Warscale - First screenshot

Hi all (at least I hope there is anybody at all reading this blog series)

So, last week was about rounding some little things. the plan was:

Finish the unit drawing so that the new units appear in the correct place in the game
Finished, the units are displaced appropiately and the new unit appears in its right position. There may still be some issues about the sizing of large units so they wont block the view but I'll tackle that later.

Fix the game starting procedure
Finished, each player appropiately receives 5 units on startup.

Delay the event startup
Finished, the ready message is sent to the server when all the resources have finished loading. When the screen shows it starts processing the internal messages so the avatars are created and the new units placed in hand. Lots of sparks should appear.

Syncronize the unit bars with the unit actual HitPoints and Mana and allow for updates
Finished, when a game event changes the hitpoints or mana of a unit, its bars get appropiately updated.

Show cost information for units in hand[b]
Finished. But this one was tricky. The problem was with the gui3DProjectionCtrl and the resize fix resources not working appropiately with my modifications of the gui3DProjectionCtrl in order to allow the control resizing based on the distance to the camera. It required me a lot of time but now everything is working fine. All the controls inside the projected control resize perfectly.

[b]Create the player information controls
Finished. Each avatar basic info like name, hitpoints, mana, number of units in hand, number of dead units, number of army units are displayed in the upper portion of the screen. Controls appropiately relocate on screen change to keep an appropiate alignment.

Create the game chat controls
50% finished. I didn't finished this because I'm now focusing on the single player version but the supporting network messages and are working fine. MessageVectors should be placed under each player bar so that each player will have a separate message area.

SCREENSHOT!
Its just a first shot, I'm using the lag icon as a placeholder for many icons. You will also recognize some elements from AFX. If you look closely you will notice the information on the center of each icon. As you see the units are located behind each avatar. I have also located a 4x3 grid in the lower right section of the screen. The user controls should be in that position.



Ok, so the plan for this week:
a. Create the unit info area located at the lower left corner.
b. Automatically select the avatar when nothing is selected. Show its info in the info area.
c. Allow selection of appropiate units only. You cant go clicking any unit in the map.
d. Show unit information on mouse rollover so that player can quickly check information on any unit. When mouse is not pointing something relevant the selected unit info should appear.
e. Show the actions for the avatar. They should be: Move, Attack, Summon and End Turn.

Good luck with your projects!
Guimo