nice effects and probably add a few more fountains to play with.

I fully intend to use OpenAL at somepoint to have the fireworks pick from a random assortment of sounds when fired as it would look alot nicer.

Need to add a background option as just a black background looks a little plain this is in the meantime before I upgrade it to display in a 3D scene which is my endgoal for the program.

I'm working on adding a simple system to place some fireworks launch points instead of just randomly across the X axis at the bottom of the screen, this will help greatly when it comes to the 3D scene as it won't translate very well.

Really appreciate the feedback so far folks and should have the slightly more advanced build uploaded later on.