The dog ate my homework, I swear!

Seriously ... the dog just walked up and ate my homework ...


Anyhow, I've got some interested updates ... or so I think, anyhow.

I've decided to attempt making a change in my development platform, from Windows to Mac. Yep, I've been a windows developer for many years now, but I've always had the most fun developing in Linux. I've stopped using Linux as a primary desktop OS, but every now and again I give it it's due and try it out again ... every time, being dissatisfied with the overall outcome ... I try to work through some of the issues, but I eventually just shake my head and load windows back onto the machine.

So, I've decided it's time for a complete change ... OS X has had quite a while on the market now, it's proven it's stability and Apple has shown a large amount of support for development on their platforms (shipping a development tool with the OS? Are they crazy?).

With this change, I'm going to try to make a personal goal to finalize the Dungeon Builder I wrote about a while back. The community in general showed a bit of interest in the project, and I thoroughly enjoyed prototyping it to the point it's at now ... the only thing left to do really is polish it up, make it feature rich and ship it ...

On the topic of shipping it ... as that phrase reminds me of the "Ship Software OnTime" slogan that Axosoft uses, I might as well put a shameless plug in about Axosoft's latest announcement for OnTime. Hamid Shojaee, the founder of Axosoft announced that Axosoft will be giving away free licenses for OnTime 2007 Hosted accounts for Open Source projects related to Microsoft .NET technologies. Is this information relevant to GarageGamer's? I think it is ... If I remember correctly, XNA is a Microsoft .NET technology, is it not? So, if your thinking about trying out TorqueX and dabbling a bit with XNA ... and you want to be ever-so-kind to the community at large and share your source for everyone to see, revel upon and eventually learn from (not to mention enjoy) ... go ahead and give his blog a quick read.

So yeah ... back on topic ... shame on me *tsk tsk* ...

As I was saying, I'm making a major platform change ... Windows to OS X ... so, those of you who develop in OS X currently and scour the forums ... Watch Out, I'm more then certainly going to have a ton of questions while I get acquainted with OS X.

So yeah, Dungeon Builder ... what's left ... ?

The rendering portion of the code is basically 100% solid, I've tested it over and over with various different things ... and it works great, it's fast as hell too ... which was really shocking, being as every move you make clears the scenegraph, generates new sprite objects, and redraws the screen ... it's so seamless, you can't even tell that it's doing just that ... (I might be revisiting the 'clear scene graph' logic though ... may not be necessary -- more on that in a later blog though ... can't give away too many secrets, else you might start expecting stuff ...)

Maps ... now ... there's a tricky one ... I've got all sorts of idea's for maps ... however, I've not yet come to a good solid solution that's good for everyone (Pro and Indie licenses of TGB) ... some of the ideas involve XML files (for those who don't know, I created a nifty libexpat resource for TGB/TGE/TGE(A) -- go check it out ... SAX parsing is fast, clean and just down-right fun to work with ;p). So yeah, I'd like to find a suitable solution that appeals to everyone's needs ... so the most likely route will wind up being some form of external (possibly even a game project in TGB?) program that is able to create the maps ... with layers and all (ceiling tiles, floor tiles ... multiple level dungeons? Oh MY!) and then export to a friendly format that TGB can handle efficiently without the need for added C++ resources ... now, it came to my attention that TGB 1.5 Beta has some form of XML built-in ... if this is stable enough and functional enough for my purposes ...then XML might be the way to go ... otherwise, I might go another route ... maybe a custom TorqueScript file that gets spit out that defines the entire level with a series of SimObject Groups and Sets and custom 'class' objects ... *shakes head* ... never know ... gotta prototype ... return to the drawing board, prototype again and get the communities feedback on my work ... then we'll find out :)

Another feature rich addition would be the ability to some how integrate TGB Behaviours into the code ... have monsters and objects that can have 'interactions' or 'behind the scenes AI' and randomly appear on different 'tiles' in the dungeon as your traverse through it ...

Oh and, for those of you with little imagination ... but lots of game design ideas (haha, sounds funny but man oh man ... it's so true) ... given the right set of artwork, the Dungeon Builder code can generate Pseudo-3D 'dungeons' ... which basically just means it can make the levels look like the old school "A Bards Tale" style walk-thru dungeons ... and it's not just limited to 'in door' scenery either ... if your tiles have buildings on them, and you set your ceiling or total level background to a 'sky box' (sky tile?) ... you've got a walkable outdoor '3d' view ... just picture it ... ok ... I said picture it, not drool all over the keyboard, pick your chin up and act right, geez!

Oh and, for those of you who didn't notice ... I've become an official GG Associate ... so, this more or less proves that Matthew Langley wasn't paying attention when he visited Phoenix and attended the 'Arizona Gamers and Game Developers' meeting I host monthly ... he apparently thinks I know what I'm doing, :)


Oh and ... for the ever awaited blog image ...



Oh wait ... I don't have one ... nevermind :)