Day 1533: Returning to blogger

Here I am, back to blogger after trying to move to a self-hosted Drupal. Frankly, I didn't have time to learn Drupal so I tossed it out. I'll try to bring the drupal blog's most meaningful moments over to this blog, which will return as the official blog. Been to the GDC, saw Unity, which is bringing a lot of things into question. More to come.

What are you still doing here?

Head on over to http://exequor.com for all the latest news about "Tales of the USCA" and also "The Archangel Chapter".

This site will soon be recycled into something else. Please update your bookmarks. Thank you!

Day 396 : Lots of new stuff

A lot has happened with the project, so much so that I haven't found the time to post a lot on this blog. First and foremost, the official website is up and running at http://usca.exequor.com. I made it with drupal. Can't say I'm in love with drupal so far. The forums are an abomination compared to phpBB. Anyway, I'm staying the course for now. The reason why I wanted the website up is that I've made a teaser for the game, it's available on the site in either WMV or AVI.

I'm currently spending most of my time in blender designing. I've never been in love with Blender but it does the job. And Michael Reimpell's excellent exporter is doing a fine job. I'll start posting screenshots on the website as they become available.

Day 365 : One year already, and vacations status

It was a year ago today that I started the development of "The Archangel Chapter" using the "Dark Game SDK". One year later I unfortunately find myself with very little to show for in terms of playable demos and such.

These vacations have been the most trying and de-motivating of this project's lifespan. I entered them with the belief that the engine was ready to enter production and that I could concentrate on asset production and integration. Not so. The engine still had big missing or malfunctioning features. In the end I spend 75% of the time doing engine maintenance, feature additions and such, and 25% adding content. As a result, the originally planned milestone of having 1 complete production level with the different menus to lead the players to it not only remained unmet, but will be unmet for at least a few months.

2007 will see a drastic change of direction in the project. So far I've not hesitated to go back and redo things I felt weren't designed properly and with object-oriented optimization. The philosophy has always been to invest time now so that later things will fall in place more rapidly and such. There was also a constant thriving to put as many features in the game engine as possible.

But as a result of this approach there is no game here. No game to be shown and too many rewrites. The game's engine will soon enter a lock-down mode, and the game will be made with whatever features are in the engine (which is already way more than most, if not all, rail shooters I've seen in the independent circuit). Bug fixes only.

To that end I will spend the next few months intensely testing the engine and locking it down. The new milestone for the complete 1 level experience is pushed back 6 months. That's enormous I know, but so far every time I thought I was ready to do production, the truth has been far from it. So I'm playing it safe.

I wish I wasn't alone on the battlefield on this. I've had a few offers for help, but I'm waiting for concrete results before considering them official.

Happy new years to those of you who've followed this little journey. Lots more to come this year. Cheers!

Day 355 : Getting a grasp

Between family gatherings, playing with my christmas gifts, the worst cold I got for the past few years and what seems to be some unfortunate gastric problems that requires me to rush to the bathroom every now and then, I'm now managing to get the upper hand on the GUI and expect good results in the next few days. I don't think my original milestone for the christmas vacations is still feasible, but I'll give it a good shot for the 10 or so days I got left. I shall do my best to put aside my newly received videogames to concentrate on work. I can play once vacations are over. Now that I think about it, in 10 days will be the first year anniversary of the beginning of The Archangel Chapter. I think it's been a pretty productive years, the first few months anyway ;-). Going back to work.

Day 344 : Gooey Gui

I never thought something so trivial would end up being such a quicksand. Again it's great that something like CEGUI exists and that people took the time to build such a system and share it for free, but at the same time it's such a mess that, considering how trivial and limited the GUI requirements of my project are, it becomes legitimate to ask myself if it would have been faster to build my own GUI system from scratch.

I've spend the last weeks ping-ponging between the ideas of either taking TaharezLook and modifying it with the look of my game or create my own skin from scratch. I started with the latter and was faced with the mishmashy reality of the CEGUI system. Not the best design I've ever seen. Forums don't give a lot of answers either. XML files upon XML files of redundant data. For example, suppose I want to rename TaharezLook to SomethingElseLook, I'll have hundreds of occurrences of TaharezLook/ to search and replace with SomethingElseLook/. And a single mistake in one of the 4-5 XML files that constitute a skin will yield weird error messages that don't help pinpoint the problem that much. This just shouldn't be.

Anyway, after 2 weeks I give up. I'll just give a quick coat of paint on top of TaharezLook and be done with this. It's not critical enough to justify the extra delays. I'm entering a rather critical phase of development. The plan is to have something playable at the end of the Christmas vacations on the 14th. And not a prototype but something complete. GUI, mission/weapon selection etc. Let's see how this plan holds up.

Day 331 : Collisions and GUI

I think I'm pretty much done with my collision system. It doesn't hold a candle to any real collision system out there but for the needs of a rail shooter it will be enough. Roughly a combination of AABB bounding boxes in a tree. I needed it fast and simple. Trying to integrate OPCODE, even with OgreOpCode, wasn't smooth enough, so I skipped. Keeps the engine nice and light and avoids an extra dependency.

I'm switching road right now and moving on to doing GUI for menus and interface, as well as finalizing the adaptation of the Shmoulette engine with the game (there was still some splashovers on both sides, I'm now cutting them to be nicely and cleanly separated).

I'm using CEGUI for my GUI. So far I love it. It's a bit rough around the edge and the .XML structure could definitely use better hierarchy, but overall I'm impressed. The original plan was to cut as much as possible in the GUI and limit player options to a bare minimum. But since I'm getting a nice, clean GUI system free of charge I might actually put in all the options I want. I'll see.

The reason I moved to GUI design even though the game module itself isn't complete (I have no outstanding issues with it, but I know they're there, I just didn't find them yet) is because I was getting a bit tired of the loop I was caught in. Start to design a level, find a flaw in the engine, correct it, go back to design, find a flaw in the engine, rinse, repeat. So I'm taking a break from that and will work on GUI which is easier and thus more relaxing. Besides, learning GUI will help me turn the crappy editor I made into a slightly less crappy editor, which is always good.

I'm still on track for a somewhat complete 1 level gaming experience after the Christmas break. Should include main menu, profiles integration, in-between levels interface, and 1 complete level, art and all. With the exception of textures on models, for which I will accept placeholders for now.

What I'm getting the most fed up with now is compile-times. They get bigger and bigger. I feel I'm spending about 1/4 of my time finding bugs, fixing problems and implementing, and 3/4 of my time compiling. Not so good. Maybe I need a new PC...