XianForce's Blog

I know I probably have a lot of downtime, and then make a lot of posts quite frequently, but I'm going to try to at least post something each week, even if it isn't programming related - Starting with this post.

So I have been working lately, on many different things, so I'll try to cover everything I've done since the last post.

So since the last post, I cleaned up my framework real nice, and started making a few small demos to test every piece of it. Then I created a breakout game. I left it unfinished purposely, because I have a Software Engineering club that wants to get into game development. So In this breakout game, I've tried to implement a little bit of everything, and I'm going to run them through it after they make a couple simple games/demos and then have them finish it (really the base of it is done, only thing left is polishing really).

I thought it had some cool effects, like the blocks decrease in color intensity every time they are hit, and burst into particles when they are destroyed.

But as I was making this game, there were two things I noticed. Firstly, I found that I need to start planning things out more, and start using Systems (or 'Managers') to control everything, and have all those systems access each other.

The second thing I noticed, was that my framework actually had some inconsistencies that really really bugged me. There were also some excessive singleton use that just didn't need to be there, so I removed it. The only singleton in the framework now, is the debugger, but I have plans to make States singletons, just because it makes it much easier.

So after fixing all that framework stuff, the structure of it starts with the ApplicationSystem, which holds a pointer to a VideoSystem, AudioSystem, InputSystem, and StateMachine.

I'm quite digging the new structure of it, so I'm excited to continue. So I am now *officially?* reviving the Charge project, but I have now planned it out so much more.

The problem I faced with my first attempt, was that I had some very specific ideas, that, in my mind, made Charge what it was. I came across problems because my design was very hasty, so when something wouldn't work well, I'd try to recode portions. Then after that failed a few times, I'd try to make some horrible code to just force it to work. After a while, this quickly fell apart, and that's when I realized I need something like a framework.

As of now, I would definitely not say the framework is done. I have completely scrapped the idea for a GUI portion, but I still want some text stuff (I removed it because it was crap). I like the idea of having a Bitmap Font Engine along with TTF Fonts, but we'll see what happens.

So I'm going to make another post tonight talking about what I want to do with Charge, and how it's all going, but for now I want to talk about another small project I created.

I made a level editor and it works quite well I must say. There's just one problem - It has no GUI. So I'll have to find a simple GUI lib to use; I was thinking wxWidgets, or perhaps just recode it in C#, because it'd be simple... but then I'd lose cross platforming =(. Anyways, all of the features are done, it just needs a GUI lib to access them.

So the only other thing I can say, that I'm not sure that I've said, is that I want to start moving into OpenGL ASAP. I have a book that I've had for 2 years, and it is great I must say, but apparently my integrated graphics doesn't support OpenGL. So if I want to get that hardware acceleration, I need to either A) Buy a new computer, B) Use DirectX, or C) Wait for SDL 1.3 and hope it's Windows implementation uses DirectX over OpenGL. I also bought a DirectX book thinking I would like it, but I must say... I hate it. I dabbled in it, and made some small base code, and even made a small game, but I felt like it was too much work to be giving up on cross platforming.

Anyways, because I've chosen option A, I've been saving up some money. I don't get too much money, but I have saved up $300 so far, and I'll probably have $400 - $500 at the end of the year. I'm thinking I'll probably need $600 because I have to buy a monitor as well, but we'll see. Maybe I can get a job over the summer =D? I doubt it =/.

Well that's what has been going on, I'll make a post in a few hours about Charge, and talk about the 'extension' of my framework I'm itching to create!