XianForce's Blog

So just a little update on what I've been working on...

So, I haven't really started DS Development... But I plan to in the near future, just not specifically on the DS. The Super Card team has released an SDK, which I applied to receive... It seems it's quite easy to get, so I'm sure I'll receive one. With this, I'll be helping a friend of mine develop a small library to make things a bit easier to develop with. I hope to make small games and applications with this.

My portable framework has finally had a bit of lift off. For the most part it's finished. The planned networking core hasn't been discussed yet, so we're going to keep it on the back burner, and there's a few optimizations I can make.

But I really have to discuss something with my partner... I'm proposing that we entirely remove the abstract base classes. As of now, they create a lot of overhead with the v-tables, and in the end, it's not really necessary. We plan to compile this framework into a library, and still be able to use:

"namespace Platform = iPhone;"

So a quick swap of search directories to the iPhone library files + header files will allow us to recompile what we create on the PC, for the iPhone. And with this, we avoid the nasty overhead of v-tables, which is surely going to slow things down on an embedded system...

So once we get that out of the way, I'll be spending my time starting to actually develop a game with it, and when I get bored, I may pull some optimizations to the library.

Lastly, I suppose I'll talk about Charge. To be entirely honest, Charge has REALLY been put on the back burner. I had not even thought about it for the longest time.

But, last night I grabbed a piece of paper, and sorted out what I needed to do... So here's my current to do list for Charge:

*Create Process and Process Manager classes

*Sync the Process Manager with the Enemy System

*Create a Weapon Class to replace the redundant 'fire' function calls

*Sync the Weapon System to the Weapon Class

*Use the Process Manager to create AI process including allowing a lone enemy to join a group

So that's just in short... But that all gives me a lot of different things to work on, which I think is healthy in a project. Because if I get stuck in one place, I can work on a different area.

So soon I'll have about 4 active projects:

-Charge (Last game using just SDL!)

-Portable Framework (Won't be as active, just optimizations mostly... And network core!)

-First Game using Framework (Perhaps I've revealed the game already, but I won't repeat it)

-Development on the Super Card DSTWO

So I think with all these, I'll be able to keep coding without getting bored with one thing. And I definitely plan to start gaming more and more :D.

So now moving out of just my programming projects, I guess I'll talk about the SDL Video Tutorials. I apologize for slacking on those lately. I let a friend borrow my mic, and I just got it back today. 'epicasian' messaged me on the Elysian Shadows forum asking about them, and just somebody asking about when the next one will be released was so much encouragement to me, so the next two should be coming soon. But as for now, it's been a while since I've made one, so I got to take a look at the previous ones to see where I am...

Well, it has been a long time, but I think this long post makes up for it :D. School's starting in a week, so let's see what I can accomplish before then!