Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts

Friday, September 7, 2012

So much to do, so little time...

Well, it looks like I've got my final coming up.  I'm glad I've gotten my program this far to be used for it, and hopefully by the end of the session I'll have a usable and displayable program to put on here.  So far, I've got my new character model, and that's about it.

The game's title is now Harper's Gate.  The name is a bit tentative but it works for now.  The idea still remains as a 2D variation of Monster Hunter with RPG elements...I'm going to be working on developing sprites over the next several weeks I'm sure, and I'll keep you guys (my very limited readers) up to date!

Also, here's Harper in all his pixelated glory...He currently has no arms, but those will be added in programmatically as separate sprites.  These are all of his progressions from a simple idea of a character with a red mask on his face.  o_O  There are two sections in there that are going to be his animation.  To be honest, they're rather meh, but I don't have to make something amazing in the graphical department.

This is the look I want him to have for his final coalesced look.  But the arms are basically going to be separate from his body so I can animate them separately.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Arguing with myself, but not Jeff Dunham...

Updated my "Song of the day" list to have my spotify playlist that I'm listening to.  Right now it's LIES GREED MISERY by Linkin Park in their latest album.  It's definitely not my favorite album, but still good song.  That song sounds a bit like something AWOLNATION would do...

Anyway, the program's been slightly updated...I'm working on documentation right now, trying not to go too crazy.  I ended up changing a lot from my visio file, but it's still pretty similar.  I'm not sure if I can post the visio file on here...if I can I will, otherwise, I'll probably it into a PDF/.png file and post it.  It's quite complicated right now, however there's SO much more I need to do...I need to find a way to make the player information, and the sprite, and a few other things...I need to find a way to separate the sprite from the player information class, but still keep them connected.  It's a fucking mess.  Hell, I might as well make the player sprite something completely different.  But then there's the problem of collisions, and how objects react to the player, stuff like that.

I'm thinking one possible idea would be to completely separate the player, enemies, and the scene...that might work.  I already have the scene manager, which can contain all the scene objects.  Then the player manager, then an enemy manager.  That would probably work really well.  Gotta figure out if it's going to be threaded with the game, or if it's going to be separate though, like the Scene Manager...I'm thinking separate, because of my camera class, which is used to translate objects to the right place based on where the camera is.

I was also thinking about making a nifty background, probably something automated like Mario.  Make it basically a cutscene that acts like a game.

Speaking of cutscenes, I also need to figure out how to do the cutscenes as well.  I'm thinking something like a bit of code that executes commands after specific times or events, such as hitting enter, escape etc.  Then I could just make some xml that dictates different events...something like moveTo with the x, y  position, object id, speed, and a few other things...Then that would need another tool.  -_-  Eventually I'll have an entire game as a tool.  *le sigh*  But that provides an interesting twist at least.  The program will be editable from a player stand point, which allows for very limited modding.

Also, been watching Battlestar Galactica, the newer version, and it's VERY good so far...I'm really hoping to get into the old BSG once I'm done watching the new one.  ^_^  I'm just starting to really get into sci fi's so wish me luck.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Picture updates ftw!!!

As the title states, there are pictures in order tonight!  I got the GUI Editor set up, it's not displaying the GUI, but it's properly displaying all the information I need it to.  I have 3 GUI files, it displays 3 GUI files...each file has about 3-4 items, and it displays the appropriate amounts!  I'm excited to present to you, my GUI Maker 3000!!!  Kidding, it's still in the super pre-alpha stage.  :-P  But soon my minion--er...readers, soon.

Alright, so pics, as promised...I wonder if it will make them small, or clog up the screen, cause my screenshots are 1080p...>.>  WHO KNOWS!  Let's try this out!


So this one is meant to show the basic startup, which allows you to select the GUI you want to work with, and gives you various buttons and stuff that makes no sense...


This is for showing the objects that load up on the left after selecting your GUI, and how it updates all the appropriate info.


Just showing off font options from the combo menu. 


And lastly texture options from a combo box.  The last two are custom data that's added to the form from the game you see in the background (Giant cyan blue thingy of doom on the right that looks super boring atm).


Anywho, it took me a while to get this up.  The beauty of this is that it uses a combination parser DLL file I made.  I say combination because it holds the level parser, settings parser, and the GUI parser, so I can access any of that through other programs, and just send it the appropriate files needed, and BAM!  It has all the data I need without having to recreate the parsers...It's beautiful.  ^_^  Once I get all the information passed to the Game client, it should be able to display and update dynamically with the data on the form.

Once I start getting more advanced GUI objects, it will be quite a bit more complicated...but for now this works.  Eventually I'd like it to work on dual screens, and have a few extra drop down menus.  Right now the drop down menus just contain a few things...

Monday, July 9, 2012

I won't stop believin'!

I love today's song of the day...it's a good version.  I still absolutely love the original Journey song though...Journey was amazing.  Anyway, I have some organizational road blocks that I've got to figure out.  Fortunately I can wait a bit before actually needing to worry about them.  I'm focusing on getting the GUI to work, along with a series of test states that are changed based on GUI buttons, check boxes, and what have you...

I'm really trying to get this to work, I'd like to get an options menu that changes the preferred width/height of the screen, as well as adjusts full screen.  And then based on whether you cancel or apply/accept, it will change the screen.  :-)  Once I get that down, I'll need to be able to switch to the main game mode and load up the main level.

So, once I get the high level GUI objects working and the state switching, I'll start working on mid level to high level object design.  I already have the diagram of all the scene object classes drawn up, just need to implement them and their methods.  I have some kind of organization to this, which is nice, and I'm sure that once everything's written down, it'll be a bit easier to know what to do, and how to do it.  Anyway, that's it for now, later!

Saturday, July 7, 2012

5 Days later...@_@

Alright, so a bit late on the update but, there's really nothing new to say...the program is still in development, and is currently organized better now, and it seems to be fairly efficient.  I'm sure it's got its flaws here and there, but it works for now.

I got the GUI parser working, along with interactive GUI objects.  I need to make their children, like buttons, and various other things...Thinking about making slide bars, should be interesting...using a slide bar for things like volume for instance is rather convenient.  I would also like to make some drop down menus later, but i'm sure that will be a lot more complicated...

Anyway, I'm working on developing the GUI parser some more.  Once I get that working, I can get a start menu made.  Will be awesomely epic.  ^_^  Once I can get the program to switch states, I can set up the player and a few other things as well.  I think if I can get the game to switch states correctly, and display all the images needed, that will give me a good idea if this organization is working, because that requires a lot of inter-code dependencies between several managers and the main.  This will help me understand a bit more of how I could improve the game and expose less in code.

As for parsers, I still have a few more to do...I know I need the level parser, and I want to update that to allow for multiple files, not just one, like the GUI Parser is set up now.  This would help me out by organizing the level info a bit better.  I also (later once the game is all awesomified) need to make a save game/load game parser as well.  That's fairly simple, plenty of resources out there on how to create .sav files in XNA.  I also need to work on a background parser, which gets the info for all the background images, and various other things that are never interacted with.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Updated collision detection with ray casting that actually functions but needs more testing!

Alright, so there might be good news...From what I can tell my ray casting algorithm is working so far, however the movement is still very umm....bad.  But, I'm quite glad to see my ray casting algorithm works.  I'll be working on it some more for initial circle collision, then the ray casting detection for more accurate collision detection.  At the moment I'm watching Psych...I'm on season 2 so far so good.  Rather silly, as always, but I never can focus on my programming...I went ahead and posted a few lines of code from my work.  If any readers want to comment on the code, shoot me a comment, I'll read over it and reply.  I'd be glad to hear about things i can do to improve.  :-)

Basic method for checking if a point intersects a segment.  Edge class contains 2 Vector2's, p1 and p2, which act as a 2D point in electronic nether-space.


        protected bool RayIntersectsSegment(Vector2 p, Edge edge, Vector2 world)
        {
            //This method is strictly used for checking if the specific point p intersects the edges points.
            //First we need to find the 2 vector values a and b.  a must be below b on the y axis.
            Vector2 a;
            Vector2 b;
            float red;
            float blue;

            //Check which one's above and which one's below.  And then increment them by the world translation.  It's very important that we do that...
            if (edge.p1.Y >= edge.p2.Y)
            {
                a = edge.p2 + world;
                b = edge.p1 + world;
            }
            else
            {
                a = edge.p1 + world;
                b = edge.p2 + world;
            }

            if (p.Y == a.Y || p.Y == b.Y)
            {
                p.Y += 2;   //Magic number used to increment y just a little bit to get it out of the path of the vertex itself.
            }
            if (p.Y < a.Y || p.Y > b.Y)
            {
                return false;
            }
            else if (p.X > Math.Max(a.X, b.X))
            {
                return false;
            }
            else
            {
                if (p.X < Math.Min(a.X, b.X))
                {
                    return true;
                }
                else
                {
                    if (a.X != b.X)
                    {
                        red = (b.Y - a.Y) / (b.X - a.X);
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        red = float.PositiveInfinity;
                    }
                    if (p.X != a.X)
                    {
                        blue = (p.Y - a.Y) / (p.X - a.X);
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        blue = float.PositiveInfinity;
                    }

                    if (blue >= red)
                    {
                        return true;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        return false;
                    }
                }
            }
        }

This method is called in this series of loops here.  The object vertices is a List of vertices, and the object boEdges contains the list of Edge objects in the other polygonal object.


                    foreach (Vector2 cp in vertices)
                    {
                        int bcounter = 0;
                        Vector2 cpw = cp + parent.position + parent.origin + offset;    //Translated to the world.
                        Vector2 oWorld = other.position + other.origin + box.offset;

                        //then check for every edge in oe.
                        foreach (Edge oe in boEdges)
                        {
                            if (RayIntersectsSegment(cpw, oe, oWorld))
                            {
                                bcounter++;
                            }
                        }

                        if (bcounter % 2 > 0)
                        {
                            //If the counter turns out to be odd, return true.
                            return true;
                        }
                    }

If I got anything seems wrong, give me a holler, I'm all ears.  :-D  Also, this was created in C# using the XNA Framework.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Latest update.

Alright!  I have good and bad news for the day.  I set up a basic raycasting system for my XNA engine project.  It works, however I'm getting a lot of errors with it.  -_-  So, I'm mostly back to square one, but I have a working system up that I just need to figure out what's wrong...essentially.  I'm guessing it has a few other problems going on right now, but I'm working on it.

The problem I'm having is that I can't visualize the segments very well.  I can visually mark the vertices, however I can't make the edges.  For now, vertices work though.

The Player object is also animating well...I have a series of sprites that are very basic, but work fine for now.  The animation also has different beginning and end sections as well, so the animation will run to a specific point, and then when it's done there, it starts back up at a specific point.  It runs from left to right, then back to left on a new row, once it's exhausted that first row.  So you can't have little sections of animation, like a square in the corner dedicated to running, a square in the corner dedicated to jogging, and a square between dedicated to something else...essentially.  Here, I'll draw a diagram, hope it helps, cause it took me a while to make.

[run ][----][----][----][----][----]
[/run][jog-][----][----][----][/jog]
[fall][jump][----][----][----][----]

That diagram would work.  The last 4 tiles in the lower right hand corner can be whatever the fuck you want, idc...but, you can actually make one frame specific to one thing, and it will "animate", essentially.

Run will last until /run, same with jog, fall and jump are individual single frames for the action.  Eric should understand this pretty well...Anyway, there's no limit on size, so far as I know, but it's best to keep it small and simple I would imagine.

As for things that won't work, here's a good example.

[run][run][run][jog][jog][jog]
[run][run][run][jog][jog][jog]

This will not work, because it runs sequentially through this process from left to right in a row, then down a row back to the left, like I said.  :-)

Anyway, enough said, I will be back in a few days with a new update!  :-D

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Hello my readers of awesome...Sorry for the 6 day delay between updates...I've been quite busy trying not to die on Diablo 3.  Finally made it to Inferno and I went from being somewhat squishy to super squishy...-_-  Even with 56% damage decrease in defense, I take like...40k damage from really annoying rares, or champions, and bosses.  I was one shotted by a mob, and yet I could take down Diablo on Hell in one go...how the fuck does that happen?  When did Diablo's minions become more powerful than him...o.o

Anyway, enough with my rant on Diablo 3...I'm looking forward to the next couple of days.  Eric and I have redirected our game idea a little bit.  I'd rather not get into that too much, but it's still a platformer.  Personally, I've been a big fan of platformers since I played the original Spyro game.  I'm quite happy with the direction we're going, I would just like to get some work done on it.  We're definitely sticking with Torque for the new direction as well, so hopefully we can get something simple out soon on the website.

The reason behind the redirection/change was primarily because of art assets.  Eric's artwork is good, but he's pretty busy with school and work, and various other life...things...anyway, he's busy, so he can't work on the program if he's doing art all the time, and Impulse Strike has always had very complicated artwork associated with it.  If we can get the art pumped out of the way, we'll be fine...Was the original idea behind asking Summer to help, however that has gone nowhere so far.  -_-  Very disappointed with that, but I didn't expect it to go very far originally, was just hoping she would want to have a side project or something she could add to her portfolio.

Friday, June 8, 2012

Looks like as of right now there's no new updates to the program. I'm still getting used to the engine, and potentially looking into XNA, however I'm sort of still on the fence.  I haven't told Eric about that yet, it's rather complicated...To say the least, I would need to create a way to check for concave polygonal collision detection and include physics with that, and it's just...too complicated for me right now.  Unfortunately I don't have a good understanding of the formula, or a way to simplify it for a GUI based tool...So...complicated, yes, possible yes, but would take a very long time for me to master and understand the concepts, and I just don't have that kind of time...

So I think Eric wins on this one then...Torque works.  Anyway, I'll be working on creating more classes for Torque tonight potentially, but over the next week, I'm sure I'll have some decent classes in the mix here to provide some interesting physics, and demonstration.  As for the file that I recently placed on the website, it's really a template right now that's just...incredibly basic, and not very useful right now.  If you want to try it out, feel free, but there's little to nothing to do on it right now.

Oh, and I mentioned this earlier, but our game engine of choice right now is Torque Game Builder 1.7.6.  It's got a decent built in physics engine, and a rather complex and powerful scripting language that I still need to learn a lot more about...@_@  We shall see how this goes.

Monday, June 4, 2012

No updates yet. :-O

Looks like we're still in the development phase.  I've been reading up on tutorials for the new engine, to see if I can figure it out, and it seems simple enough, despite all of its complexities.  We've got a decent idea of how the game's going to work, we just need to flesh it out, see what happens, and adjust the program from there.  :-)

I'll try to get something worked on by Wednesday, but no promises right now.  I still need to convert the old image files over to the new engine.

Also, because I've been playing Diablo 3 so much lately, I found a decent way to contain the files.  ^_^  I'm going to use my soulstone USB drive to contain all the files I need for development.  Gotta love collectors edition games with USB drives, right?  I just hope it'll fit my laptop while I'm using my lapdesk.  Hehehe.!

Friday, June 1, 2012

More development, less work! :-P

Alright, long time no see.  I talked to Eric for a little while, looks like I'll just be updating about...three times a week now, instead of semi-daily.  Essentially whenever my favorite comics start updating their comics, I'll be updating my blog.  :-D  Looks like Mon,Wed, Fri for now.  To be perfectly honest though, I haven't gotten anything done.  Eric and I are working on developing the project idea further, and it looks like we may be switching engines.  I can't talk about it too much...need to keep some illusion of interest, right?  Hehehe.  We're trying to focus more on developing the game, rather than me fucking around with a program.  It's fun to fuck around, but difficult when you have no direction yes?

With the decision to switch engines, comes the decision to essentially scrap the work I've done, and start all over.  It'll be nice getting a different view with another engine, and some more experience as well.  Fortunately they seem to use a similar scripting language, but I doubt this new one will be nearly as easy as Game Maker...however, Game Maker did have its major flaws and limitations that we didn't particularly like, I will say that much.

To be perfectly honest, I love using XNA as a game engine.  It works stupendously well, and supports windows platforms, however, I think Eric and I need to work on a broader spectrum of systems.

So all in all, updates to the game are currently suspended until further notice, which may or may not be the next...4-10 business days...>.>  Or something silly like that.  At which point it will be something very simple and/or simple.

Anywho, I must be getting to sleep, Dr. appt in the morning.  Latorz!

Sunday, May 27, 2012

After a long couple of days, I still have yet to make any good progress on the game.  Been too distracted with Diablo 3, and my new keyboard.  Once I get some more things updated, I will post it here, however I'm not sure when that will happen.

On a happier note, I finally got to Hell on Diablo 3...unfortunately I need to grind 3 levels before I can get into it.  Apparently it's level locked for lvl 50 players only.  Sooooo....I have another long couple of days ahead of grinding and being generally awesome until I hit 50...then I will be super Lord Squishy...Oh yeah, that's my other self proclaimed nickname, Lord Squishy.  Ramen was given to me by an old friend of mine a while back. :-)

Anyway, I still need to get an inventory screen loaded on the player. I'm hoping that it won't be too difficult to set up at least a basic information screen.  Eric's got an epic idea of what to do with the game story, and some really excellent additions to the game.  I'm rather excited to hear more about it on Monday when we meet up.  I'll update my song of the day (kinda night now...but still) soon.  Peace.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Update Impulse Strike 2 v0.1.1.3

Latest update is up on the Google sites, check it out here.  The Legacy folder is used for older versions of the game.
Looks like most of the stuff I said I wanted to do got put on the backboard...I've been working on setting up the system to use escape to not close the entire game.  That has finally been addressed, and resolved.  I didn't want to get stuck in the game in fullscreen without any means to exit...so yeah, I have it now, I'll be updating escape to load up the main game menu, and tab to load up the player inventory.  :-D  It's very exciting.

That will be my focus tonight.  If I can get more done, I will post again about it.  Otherwise, check out the download page later...today I guess.  o_O  It is 1 AM for me.  Semantics aside, the update will be up within the next 2 hours or so, whether you like it or not.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

I'll be working on an update over the course of the day.  We seem to have acquired an invaluable asset, an artist, Summer.  I'll be posting about her on here eventually with a description of her, and her credentials for this project.

Anyway, I already have one update, but it hasn't quite been tested enough, and fixed properly.  I'll be working on updating the Menus, and their positions.  I would also like to update the program to have mods for each weapon, and will be working on that over time.  I also want to have an inventory UI show up in the next week or two if possible.  If anything it will be a black screen with white writing about player info.  :-P  I also need to update the exit functionality of the program, escape doesn't close the whole game, it just loads the screen that tab currently loads.  It's a fairly simple process.

There will also be save points in the game, rather than having an auto save feature that works with every room. I want to make a save station of sorts, think Metroid, but more of them...I think having a save station, as well as a health and ammo station where you can save would be nice.  Maybe just checkpoints.  I will figure it out eventually :-P

Also, check out the latest song of the day, I got Swedish House Mafia up on the left hand side.  Excellent song.  :-)

Monday, May 21, 2012

Alright, so I'm just about to get around to updating the program.  I created the website for Impulse Strike 2 downloads...It's at the following website:  https://sites.google.com/site/impulsestrike2/.  The program may or may not pop up as malicious software (I know Avast doesn't particularly like it), but it's quite legit.  If you have any concerns about it please leave a comment, or email me.  Thanks.

Anyway, as for the update tonight, I have no clue what I'll be doing.  I know I need to generic the grenades, so we can have multiple types of grenades, not just one.  The white box in the UI needs to be changed over to the current grenade selection.  I would need to make generics of both grenades, and the extra stuff that's dropped, that's a fairly simple process with Game Maker, but will still take some time to change.  I also need to set the player up to work with the stats object and grab the grenade that's currently in use.  Although, I think I could put that in the player...not sure which would be more complicated.  o_O

I need to consider xp as well, probably just like...100 xp per level, and the mobs gain 1 or 2 xp per level.  I would need to do graphs for figuring that out though.  @_@  Fucking graphs...We shall see how it works out.

In other news...I finally beat D3!  Had the help of my buddy Eric, but somehow or another we skipped the ending...-_-  So I have to go beat Diablo again tomorrow just so I can see the ending again.

Today's song of the day:  Moves like Jagger, by Maroon Five (feat. Christina Aguilera).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRsxpoAc5w&feature=g-vrec
(That one doesn't have crazy dancing ladies with their very occasional boob shot...gotta be non-adult content here, excluding language.)

As for tutorials, I think I'll be starting with simple Game Maker Tutorials...If I do any of them, I will post on here about it first thing.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Updating the blog layout.

Please bear with me as I update the blog, I'm still getting used to using Blogger.  :-)  Tonight, I'm hoping to get a little work done on Impulse Strike 2, if I can, I'll post a link to download the .exe file, although I'm not 100% sure if I can do that on here, but we shall see, yes?

Also, my music choice of the day is Kelly Clarkson: Stronger (What doesn't kill you).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avYxiIRG4xQ&ob=av2n

Please enjoy the song, and support all artists in their endeavor to make the world more awesome!