The Chosen

After adding Unit to the interface it became very obvious that something was wrong with the way the game objects network with game engine and all of the mouse and keyboard actions. When working to get the GUI interface to work, I struggled to find the correct setup that allowed mouse actions to pass into the frame but get caught before hitting the actual game engine. After finding a working scenario, I worked up a system to properly handle the actions caught by the GUI. Unfortunately, the current setup will not work at all with what I need to do with clickable elements that exist inside the game engine. Currently the units, which are extensions of the base game object, which is an extension of awt.Component, are attempting to maintain themselves in a variety of ways that are all causing issues with my current setup. For example, the source behind the moving lag is actually the result of the unit trying to repaint it’s self after being moved, which clashes with the existing graphics engine. In addition, because the scroll engine doesn’t actually move every element when scrolling the units move but the locations to click on them do not. Anyways, my first instinct was to create my own very stripped version of the Component, which would involve me writing all the back end code to handle mouse, and key actions. After some more thought I decided that I would first try creating a complete catch all object that would catch all the actions and just forward them to the main engine to be handed to by my code. Both of these solutions would remove the Component from the issue and leave me to handle all mouse actions, sending them to the appropriate units. On the positive side, once I optimize the entire engine I should much more control over which elements get tested for mouse actions, painting, and other general searches.

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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Been back to work for a few days now, and everything is going fine, but it doesn’t seem like I’m getting much done. Most of what I’ve ended up working on has been little stuff, or small tests, or just cleanup work that can get old real quick. I worked on my GUI a little bit more, but spent most of my time on the new cursor system. All of the ground work for the cursors is written, and in place, including all the code to handle how cursors move over units, non selectable objects, the GUI, and even the code to show scrolling. All of this is good news but unfortunately this addition brings little moral as I have no actual cursors to use. To test most of the system i have used some dummy pictures but I seem to be too tired to enjoy my work. For now I’ll sleep it off and hope that some flashy animated cursors will arrive soon.

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.

Whenever I start a project like this, I also try and identify all of the possible problems, and troublesome issues first. Long before I start writing any code that will end up in the final game, during the first design meetings, I isolate each issue, either mentally or in actual test code environments, and make sure that the design concept is possible, and within grasp. This project was no exception, and I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing.

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With time to kill, while waiting for my new drive, I found myself unable to focus on a single task. I knew I had plenty to do, but always found myself working on something else or simply nothing at all. Not much has gotten done this week, but I did manage to finally put up an about page, and a general task list. I tried to keep the about page very broad, and open ended but I’m sure it will tweaked several times before this completed. On the task list page I mostly wanted to show the big picture, and overall progress of the game as a whole yet still vaguely show what will come next. The unfinished portion of the task list is a general order to show my master plan, but I’m sure, once completed, the list will rearrange its self.