Dev Diary # 3 : Object Selection 90% complete

Did a bit of work on the object selection code, and I'm happy to say its nearly done, despite a false start. The original direction I went in was extending the TSControl object to query objects under the cursor, but it turns out theres an easier way. Happily, most of what I need is contained in the existing guiCrossHair (which is, incidentally, often the case with TGE :D. The real trick is just to gain enough experience with the engine to know where to look for what you want.). It already does the client side ray casting and checking for objects, all that was needed was to extend it to save a pointer to the object it found, and provide some console accessor methods. Easy.

Then, to make the crosshair "context sensitive", I looked to one of the gui buttons, GuiBitmapButton I think it was. This button loads up a few different bitmaps, one for the normal state, one for when the button is depressed, etc. A little bit of copy-pasting, and my new AdvancedCrossHair does the same thing, loading in icons for when the thing you're looking at is something you can interact with, something to attack, something to talk to. It has a "mode" variable, and script functions to set which mode its in. There is also a script callback which determines the appropriate mode. Ie, the crosshair does the following, in this order :

1 ) clears the current object pointer.
2 ) casts its ray, setting the object pointer to whatever it finds, if it does actually find something.
3 ) Call the "SetMode" script callback
4 ) The script code sets the crosshair's state based on what the object is.
5 ) The crosshair renders with the bitmap appropriate to the state.


I left the "SetMode" logic in script for flexability, so that its easy to change later without recompiling. For instance, right now if the object is another player it sets the mode to hostile. Later on I plan to have game factions, it will analyse your standing with the target creatures faction to determine whether its hostile or not. I generally like to put these "game logic" type snippets in script, as its the kind of thing thats most likely to change over development, as you play around with different options.


Kork is the enemy, he must die!



At the moment, all static/non-static shapes show up as interactable. Hmmm, maybe I should make a "Hippy" class for my RPG, one whos main goal is to hug every tree in the game? ;)


Then it was just a matter of binding a key to a server command, one which pulls the selected object out of the crosshair, gets its ghost ID, and sends over the "Interact" command with said ID. Remember, every object the client sees is a ghost (a copy) of the original one on the server, even if Torque is running only on one machine. When the command gets to the server, it calls a function to translate this ghost ID to one of its objects IDs, then calls the servers OnInteract with it. Easy!

At the moment, all my interact script does is check if its another player, and if it is do 200 damage to it, what I like to call the Death Stare, hehe. My plan is for shapebase objects to have an OnInteract script function call which you just override for specific objects to get the desired behavior (attacking an enemy, initiating dialogue with an NPC, flipping a switch etc).


Kork recieves the Death Stare!

All in all, I'm quite happy with it, and its kinda fun making cheesy little programmer art icons. It'll have to wait a few days to get completed though, as I'm going away for the weekend. I'm definately going to enjoy my holiday....but.... once I get so close to finishing something its like an urge I gotta scratch. Part of me doesn't want to go till its done.


On a completely unrelated note, while I'm in the picture posting mood, heres a shot of a castle gate I worked on while learning Quark (remember I talked about the art "fluff" I did?), and Kork standing outside a wall/gateway I made. There was going to be a manor house in there, before I snapped out of "stuffing around with quark" mode and got back to coding.




And since I'm in the picture mood, I may as well throw in this concept art sketch I did of a generic dark knight looking fellow. Not really sure if he'll be in the game though. ;)