blobulos

I decided I had done way to much with 3D (Blender, character animations) and it was time to work on something else before I lost it. Recently did some stuff with blobs and trig, so it seemed like a good idea to expand on that a little.
It was also a good time for me to test some of the duct modules (namely input and scriptparser), still a little 'eh on the implementation, but it works!

linky.

sooo happy!

I finally got it! My tilemap engine actually works, and I couldn't be more excited!

The red lines on the map are in the image itself, if you look carefully enough you will see that the tiles have a height, and form together to make a solid surface.

The reason I didn't go straight 3d is the typical look it gets.. I hate that look. And functionality in a row & column environment is much greater - and you don't waste memory on 3d and tile data.

The FPS in this test was limited to 60, because of refresh rates. I can manipulate the height of each tile in realtime - it's nice and fast :)

Next I'm going to implement area drawing, that is deciding which tiles to draw from a given rectangle (to fill in as many spots as possible.)

duct module series

Recently, I've been working on a pack of modules for game development, namely 'duct'.

I already implemented general resource management and basic scripting (like quake's engine - mostly for object/graphics/AI setup.)

Still attempting to write the tilemap engine - think AOE/UO/Fallout 2.. Some great ideas to implement, once I get it drawing correctly.

After the tilemap engine gets sorted out I'll be continuing on the script engine (saving script nodes and rules refinement) and possibly a gui/layout system.

πρόοδο! (progress!)

Few more projects on the run:

• GIden (Global Identitfication) - basically a user data verification module, it gives you a unique access hash to use for gathering/changing user data from a server (or at least, in the future).
• Grescaro (information displayer for the Greek alphabet, and English to Greek/Greek to English translator) - guess who's been learning Greek.. ;)

GIden is currently in its baby-stage. It will remain dormant until I decide what direction to go..
Grescaro currently suffers from (what it seems to be) numbered crashes when trying to translate (curses!).

Just thought I'd take this free time to post a few updates..

P.S. Anyone else tired of the NEWS on HACKaday? (I know, no one will respond, I just had to say it)

game insight

Ever since I heard Blizzard was working on Diablo 3 I got back into the rpg-maker wannabe bandwagon. The results: playing Diablo 2 (non-stop, mind you :) for idears.

I'm mostly intrigued by the complexity of Diablo 2's map engine, the game was made back in 2000 and it's not even dusty yet. I'll probably design a similar system, once Max3D gets released (hopefully around Christmas), by then I should have the wxFry Designer all finished and polished up.

An engine for BlitzMax, using Max3D, on par with Diablo 2 would be excellent. The only reason I'm not going to attempt this with Max2D is lighting (and wall transparency); how would I render a scene like this?
That would be alot easier in a 3D engine, and you could do all sorts of other fun stuff with it.

fry designer

My upcoming version of the Fry Designer uses wxMax (a BlitzMax port for wxWidgets by [Brucey], thanks a MILLION btw - not to mention all the other great modules you've created; libxml, graphvis, crypto, and now support for commercial audio API's!).

Currently, it only has gadget selection and property viewing (on the verge of changing values, gotta wait for Brucey to implement some of the missing features for property grids), multi-project management, and a new project format.

Reflection: I've used Reflection to allow easy extension, and open up the possibility for script-based extra/user gadgets.

Project Format: Fry Designer now packages all files into a zip (named .fui, for Fry UI), while it will maintain backwards compatibility for the original folder-based setup - for those who choose not to use a modified version of FryGUI.

Dragging Gadgets: You can grab and move around all the gadgets you create (you can also move and change the size {not to mention a plethora of other fields} of gadgets using a property grid).

Coming soon: Preferences, multiple screen (per project) support, and options being explored for scripting.

And, as always, Open Source.

silly silly silly..

Apparently after creating a symlink for gcc-4.2, to compile the wxwidget libs, I forgot to set it back to gcc-3.3. So all the code I was compiling was being compiled under gcc-4.2, which was aparently bad..

Upon suggestion by [dawlane] I reinstalled gcc-3.3 and gcc-4.2 (I buggered them up by deleting all gcc symlinks - woops), and magically now both internet streams and graphics are working!
Needless to say, I'm a bit slow at night. I should of caught that stupid thing, though it is odd how it caused so many issues.

Onward!