Blog for Daniel Allessi at GarageGames.com

Friday May 6 23:29

Daniel Allessi — 2005-05-06T23:29:19+00:00

Blocks, Platforms, and more...

First, let's have the obligatory pic (no plan should be without one):
[IMAGE]http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-3/967894/block.jpg[/IMAGE]

GAMEPLAY
This is the platformer I have been working on throughout my .plans.
These gameplay elements are underway for the main character:

- move relative to camera

- grab ledges and climb up/drop down or move sideways along the edge (also applies for pushable Blocks)

- use ranged and melee weapons

- push blocks around

These mission objects are also underway:

- moving, ridable platforms

- destructable boxes w/ money or ammo inside

- teleporter pads (these are 95% done - see last .plan)

- forcefields that block doorways

- switch that deactivates a forcefield when something (player, pushable block, etc) is on top of it

- indestructable block that can be moved around and used for weight-activated switches or to climb on to reach higher places (also basically done - just needs tweaking)

The style I'm going for is Ratchet and Clank, so any additional gameplay devices you think of, please feel free to contribute.

DEVELOPMENT
It has been around a month since my last .plan and progress has been slow. Real life has a tendancy of getting in the way, doesn't it?

Above, we can see some modifications to the editor. First off, all of the additional 'editors' are condensed into the 'Game Tools' menu. Currently this only has the Lighting Pack Editor in it, though the AI editor and others will end up here.

On the right side, we can see that I have my pushBlock and spawnPointMarker objects showing up under 'Mission Objects' and *gasp* the 'Shapes' group is gone entirely. Basically, I thought it stupid to have things that I consider 'Mission Objects' like spawnPoints in a seperate group of the editor. This is not the PITA way the resource on here shows, either. The way I have it setup now is that if you want your item to be under 'Mission Objects', then you set the category as such, and no messing around with the editorGui.cs or ObjectBuilderGui.cs files.

Also visible is a platform .DTS with the skin fresh out of the unwrapper. I'm still debating on rolling my own 'ridable platforms' or using TGE 1.4's pathedInteriors.

Then there's the pushBlock. It's a rigidShape(you're the man Lund) that will serve some interesting gameplay uses as described in the section above.

My last piece of development is getting two different controls systems working that I'm having a hard time choosing between. One implemented this resource to get camera relative movement up and running. It needs work and breaks the mid-air control system. The other has it so that if you push forward, the character moves forward in whatever direction he faces but if you hold the left or right movement keys, he'll rotate continuously left or right. It's similiar to Resident Evil but much smoother and with the orbit camera, feels good. That'll be tough to decide.

Saturday Apr 2 20:28

Daniel Allessi — 2005-04-02T20:28:16+00:00

Frustration, Teleporters, and what to do next...

Since people like pictures (I know I do ;) here's a shot of my teleportTriggers as discussed in my last plan.

[IMAGE]http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-3/967894/teleporters.jpg[/IMAGE]

Development of the teleportTrigger is on hold while I work on some other things for the game, which is proving quite the challenge.

I can't just use collision meshes since it screws up the projected shadows (they use the collision mesh instead of the character mesh if one is available), and the Box3F structure seems to be hardwired as an AABB. So I have decided to put the problem off for the time being since all it's doing is frustrating me and nobody seems like they can offer any suggestions. I was kind of hoping for a GG person to chime in with some suggestion about how to do it, but oh well.

On the motivating side, however, swimming is coming along nicely (aside from those collision issues). Not sure what to tackle next. There are so many things to do... maybe some moving DTS platforms, or put together a basic multiplayer selection screen... who knows.

Saturday Mar 19 18:33

Daniel Allessi — 2005-03-19T18:33:03+00:00

Teleporters!

I just finished adding in the teleporters for my platformer. No offense to whoever wrote the teleporter resource on here, but it was lacking for my needs.

I had to add a callback in the engine so ::onAdd will be called for triggers, but other than that, all script. The system generate a new ID for every teleporter (and accounts for teleporters you may have already saved in the mission file). You specify the ID of the teleporter pad it will take you to, or if the pad is receive-only, and voila. It won't bounce you back and forth between teleporters since it remembers the last teleporter you were on (which is reset when you leave a trigger area).

They work wonderfully, and the only things I need to make them perfect for my game is the ability to specify if the player has to press a USE key to teleport (right now they just teleport you on entering) and making the camera smoothly pan to the destination location.

All you need to change in an existing codebase are the one-line addition to the engine, a call to teleportTrigger::registerMissionPads() from your onMissionLoaded function, and add a lastTeleporter field to the players allowed to use the teleporters.

I am considering adding them as a resource but I'm still unhappy about the fact that my last resource from Mar 7th was never approved, nor was I told why.

Wednesday Mar 9 21:23

Daniel Allessi — 2005-03-09T21:23:43+00:00

Options Dialog updated and a new resource

I have finished all the non-game-specific options in the developer pane of my new options dialog.
[IMAGE]http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-3/967894/optionsDlg_01.jpg[/IMAGE]

Also, I have submitted a resource that I mentioned in my last .plan. This makes some changes to the guiSliderCtrl that you can see evident here in my screenshot.

I'm going to be busy working on some basic gameplay functionality for awhile, then when I'm ready for audio in the game prototype, I'll come back and do the audio pane. Likewise for the controls pane.

Wednesday Feb 23 3:24

Daniel Allessi — 2005-02-23T03:24:23+00:00

First .plan, my code base, and grilled cheese.

This whole .plan thing is pretty weird, but I thought I'd give it a try. ;)

I've been going through the common scripts line by line and rewriting them to suit my own needs and anal-retentive coding style. So far, so good. Quite a few little bugs and inconsistencies in there. I also didn't like how the settings for everything seem scattered throughout the scripts so I've moved them into the defaults.cs and pulled all the strings into globals as well for easier changes. Pretty similiar to what I did with Acknex 5 (3D GameStudio) way back when. Torque is much cooler though. :)

Hopefully I can be done with the grunt code soon and start on the gameplay stuff for my platformer. My partner and I are shooting for Ratchet and Clank style fun. Guess we'll see how that works out.

Oh, and:
grilled cheese + code == bliss