Blog for Rob Parton at GarageGames.com

Thoughtbomb

Rob Parton — 2007-10-04T02:54:14+00:00

Sitting here at work on a quiet day has given me some time to sit down and browse GG after not being around much lately. I've seen a number of statements here and there, and I figure I'll just take the time now to just blurt out whatever I'm thinking at the moment.

First and foremost, I'm not really much of a developer. I don't have the time, nor the money to be able to pull off anything more than just doing stuff as a hobby. However, like everybody else here, I'm also a bit of a gamer. I love games. I love sitting and designing games. I may not have the manpower or money to make those sheets of paper in my binder into a game, or the piles and piles of grid paper into big levels for lonely Kork to run around through, but I still find the time to play around with Torque.

Many of us are in the same boat; we just do not have the time or energy to put all our dreams into motion. However we do what we can, and we have fun at it. And we learn. I have learned more about game programming by playing with Torque a few hours at a time than I did in any class, reading books or articles online (though the Torque books sure made it easier!)

While I was on vacation, I spent time with my father outside, carving wood and building a small table, and some shelves. Sure, they turned out lopsided... and not very useable, but I loved doing it, and I learned. Many of those who say Torque has very few published games should look at this and rethink a bit. Sure, there only may be a few pieces of exquisite art published, but there's lots of small little sketches out there being refined.

Personally, off the top of my head, I think about the small things I've done in Torque. Playing with the bitmap controls, figuring out the tiles I would need to make a simple dungeon set. I know a number of projects use my skinned progress bar.

We all leave our little marks here. That definitely makes all of it worth it!

(well, that wasn't very coherent!)

Frustration can be a good thing

Rob Parton — 2007-03-06T20:07:04+00:00

The last few days I've grown bored at work without a lot to do. When I get home I fiddle with some interiors, trying to come up with a nice crypt or dungeon level. However, no matter how much I try to make it look acceptable to me, it always comes up short.

The solution: a tileset. In theory, I should only have to make each tile once, and then just paste them together in a mission to get the right layout!

I started sitting around on my lunchbreak (if 9pm counts as lunch), and came up with the 14 basic tiles:

I started making the tiles in Quark at 12pm today. After about 30 minutes, I had all 14 basic tiles done:

Every tile is exactly 8 Torque units wide, so placing them is relatively easy. So easy in fact that it's faster to just draw the level layout in tiles on paper or even in MSPaint, and then just write the MIS file in Notepad... The only small issue I had was when rotating some tiles, but it didn't take long to piece that together either.

This is an extremely basic tileset. It doesn't include doors, stairs, windows, anything like that. It would be very easy to add more tiles, or prefab rooms as well.

But for now, here's a few shots of the tileset in action, from a number of angles.

Again: This only took me 30 minutes in Quark!

I think I may take some time off from doing interface coding and instead make a few tilesets. :)

Minor Update and GuiWindowCtrl Gripe/Fix?

Rob Parton — 2007-02-02T00:15:10+00:00

Today, for the first time in a few weeks I had a chance to mess around with some interface stuff. I haven't had much of a chance in the last month or so since moving again, but I did have lots of time to think.

The first was to do an interestly different window frame. After some suggestions from a few friends I did come up with something. Namely, this:

Not too bad, kinda pretty. However, I did realize something very quickly. I was having issues when trying to drag the window around. After a bit of frustration I decided to look at the actual source, and found the following in GuiWindowCtrl::onWake()....

   mTitleHeight = buttonHeight + 4;
   mResizeRightWidth = mTitleHeight / 2;
   mResizeBottomHeight = mTitleHeight / 2;

That would be why mine wasn't working particularly well! So, I changed it to...

   mTitleHeight = mBitmapBounds[BorderTopLeftKey].extent.y;
   mResizeRightWidth = mBitmapBounds[BorderRight].extent.x;
   mResizeBottomHeight = mBitmapBounds[BorderBottom].extent.y;

There! Now the zones for resizing and moving the window are based on the specific skin and not hard coded!

Huzzah!

New Year brings new things!

Rob Parton — 2007-01-02T23:23:04+00:00

Been gone a while, back again. I've spent the last few months keeping very busy. I've been slowly talking my boss into allowing me to take a 6 month leave of absence in the spring, something I hope he okays so I can get some real work done on other projects.

What else is there?

1) it looks like my GUI components work in TGE 1.5 with no problems.

2) There is no #2.

Sadly work has distracted me like crazy, another reason I really hope this LOA goes through. I have some very interesting things I want to start working on and I can't wait to get the time to do them.

Yatta!

Musings and Future Plans

Rob Parton — 2006-09-24T23:21:28+00:00

So busy. The last two weeks have been mad busy with both Torque and real-life job. However everything culminating in my Operations interview is complete, which means now I can finally relax and do some other work.

I've released the skinned progress bar and skinned button as-is for the moment while I work on some other projects, as their main functionality is completed and just need a few tweaks and additions (next up is changing the progress bar to allow for vertical bars as well as horizonal ones).

With the moving of a few things in my apartment, I am halfway completed having a permanent office here. It will pretty be much my domain, as I've already put a lock on my door. The room is my place to meditate and work on my Torque project without any other distractions, along with stuff around the room that will get my juices flowing. My father was cool enough to build me a huge CD rack that spans most of the wall by the window, so pretty much anything I want that I have on disc is now accessible to me.

The current list of Torquey things is growing fast, but there is some overlap, thankfully.

Skinned Textbox: A skinned box that works like a normal text edit box but with a skinned background.

Skinned Combobox: Skinned combobox, pretty simple.

Skinned Buttoned Toggler: I literally have no name for this one. Basically, it's bitmap that shows weither or not a certain button is being held down. This is mainly for a specific project I'm working on that uses a controller. ie: It shows a graphic of the button and shows a depressed graphic when the button is being held down.

Incredible Edible State Toggle Button: As per old .plan, button that changes graphic depending on the button's value.

However first, less than a week until I know if I got the promotion, which will give me sensible hours to let me actually work on my own stuff, as well as extra pay. Woo!

Time gets in the way

Rob Parton — 2006-09-03T16:40:57+00:00

As mentioned in my previous posts, I have been working on a number of skinned interface objects over the last two months. I have the progress bar and buttons working well now, though there are a few features I want to add to them. I have put all my other Torque-based projects on hold for now because of these.

However I have struck into a dilemma. I work long days at my new job, I get home relatively late in the evening and go straight to bed. I end up needing a lot of sleep and because of this the only days I have off to do anything are my weekends, and on those weekends because I'm so busy all week, I need to spend my time off doing errands I would have used to do right after work at my prior job. I really want to sit down and work on the stuff I have working so far so I can throw them up as a resource knowing you could just drop them in and have them work (as it is now, they do technically work, but there are some things, primarily resize-stretch issues I have not put in).

This is ultimately a question to all you indies out there. A good deal of us have full-time jobs, since that's how we survive. How do you get the energy and time to work on your projects?

GuiSkinnedButton Test #1

Rob Parton — 2006-08-19T02:31:27+00:00

Well, everything I own is in boxes still and I haven't bothered unpacking anything yet, but I got the computer set up with DSL temporarily until my cable can be installed, so I decided to get to work.

First new project is GuiSkinnedButton. It takes a simple 9 section gui image, and has Normal, Highlight and Disabled states (I will add a depressed mode in the next couple days).

Not much to say other than that, so obligatory screenshot, then off to try to find my cutlery.

Moving Day & UI Component Ideas

Rob Parton — 2006-08-14T16:22:29+00:00

Well, this week is moving week but since I work every day up to the day I have to get the heck out of this apartment, I need to move as much as I can today. I slept on a mattress on the floor last night, and right now I'm typing on the surface of my desk which I've laid flat on the floor so nothing is on the carpet. To my right is a can of coke and a bowl of alphagetti since it's pretty much all I had left in the cupboard.

I can't wait to finally move into the new apartment this week. Not only do I have a nicer bedroom, I'll also have a huge window in my living room where my desk will be with a full view of the northern side of the city. It may not be that beautiful of a city but it's a better view than my current view of a parking lot and the back of a Staples store.

I haven't done any work at all on Torque stuff in the last couple weeks since I've been busy blowing away my training exams for work, but on my breaks and lunches I've been working a bit on some stuff and prototyping some layout ideas. Thanks to everybody who contributed ideas in my last .plan and if you have any other ideas, please keep them coming.

Skinned Button
This is basically a standard button with the 3 different states. Unlike a bitmap button though, this one prints the text on the button as well as scales without stretching the entire image (skinned caps and center spans like my progress bar). It otherwise works the same as a standard command button in almost any IDE, where putting an & before a letter applies that accelerator for it (useful in localization, I suppose)

Multi-State Toggle Button
Thanks to Phil for this idea, it's basically just a bitmap button that accepts a DML list. Left-clicks increment to the next state, while right clicks decrement states.

Skinned Drop Down List
Why the hell not?

This .plan has been completely typed using Dvorak keyboard layout in less than 2 minutes. All Hail Dvorak.

Uh oh, I sat down in lotus position and now I can't get up.

Minor Update & Interface Ideas

Rob Parton — 2006-08-05T01:26:05+00:00

Thanks to the few who commented on my last .plan, I greatly appreciate the feedback!

I have extra busy with training at my new job this week. Only 3 more weeks to go! I'm also in the middle of packing my apartment to move across the city, so my time with TGE has been sorely lacking. However, since I seem to pick up the training so well at work that I end up helping out other trainees, the instructor has been giving me lots of personal time to sit back and plot things out on paper. These are a few things I'm working on:

GuiSkinnedProgressBar - Implemented the suggested change in skin layout as well as added vertical bars.

GuiSkinnedTextboxCtrl - Straightforward and easy to implement: I will be doing this first as soon as I get my PC moved into the new apartment in the next two weeks.

GuiSkinnedDropdownBox - Similar to GuiPopUpMenu, it's basically a skinned Combobox.

Like I had mentioned in last .plan, I'm really enjoying doing these sort of things compared to actual design, since I find interface work to be a real joy and a nice change of pace from everything else, and it's a part of Torque I truly enjoy and I find it's one of the easier parts of the code to understand.

If anybody has any interface components they can think up that could be interesting to see, please feel free to state so. I tend to try to figure them out only as I need them but sometimes I'm not much of a forward thinker.

guiSkinnedProgressBar. Wait, what?

Rob Parton — 2006-07-29T20:03:11+00:00

I browsed GarageGames
To find a skinned progress bar
I did not find one

Now that I have the haiku out of the way, the story goes like this:

I am screwing around with Torque, trying to implement a number of different GUI ideas for my own little amusement. I decided I wanted to do an MMORPG interface, just to tickle my fancy. Nothing big. Just some health bars, ability icons and the like.

However, I was surprised to find that there wasn't an easily usable skinned progress bar. Hell, I couldn't find one at all.

Now, I haven't coded a heck of a lot since I left high school in 1999. I'll admit I'm beyond rusty, but I figured this would be a good little project. Thus, guiSkinnedProgressBar is a reality. Sort of.

The code is fairly simple, and once I add some features to it, I'm going to post it as a resource. However, I can't reiterate how shocked I am that I couldn't find one already. You'd think someone would have done this already and that it'd be in HEAD by now. o_O

Currently it only has a background and bar textures. It stretches the center texture like a GuiWindowCtrl does. I want to add the ability to make it instead tile the texture instead, as well as add some other capabilities that I'm not totally sure about yet (vertical progress bars / gauges would be nice).

This is the skin used for the above example:

This was about four hours spent to come up with this, after not really coding anything on my own in C++ for years. I am quite pleased with myself on this!

Any thoughts or suggestions on what to add, now that the core functionality works?

Edit: Throwing up some examples as I go...

the original progress bar along with two others, one of them very Guild Wars-esque