One year later

And no I haven't given up yet.  I have been busy, and with university over, and work started, I still have managed to do a little work on hq:

Interesting things in that screenshot:

• Life bars (they change colour the lower the character's hp is)
• Shadows

I don't really want the life bars to stick under characters while fighting, seems a bit distracting, although it helps identify the weakest target.  Probably will go with a user interface overlay.

For shadows, the direction the light comes from can be changed (left to right angle, and top to bottom angle), but currently the shadows are just rendered flat onto the ground.  I've been reading up on shadow mapping and perhaps I'll implement it in the future, but if I don't, then we might just revert to simple shadows.

Right now I'll be working on the user interface, and then on more of the in-game logic (catching is buggy). Oh and, characters can be killed now (the logic for how to deal with a "dead" character is harder than you'd imagine).

Azriel~

Floating rocks... what next?

Work ended, university started, and I didn't feel like doing assignments, so, I took some time to work on the platforms for Hero Quest. I think it looks pretty shiny now, with the Storm Cliff map graphics drawn by Blue Phoenix. Not tested thoroughly, and certainly not bug-free. Anyways, I won't be working on HQ for another while while assignments keep coming. Till next time.



Azriel~

Slowing down

Work starts on Monday (first day at a real software company, yay), but that means progress on hq will be slowed.  Anyway, things I've done since the last update:

• background animation
• parallax scrolling (includes acceleration/deceleration)
• parsing character attributes (walking frame rate, speed, etc.)
• linking character attributes with the processor
• linking map friction with object behavior
• object points for maps (creating objects at the start of a game)
• correcting data parsing (various bugs)
• pulled out the frame element parsing from the Frames class into a common parser so that the code can be reused (instead of duplicating the object point code into the Map class, a single call to the corresponding function can provide the same functionality)

Also, here's a video of the camera scrolling + background animation:



I plan to get platforms working next, but still thinking about the design (the last one had to perform operations on platforms in multiple places, going to see if that can be reduced and contained).



Azriel~

Maps

Exams over - time for an update. Cleaned up the loading code so it's easier to add objects to the game without having to recompile, and also wrote code for maps - analogous to backgrounds in Little Fighter 2.  However, maps will be more interactive and dynamic.

The syntax differs slightly from the LF2 background data files - filled rectangular areas now use rgba values to specify the colour, and pngs are able to be used for the images. The transparency tag hasn't been implemented, as you may use pngs if you want to have transparent areas in a layer

TODO list for maps:

• parallax scrolling (with camera)
• animation
• layers that render over characters
• linking map data with objects (bounds, friction, etc.)

Other things to do in the near future are opoints and interaction.  That's all for tonight.

Azriel~

Loading...

Spent some time writing the code to load externally configurable file that determines the objects that are loaded into the game.  Works if you don't have any blank lines, but otherwise the app crashes.  Next update will be after exams (if work doesn't start so soon).  Anyways, this next term's workload + exams will be ×1000 stressful. not so fun.



Azriel~

Massive update

Been a while since I posted, I've ported approximately half of what's done in the Java version into c++, and I've got it set up to use either SDL or OpenGL for rendering. Above is a benchmark test when using OpenGL. The SDL version started slowing down at around 600 objects on screen (slower but gradually decreasing frame rate), while the OpenGL version could handle >5000 objects without lagging. Above 5000, you still get 30 fps, but keystrokes can be lost, and sometimes the animation jerks (stops for ~2 seconds, then restarts).

Anyway, next thing I'm gonna code are other objects, then collision detection.

Azriel~

Translating

Been translating the sourcecode from Java to c++, so far the data part has nearly been done (save for special effects). Haven't properly tested it (for both functionality and memory leaks (no more automatic memory management =z)). Been doing optimizations with the code as well, working with the data as a character array instead of as a string object (for the most part).

Anyways, we've started on openGL in uni, so might work on that in the upcoming holidays, depending on how quickly I manage to finish assignments.

Azriel~