TMC's Space Ranger Dev Diary

[fog]

Good job TMC, and after playing the demo I can appreciate the work, it looks bl**dy fantastic and like a wine it will get better! Hope you have as good a year next year!

And what about a year end update from you and that Christmas project you promised many months ago

[T_M_C]

Good job TMC, and after playing the demo I can appreciate the work, it looks bl**dy fantastic and like a wine it will get better!  Hope you have as good a year next year!

Thanks Jdog.

Thats really encouraging.   

TMC

[T_M_C]

Forgot to mention in my year review i also took a month or two off to start a second project.  My 2d elite inspired space trader game.    


Update
----------

I've come to the point in my limb animations editor where i need to save out animations.
This requires new folders that are seperate from the current set of game files.  ie, not level related.

I soon realised that i would need a way to create, delete and rename folders as well as a save and load system for the animations.

Pretty obvious i know but so far my system doesn't allow me to create folders of a specific name.  
I've been using sequential numbers for level folder names.  Thinking it would be much easier.

But in fact it's turned out to be a bit limiting.   

So, for now, i've stopped work on the animations editor and returned to the main editor to write a proper level folders management system.

This means a sub menu where i can scroll up and down a list of level folders to select a new one to work with, create new folders, delete old ones and rename any i see fit.

This has the advantage that i can give any level folder a unique name instead of number.  Making for a much more sensible solution than before.
Each level also has a description file associated with it, so this along with a relevent folder name should give alot of information about the level.

Currently about half way through coding.  

Hope to complete it before christmas.

Then i can use the same / modified system for the animations editor.

TMC

[fog]

Forgot to mention in my year review i also took a month or two off to start a second project.  My 2d elite inspired space trader game.   

Oh yeah, how's that going?  ANy chance of a screenie?

This requires new folders that are seperate from the current set of game files.  ie, not level related.

I soon realised that i would need a way to create, delete and rename folders as well as a save and load system for the animations.

Pretty obvious i know but so far my system doesn't allow me to create folders of a specific name. 
I've been using sequential numbers for level folder names.  Thinking it would be much easier.

But in fact it's turned out to be a bit limiting.   

So, for now, i've stopped work on the animations editor and returned to the main editor to write a proper level folders management system.

This means a sub menu where i can scroll up and down a list of level folders to select a new one to work with, create new folders, delete old ones and rename any i see fit.

This has the advantage that i can give any level folder a unique name instead of number.  Making for a much more sensible solution than before.
Each level also has a description file associated with it, so this along with a relevent folder name should give alot of information about the level.

Currently about half way through coding. 

Hope to complete it before christmas.

Ouch.  As I mentioned elsewhere, that sort of thing is typical of the dev process and I'm sure some non-developers don't fully appreciate all the background stuff needed to get things to work.

After a couple of recent emails I thought I must be doing things wrong because apparently "all you need to do is add feature X" or "just add it as an option".  No bother, I'll have that done in 2 minutes 

[prince caro 19]

After a couple of recent emails I thought I must be doing things wrong because apparently "all you need to do is add feature X" or "just add it as an option". 

your problem it your doing the thing called "programming", i much prefer the method of snapping your fingers and having the file automatically update itself to whatever you envisioned.  

[T_M_C]

Oh yeah, how's that going?  ANy chance of a screenie?

Yeh, sure, i'll also see about knocking up a demo.

It's still very early days though and all you can do is fly around the solar system.

This game is on the backburners though while i concentrate on my platformer.  But i'm sure i'll return to it when i need a break from my current project.

Ouch.  As I mentioned elsewhere, that sort of thing is typical of the dev process and I'm sure some non-developers don't fully appreciate all the background stuff needed to get things to work.

After a couple of recent emails I thought I must be doing things wrong because apparently "all you need to do is add feature X" or "just add it as an option".  No bother, I'll have that done in 2 minutes

Lol, yeh very true.

And the bigger your project gets, the more knock on effects any changes has.

Still, it's all part of the process of inventing software as you go.

I've lost count of all the rewrites and updates i've done.

your problem it your doing the thing called "programming", i much prefer the method of snapping your fingers and having the file automatically update itself to whatever you envisioned.

I'm looking forward to the days when computer AI is so advanced i can simply speak to the computer and tell it what i want, and let it do the coding for me.   

TMC

[fog]

Funny isn't it that a lot of people get very snobbish about what coding language or game engine you use while the rest of us would happily do away with coding because what we really want to do is design games.  There are two very different kinds of developers and somewhat ironically it's the ones who would rather not be coding that seem to be most productive.

After a couple of recent emails I thought I must be doing things wrong because apparently "all you need to do is add feature X" or "just add it as an option". 

your problem it your doing the thing called "programming", i much prefer the method of snapping your fingers and having the file automatically update itself to whatever you envisioned.  

See, now that's where I've been going wrong 

[JDog053]

Funny isn't it that a lot of people get very snobbish about what coding language or game engine you use while the rest of us would happily do away with coding because what we really want to do is design games.  There are two very different kinds of developers and somewhat ironically it's the ones who would rather not be coding that seem to be most productive.

I agree with that 100% !

[T_M_C]

As requested, here are some screenies of my 2d space trader / elite style game.

The spaceship is just temporary at the moment.  I do plan on making all the ships upgradable.

The red planet screeny is the sun / central star of any solar system.  It looks pretty neat in game, all swirling to give it an atmosphere.

It's not really pratical at the moment to release a demo.  Theres not much to in it anyway.

The planet images by the way, were created with a really neat photoshop plugin i found on the net.  I think it had a 30 day free trial, which allowed me enough time to knock up over 100 different ones.  using random generation settings.

Although the plugin actually allows you to render 2d circular planet images, they turn out a bit flat looking.

So instead, i used an option to render out sphere texture maps, which i then used to texture a 3d sphere mesh in 3ds max.  Apply some lighting to it as a 3d scene and then render out the final 2d hi res image with an alpha layer.

I then made a second lo res version of each image via paintshop pro.  So i could have in game detail settings.  


Update
----------

Nearly finished the folder management system for the main game editor.
Had a few issues yesterday trying to delete folders.  Took several hours to track down the problem to two routines, which had closestream filehandling commands just a few lines earlier in the code than they needed to be.  A typo, basically.

Just need to code the ability to create new folders now.  Which will be just a modification of an existing routine.
I expect that to be completed within the next day or two.

Then it's on to the Animations editor.

TMC

[T_M_C]

And some more.

TMC

[JDog053]

Yeah, they look awesome! This "mini" game will be a great project.

This is definately a hark back to that community project we were gonna have a go at!

[fog]

Yeah those planets are looking rather nice.  Very effective.

I know from my attempts at a similar game many years ago that this will mean a lot of work as there are loads of separate routines needed to handle all the navigation, trading, upgrade screens etc.  I hope you do better sticking with it that I did.

[T_M_C]

Thanks for the comments.   

This is definately a hark back to that community project we were gonna have a go at!

Yeh, it's a pity that never really took off.

If anyone wants to restart a community project with this code i'd gladly hand it over.  Blitzmax code and media.  As it will be gathering dust while i concentrate on my main project.

It would be nice to see someone take it on.

I was also toying with the idea of letting the player land on the planets and go wandering around.   As well as docking with space stations.

I've also written a solar system editor for this too.  Allows random generation of solar systems ect.

It has alot of potential.  Just that i don't have the time.

TMC
 

[TheKhakinator]

I once saw some... it was some weird spacey explor-y game. I think I got it off Acidplay, basically all you could do was pick a planet and land on it. It was just awesome that you could float around and like I think the whole thing was procedurally generated and stuff so just the idea of this virutally infinite universe to land on and see some badly 3D generated terrain... was kinda cool.

[T_M_C]

I once saw some... it was some weird spacey explor-y game. I think I got it off Acidplay, basically all you could do was pick a planet and land on it. It was just awesome that you could float around and like I think the whole thing was procedurally generated and stuff so just the idea of this virutally infinite universe to land on and see some badly 3D generated terrain... was kinda cool.

Cool.  An explore em up  

Fancy having a go at this project then 'TheKhakinator'  ?

Or use the code and media for any idea you have.

Blitzmax is a very flexible and easy language to use.

You could even start a dev blog.  


Update
----------

Have now completed the file and folder management system for the main editor.

I must say it's improved things quite alot.  I only needed to modify the portals sub editor to handle folder names instead of numbers and that didn't take too long.

Now, i can, audit folders and files, create folders, delete them and rename them.  All through scrollable menu's and lists.

I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out.

I've now gone back to my animations editor and started to implement a similar folder and file management system for that too.  Going well so far.

TMC