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"Endgame: A Tactical Starship Simulation"
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Owner:
| el tea
| | Showcase Entry:
| None | |
| Total Entries: 7 | el tea
Entry: 7
08/07/2003
07:55 PM
| 7 Aug 2003
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So...much....work....so...little.....payoff...
I spent the last three days figuring out the physics of the game. How much damage torpedos do, acceleration rates, turn rates, etc. In the end I came up with two very important sets of formulas which model the acceleration, turn rates, and phaser decay. I was going to implement the formulas as is in the code, but I was worried about the time to run them. So, instead, when the program starts it generates 8 tables with 1000 entries each so that the values can be looked up instead of dynamically calculated. That takes only one third (or less) of the time it would have taken to dynamically calculate, so it seems to have been worth it.
With all those decisions done, much more information went into the ship files, so I had to adjust my setup function (which loads the data in) as well as my SpaceObject creation function (which uses that data). I am hoping that I am now close enough to see some on-screen results. I really want to see how long it takes a ship to turn around, accelerate to max speed, etc.
After that I face the daunting task of deciding how I'm going to load in and treat weapons in the game (ie: can a ship have 2 types of photon torpedos? Or just one from each "type" of weapon?) Then implementing it. But when that's done...ayyyyyyy! | el tea
Entry: 6
08/04/2003
04:54 AM
| 3 Aug 2003
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When will I finally add new, cool stuff? Last few days have been spent cleaning it up. I added a bitmap font system from okee. It's proportional, so stuff looks a lot better than with other bitmap font systems.
I have finally finished changing all the display code so that nothing references the screen absolutely. At the game's start I call a function called SetupGraphics() where I set all the display variables and load the images. The variables are used for viewport/image placement in the game. This should allow me to add multiple resolutions with a minimum of changes.
In between coding sessions I have also been working out the "rules". In other words, making decisions about energy consumption, weapon damage, acceleration and turn rates, etc. There's still as much to go as I've done, and it's a lot of hard decisions...
Can I finally do something new? | el tea
Entry: 5
08/04/2003
04:54 AM
| 1 Aug 2003
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My how time does fly. I've been busy finishing up my Master's degree for a few months, but I'm finally taking a look at the game again. I just changed the particle system so it exists on its own (ie: it's not just another space object) to drastically reduce the processing time. I also changed it so that the particles fade over time instead of just disappearing at the end of their run. Much better.
One nice discovery is that I have laid the code out in a clean enough design with sufficient documentation that it wasn't difficult to figure out how everything worked again.
Next: Figure out all the systems in the game (ie: shields, speed, tractor beams, etc...) so that I can add damage and energy management. | el tea
Entry: 4
08/04/2003
04:55 AM
| 8 Apr 2003
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I was sick today and stayed home from work. In between naps I coded away and tada! The setup screen is done. It might not sound like a huge milestone, but with that I can quickly customize battles and test out new ships without having to "hard code" the new data. It took a long time because there were ten buttons to respond to, and a schematic pic to update depending on what ship is selected. That's a lot of state based information to mess with and it took some time. Either that, or I'm crappy at what I do lol.
All of the ship information now resides in a file called "ships.txt" and as you add more ships, as long as the right pics are also added, they automatically become part of the game. I'm pretty happy with the result.
Now: back to the fun stuff of making a starship combat game! | el tea
Entry: 3
08/04/2003
04:55 AM
| 6 Apr 2003
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The setup screen is almost complete. It's great, because now I can just make changes to a file called ship.txt, add the appropriate graphics, and presto! New ship in the game. Basically, all I have left to do is to add the ability to click on an added ship from the list and have it re-display its statistics and then to have all the selected ships added to the game.
Later on I'll put in some choices for scenarios and such (as well as displaying the relative difficulty of the chosen simulation), but once this immediate work is done I can get back to working on the gameplay (finally!) | el tea
Entry: 2
08/04/2003
04:55 AM
| 1 Apr 2003
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Well, I could start with an April Fools joke and say that I'm done, but I'll jump into the real status. My weekend was mostly spent making graphics (LCARS style) for the fleet selection screen. Plus, I spent a full day making a tileset for The Caffeine Kid's version of "Take Two". It was a good refresher in The Gimp, but it took a fair bit of time.
However, I did get pretty far with the setup screen and it should be good to go after another full evening's worth of code (although it won't be all animated and pretty... ) | el tea
Entry: 1
08/04/2003
04:55 AM
| 29 Mar 2003
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I started into Blitz Basic only three weeks ago and have been working on EATSS for about a week and a half or so. Progress so far has been good. The general structure of the game is there with a general "SpaceObject" encompassing all the types of things that can be in the game: starships, weapons, particles, etc. But it sure makes me miss polymorphism (c++).
I'm a little hung up at the moment as it's gotten to the point where I have to build the system to allow the player to make the two fleets and assign ships to them. This means making a system to hold data for the ships, reading it in, and creating what the player asks for. |
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