Building project

Tomorrow, material for a big improvement on our house is arriving. We will be pulling out our front and back walls, and insert new ones, made of some sort of industrial chemical compound which will survive us all, and the walls will be properly isolated for a change. We really need this, as I can see the curtains move inside our house when it’s windy outside. I will post some pictures showing the progress. Should be fun. I’m glad I hired people to do this job, as it’s way too hot outside during the day to do heavy work.

Also tomorrow, I will go on a course for Platespin PowerConvert and PowerRecon, and this weekend I will be on a bootcamp for Vmware ESX 4 (you may call it Vsphere, I find it odd ) Busy days indeed and probably not a lot of programming going on while we’re rebuilding.

But on that note: the particle editor can now load and save libraries. I also changed the shortcut keys, and enabled all menus and added new stuff there as well, all to make it behave more like you expect from a Windows application. It’s starting to get there. I uploaded a new version for download and updated the svn so grab it if you’re in need Go to the My Code page and then to the particlesMAX project page. I started to use Tmaps for everything. It’s my library storage system and now also the thing that drives the new configuration system. I like Tmaps, they are the unsung heroes of BlitzMAX

No screenshots today! awww.

Time for a new addiction

Cancelled my WoW account. yay!

After spending two nights staring at the code, trying to find a rotation bug, I squashed it and finally got all that stuff working. The line emitter for which this was needed was then quickly finished. This will allow the creation of (for Trapped! anyway) plasma and laser lines. It can also be used to create a line of flames, or rain from the sky. The length of the line can be changed in real-time, as it’s linked to the Y size of the emitter.

I’ll probably tweak it as I go along but it’s working pretty well. I’ve uploaded the new version to the SVN and will update the binary download soon. I also updated the WIKI pages.

So now I have explosions, lines, and fountains. I think I am set, and can move on to the creation of alien effects. Experimentation will be the key for that, so interesting things to try out. What I am aiming for will be a snail-like appearance for the aliens with shells of energy. Aliens in different stages of energy evolution? Might work, and would be an explanation of the different levels of aliens.

If one idea solves two problems, then I’m all for it. I’d like to think about game design as Yoda thinks about the future: ‘always in motion’

Spawner spawns spawner spawns spawner….

Yes, the title reads like a Monty Python sketch

Today, the library got simplified a lot by merging all internal TMaps into one. This was needed because I needed each id in the library to be unique. The reason for this was that it should be possible for spawners to spawn new spawners. Before this, each item type had it’s own internal id series. This posed problems when I added the possibility to select spawners in addition to particles and the selected spawner had the same id as a particle. Choice lists would get messed up. But not anymore. 

The explosion on the right has a spawner which spawns 5 fire cloud spawners, creating trails of fire. This was one of the final important features that had to go in before I wanted to add the engine to the game. The engine is ready for the big bangs now!

The engine spawner code has become a bit messy, with some repeating code, but I will get back to that later. What now is needed is a line type of spawner, allowing particles (or spawners! ) to be created on a line. This will be great for lasers, plasma beams, and more. I want the offset of spawners to emitter to be changeable over time, instead of fixed values.

I added a lot more control over how things are spawned (angle, direction, scale, etc) The combinations are starting to add up now, allowing for great combinations.

I’m also busy making ‘weird’ particle images for my aliens. Doing a lot of testing with those particles to create unique, pulsating energy shapes. It’s fun and so far, almost no crashes happened as I keep adding combinations in the emitters. So far, so good, and a new version of the editor should be on the project page in a few days, once I am sure the new stuff is stable.

More detailing

As most of the code has found its place, time has come to add more and more detail in the functionality. It is now possible to change the handle of each image, affect scale of items at spawn time, and more little stuff. Also added is the Fountain emitter, allow sprays of particles to be emitted. Useful for engines, smoke trails and such. I also changed the order and categories in the editor. As more and more stuff gets added, it will be necessary to have a more categorized layout.

Here is a new shot of the editor; almost the same at the earlier shot

It shows the new layout of the spawner. This is where the most work has been done. As the shot shows, what to spawn is now under the ‘Create’ category, and under that is also the new ‘Scale’ category. More and more functionality will be added to the spawner, and ext to do is the ability to spawn spawners. This will enable the creation of explosions with sprays of fireballs, etc. Something I will need. Heh.

I will update the SVN as soon as the new stuff is more stable.

Quick Update

The 3rd iteration of the particle editor and engine is now up on http://code.google.com/p/particlesmax/. This is the final review of the code and its structure. Type specific code has been removed from the editor and into the types themselves, cleaning up the editor code considerably. I am very happy with how things have turned out and I am confident that new features can now be added on top of this version.

The time is also near for me to plug the new engine in the game and start designing the new aliens with this new particle system. First up though is creating the few spawner types needed. Also, I want spawners to be able to spawn emitters. That will be the final essential feature (that I know of now) that I need for the game.

Creating the new aliens with the editor will surely be a good test run for it! I expect to find lots of bugs