Friday, December 14, 2007
Preview Video 2
Let me first note that there are quite a few features that aren’t really working properly in this video, such as that the attack markers that are supposed to be something completely different are just yellow particle clouds.
Also, a lot of things that have been done like the work on modularity, the map converter, the xml system and such can’t really be shown in a video just like that, so the features shown are just the ones that can be shown.
I recorded this video in less than ideal fps, it was locked at 30 by fraps, but it dips under it a few times, this was mostly due to my computer and fraps not agreeing with each other… the insane lag towards the end of the orc clip was due to fraps filling up my C:-disk.
So, without further adu, here it is, preview video 2: Preview2.wmw
Various other notes about the video:
The first time the race sceen is shown it shows four teams, the second two are placeholder teams we’ve used in testing.
The fullscreen buttons in the options menu really do work, it just doesn’t really show in fraps.
We know the music is the warcraft 2 human music, we’re just using it as a placeholder. We do not own the copyright to the music and as such we will not distribute the game with it.
The enemies really do chase your units if you attack them and they will follow you if you try to run away. The orcs even do basic flocking while moving, didn’t really show too closely though.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Blog Announcement
This is a blog post about our blog posts, brought on by a comment on our last blog post before this.
The System Lords have demanded that we edit our previous blog entry titles to have more professional headers and revise the language we’ve used in our blog posts.
As you all know our blog has been a bit on the odd side, mostly due to the fact that we wished to bring a little humor the blog to keep it a bit more interesting and a bit less strict. In a sense it’s worked since among the outside people that have read the blogs ours seems to be the most memorable. We guess that in writing our blog it has gotten a bit too personal and apparently Lucas Arts-style humor isn’t appreciated.
However, since we’ve been asked to be more professional, we will comply and keep our blog more to the point. So this is probably the last entry until MS2 which will probably be another big list of documents and the second to last post on this blog.
We have now revised our subjects to reflect the contents of the entries more, we are not quite sure which language that was also unsuitable, we have narrowed it down to the following: “Hell” and “Java”. :)
The Banana Republic will live on in our hearts at least…
Monday, December 10, 2007
Preview Video 2 Delayed
Since the development team is currently running on 200 hour days due to too much of a workload from various courses that still remain with us from the last period.
The video won’t be up until later this week, most likely Friday. We meant to do a video last friday but LTU’s connection to SUNET went down and over the weekend we’ve done quite a bit of improvement which has lead to that we wish to finish some more things before we do the video.
One thing that we wish to show off is that we’ve made a program for converting BMP-files into maps for the game. This allows for drawing maps in a program such as Microsoft Paint which is a lot easier than editing it as a text file.
The program takes a BMP-file, calculates how many maps it should be split into depending on size, writes .map-files and .xml-files for all maps with the correct folder structure to make them a part of the created province. It also writes an .xml file for the province itself. It also sets all values in the .xml-files to the correct values based on the indata it gets from the gui and from the BMP-file.
The program looks like this: mapconv.PNG
Oh, and something rather interesting, last wednesday a human footman was the first ever unit to kill another unit in TheRTSGame, we now have more of a combat system, but to see that you will have to wait until Preview Video 2.
Furthermore we also have working sound, we’ve had working sound for quite some time now, but we thought we should at least mention it since it’s been something we’ve forgotten to say anything about. So, now we can at least say we’ve gotten the sound to work. ;)
Also, the work on the menus is almost complete. Two back buttons don’t really do anything and the volume slider isn’t done yet, but beyond that they are fully operational.
So, preview video 2 postponed until friday, for those of you that were looking forward to it and think you’ve been cheated I have just one word explaining the delay “Java”.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Screenshots
As promised, here are some screenshots. These mostly showcase new models, but they also show off that units get marked on the mini map now and a few other features.
ScreenShot001.PNG: Showcasing some models, especially the catapult. Also displaying a few other units in the screen. As you can see this screen also shows off the units being marked out in the mini map.
ScreenShot002.PNG: Showing the same models, displaying ground level view, and has a cavalry unit selected.
ScreenShot003.PNG: Also showing the ground view. Displaying a building, Human Training Ground. Yes, those buttons on the right actually work for creating units. The blue bananas create the three different human commanders. They are just there for testing as one will not be able to build commanders in later versions.
ScreenShot004.PNG: Another screenshot in the ground view, showing off the three human commanders. Priest, Crusader and Wizard.
ScreenShot005.PNG: Displaying some units, with the human Peasant selected. Those two buttons allow for constructing tents and training grounds.
Most likely we’ll do another preview video tomorrow, as you can see we have quite a few fancy new features to show off, beyond what has been showed off some other things like that we have almost completed our menus means that the next preview video should be very interesting.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Progress - XML and Modularity
We’ve gotten a tad lazy on our blogging lately, probably since we’ve been so busy working on actual programming we’ve forgotten to update the few readers that we do have on how we’ve progressed.
Since the video we have started implementing more modularity, this has been greatly supported by the fact that we’ve gotten XML to work. Yes, you heard me right, we have gotten the scripting working. That’s yet another of the big things on our checklist to cross off. Combine this with the fact that we’ve kept our modular structure so well and held our open standard so well and you get a game where nearly everything can be changed by just editing a few XML-files. Just by XML editing you can add units, buildings and even entire races as well as change every stat of everything in them.
It is quite impressive when you get to testing and by quite simply adding just one line to an XML file our workers could all of a sudden build training grounds in addition to the Tents we had used for the initial testing of construction. I use the term construction a bit loosely since it isn’t really construction as much as the worker creating and placing a building in zero time using no resources.
The map system is in the works with most of the XML-structure for the province map(or should I say multiple province maps since we do support more than one) is done. This has been something the work on some of the menus has been dependent on getting done. Some script parsing and object creating still needs to be done, but that should not take too long.
The menus are in the process of being reworked to become more dynamic and to support our modular structure which was specified in our design document. This is coming along nicely as well.
We are quite pleased with ourselves and how far we’ve gotten, so pleased this blog entry is mostly being posted to brag about how good we are. We’re going to need it though, since the project has been eating up most of our time for the last couple of weeks we’ve somewhat been neglecting our other course… so that will most likely start to take some time from project work starting next week. The project is still going to be getting some work done most days of the week. The project group is still motivated and willing to work… so it’s looking pretty positive for us in general.
Sadly no screenshots today, it’s been a while since we really took any screenshots to show off. Working on modularity and scripting doesn’t really give you much fancy things to show off. I do however promise you, our faithful but few readers some screenshots on monday and possibly even another preview video by the end of next week.