The Chosen

After months of coding and design, the game is finally taking shape as I can now handle units on the screen. I put several finishing touches on the selection system and the scroll system to prep the RTS for another build. Also I have recently added numerous new script variables to a root script file that allows my other developers and I to very easily tweak the code before it runs. I added script variables for screen size, tile size, an array of GUI/mouse interaction variables, nearly all variables involved in the scroll system, and even variables to set preferred frame rates in the graphics engine. I am still amazed at just how helpful these script variables can be, and how they make the designing of the game much more simple and enjoyable.

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Finaly I’m done with the scripting portion of the GUI. Though I’m sure that I will need to modify a thing of two as I start witting other code to interact with the GUI, but still it feels like a big accomplishment. While finishing touches on my script code for the GUI, I was also working on the cursor animation engine which is also up and running beautifully. Sadly, because the cursors are automatically removed from the screen shot, my cool animated cursors don’t appear in the picture, but I assure you they are very cool. In almost no time at all, after minimal explanation, I was able to hand off the script files to my game designer and he was able to construct his own version of the GUI as seen above. He was also able to modify the new cursors file, and using a constant code base, work with multiple new cursors and see how they looked in the real engine. Before I knew it, he had completely redesigned by default test GUI (bellow) into something that looks much yet functions exactly the same.

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Despite numerous distractions, I final got my my Chat server up and running. Spending all that time one networking side of the code has really improved my confidence in the multilayer side of this project. As part of the process of getting my first server up, I also have all configuration done on my home network, meaning that the next server application I write will be a much simpler process. Also, because I picked a program that I use on a regular basis, I am able to work out all of the design problems in a less stressful environment, and will have an excellent template to build from when I start on my RTS server. In addition to my progress on the server development, I have also made some decent progress on the GUI. I believe I have the entire layout handler complete and have a complete default GUI setup, functional, and ready to go.

I knew that clickable units would brighten the spirits of my anxious audience, so I made that my next goal. However, as a programmer, I knew that implementing the unit selection system could be much easier if I had a visual representation of which unit(s) were selected. To represent this status I would need a graphic user interface (GUI), which meant that before I could add units, I needed to design and implement a GUI. The actual GUI layout was one of the many details that me and my designer argues over for quite some time. To settle this debate I decided that I would write the GUI using a my scripting engine, which would allow any user to customize the GUI any way that the user would see fit, the better way of course would then just be the default version. During initial talks, this process sounded pretty strait forward, and it it seemed like just a matter of time before it was done. Once I started work on this feature, I soon ran into several issues. (more…)

Despite many initial bugs, and almost a month of procrastination, I finally sat down and devoted myself to fixing numerous mouse related bugs, and writing the majority of the mouse scrolling system. After several bugs were identified and corrected, the rest of the scroll engine went rather smoothly. While I was able to somewhat lock the cursor within the window, the execution was done in such a was that left me (and other testers) dissatisfied. To improve this environment I decided to try a slightly different approach. (more…)

A few modifications to the graphics engine to separate floor tiles from unit tiles, and also down-sizing the current units (the black circle placeholders). This running version also had some minimal graphic clipping around the edges of the screen but painted only the 250 or so visible tiles and not all 10,000 of them. Unfortunately, the modifications I made to achieve this smaller painting area were overly simple and will need to be rewritten before the graphics engine can be considered “done”. The keystroke engine on the other hand has been applied and is remarkably smooth. So far the graphics engine, mouse engine (scroll engine), and keystroke engine are all running very smoothly and still using very few CPU resources. I hope that remains true after the more complicated engines have been written, such as the pathfinding, A.I., or networking engines.

To achieve this screen I had to write an ImageStore class to handle all of the pictures. This class efficiently pre-loads and pre-renders each image before it is actually painted by the graphics engine.