XianForce's Blog

Looking at my framework, there was something that bothered me. To initialize subsystems of the framework, you call an 'OnInit' function, that takes in a number of flags, for each piece you want to initialize. I'm not really enjoying this, and I'm really considering pulling that out, and adding an init function for each subsystem within the app manager. This way, I can have more control over how each piece is created.

The thing I'm disliking more and more though. Is having to use the AppMgr to access anything else. But thinking about that... That's the whole point of the AppMgr, to have a unified 'front' to access everything. I'm just lazy and don't want to type alot... so #define will be a good friend =p.

#define WndwMgr CApplicationManager::Instance()->GetWindowManager()

The joys of #defines...

Anyways... So now that I'm done talking about what I'm doing next, let's talk a little bit about what I just did.

So basically, there were 3 new classes I wrote: Base Game State, Game State Machine, and Event Handler. The Event Handler polls for events, and every time there is an event, the event is dispatched to the AppMgr which determines whether it is an event that the Window Manager or state machine needs, and then dispatches it to the correct manager. The Window manager has functions to handle each type of event, such as resizes and focus loss.

The State Machine utilizes the Base Game State ( duh!). The Base Game State class has virtual functions for mouse/keyboard events. If your Game State will use it, then override the virtual function, if not, no harm done.

Well, that's pretty much the Event Manager...

So after I do some clean up to make sure everything works together so far, I'm going to finish planning out the Audio Manager, which will be the last piece (Besides Threading, Networking, and OpenGL support, but I'm not planning on adding any of those until I get my new computer).

I planned out the Audio Manager once before, but I'll have to modify it a little bit due to recent changes.

Now that I've said the Audio Manager is the last thing, I've realized I don't have text support yet =0.

I'm still contemplating on whether I want a full out text system (ttf/bitmap font support, specialized surface abstraction, and functions made specifically for it)

or just extend support on the abstracted surface I already have...

Either way, I should finish this framework over the break... and hopefully those two games.

Anyways, finals are almost here, if I get an 86 on my history final, I'll have a 4.3 GPA, yay...

Depending on how I feel over the break, I'm thinking about releasing some SDL video tutorials... The only SDL Video tutorial I know of is from some guy with a strange accent (no offense) snasebrase on Youtube, I believe...

Anyways I'm done rambling, it's time for bed, happy devving.