The Vid

I've haven't been updating recently

But that doesn't mean I haven't been coding furiously, because I have. Once again, I've gone through and cleaned up a ton of code. In the process, I've totally revamped the process my game uses to generate levels received from my level editor. I've also made a lot of improvements to the way the level editor itself works. The largest amounts of rewrites and code changes were in the environmental collision section of my code. Everything has been separated and compartmentalized so that I can easily modify specific types of collisions and have it applied to every portion of my game. Once again, I love object based programming.

The new stuff

One of the biggest environmental collision based updates I've put in, is the ability to have diagonal collision rectangles. Previously, I'd have to staircase multiple collision rectangles over and over to simulate a diagonal while now, I can just have the damn thing check against angles. This took a little bit of math wizardry but now that it's in, it's marvelous =) I've made the collision rectangles on the first platform layer visible so you can see what I'm talking about. Not only will this save an immense amount of time in level creation, it should mean fewer collision checks every update.

In addition to that, I've added the ability (not shown in vid) to change maps based on either the player moving to a specific location, or activating something. I've also put in a very rudimentary load screen. Eventually I'll make it so the transition is sexy, but for now it's just super basic and functional.

I've also added shadows to the aiming cursor to give the player a better idea of where the item they are throwing will go. The height that the item is thrown is also now player controlled dependent on how far the trigger is depressed.

The last thing demonstrated in this video is transparent background objects. I've managed to figure out a way to use my level editor with my environmental collision stuff to have sections of the level become transparent when the player is at specific locations. This'll be useful later on when I'm building maps.

Things I've been working on

I've still been hard at work building up the dialog system that I need for my game. I've got all the basics down, but what I really need to do is nail down how it's going to look, and in what way the player will be able to manipulate their choices. Hopefully I'll have a bit to show on this section soon. I'm also still working on the story. . . which is something I really need to get together soon as I think I'm nearing the completion of the engine. I've still got plenty of HUD work to do so while I have a lot of wiggle room, I'd like to have it nailed down before I actually NEED it to progress.