A new video..? Not much to show.

Hello my followers...
Today it's been a pretty bad day for development... I've been one whole day trying to figure out a new error (Exception unhandled) in my Content Processor for my Event class... Apparently it just decided to stop working and Visual Studio 2008 went on strike and decided to stop every builder/debugger ever...

After spending a whole day figuring out what the problem was, I found out that my project was building a different source code (which I have yet to understand what it was...) than what it was supposed to and whatever changes I was applying they weren't even read.

What I had to do is to delete the whoe Content project, remove every assembly related to it and restart from scratch (well, I copy+pasted the sources...). This at last made it work... but only after 8 hours of hair-ripping debugging (Which wasn't working).

Sometimes I hate computers, I seriously do.

Anyways, since I haven't posted much in a while and I came back to this only a few days ago, I decided to hand out a new video and a screenshot of what I'm currently working at.

The video shows the Event Editor I use to code the event scripts in my game and the screenshot is an Xbox screenshot of a running event (the one I was changin in the video).

I know it's not much and the graphical assets are all missing (Tell me something I don't know..) but it's still something I go proud of.

Enjoy the screenshot and the videos. To the next update!

Cheers!

Video:



Screenshot:

Events, Xbox360 and a step closer to spaghetti code.

Hello my lovely followers (so few followers actually..)!

Today I have a nice update for everyone. Since I pretty much disappeared for a while, with Christmas holidays, ET and exams at the University I had no real time to work on the project, however today I came back to it with a nice update and new features ready to be used!

1) I was actually able to deploy the game to the Xbox360 through the Trial membership (I love being a MSDNAA student!) and, after having fixed a few graphical glitches due to the change of resolution and some annoying bugs, the game is perfectly working on my small (very small...ugh) TV at 720p. This, to me, is awesome since I honestly never thought I was ever able to see my small game (even if incomplete and pre-alpha version) on my Xbox360, makes me feel really pro and one step closer to a real AAA game.

2) I stopped the development of the Battle Engine since it felt almost complete, I will have to add implementation for skill animations, attack animations, items support + animations, monster AI (scripting... ugh!) and multi-character support, however the backbone of the engine is done and it's very versatile, I will have no real trouble adding those features once I have them planned.

3) I started working on the event engine for scripted events on the TileMap screen and.... it's awesome! I was able to get it ready, loaded and running in less than 4 hours (still have to implement some functions thoguh) and that is a record time for me... Since I've never coded a script engine before and it was my first approach. Now I'm able to write simple and easy to write files with commands and instructions to the NPCs on the map to perform all the various actions/conversations available... To be honest, I really squealed like a fangirl when I saw an NPC coming on the screen, from offscreen, walking happily toward the (X,Y) point of choice after I told him so. I was so happy that everything was working that now I feel a new adrenaline charge to dive in the project once more and try to finish the backbone engine for everything as soon as possible.

Thank you for reading this, my friends.

Cheers!

PS: Next time hopefully I'll post some new screens from the game... maybe.

The battle engine and its miracles...

Today I was able to go further in my battle engine and, surprisingly, it's working pretty well. With an event driven GUI-like interface it's getting easier and easier to go on... however some things keep me amazed and wondering... Sometimes I don't even remember stuff I myself have added in.

I've just spent 20 minutes looking for the place I told my game to select the party during a healing spell. I swear I didn't remember putting that in and later on I just found out it parsed the type of skill and added the player party to the list of "enemies" instead of the enemies themselves. That's how intelligent my GUI is, I'm really happy.

Now I just have to add in some animations for both skills and players and the battle engine should be done with... that's a huge step, seriously.

Next I'll be posting a small video of it done (hopefully), so keep tuned for even more!

Cheers.

New possible addition to the team?

Hello guys, today I have great news. Probably the project will now speed up a little bit and I have to apologise once again for the lack of updates as of lately.

I've found someone who could, probably, be a nice addition to the team regarding the graphical aspects of the game, I'm already "using" her for characters concept art and she'll take on pixel art as well... I have great hopes for it.

Plus, even though university (and Dragon Age: Origins *cough cough*) is keeping me really busy, I've managed to add some new stuff and polish a little more my skill system / battle system. Nothing great from this update about the game, however I'm slowly moving on toward my target and I really hope I'll be able to release this game soon (aka less than 1 year...).

Cheers.

...done organizing?

At last, I'm done commenting all the code I've written... I'm only missing a last part regarding the battle system, but that is because it's roughly incomplete and probably due to changes soon, so I'll avoid commenting/explaining that since it will change soon.

Today I, also, was busy with installing and trying out the new Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2010. Too bad it doesn't support XNA GS yet, so I cannot make use of it for Harmonia Warders... well, VS 2008 is awesome already, so no loss.

Now it's time to tackle again on the battle system, I have to get this done, it's dragging me down so fast that I almost have no energies for anything else...

and still need artists. I hope someone *looks up* sends me an angel to help and draw all my images, but that won't work I bet, don't know just why though...

Organizing the style, boring...

Hello everyone,

Today felt the urge to just re-read the whole code I've written so far and... I have to say I'm impressed with the amount of work I've pulled out and I still have to do, it's really huge. Some parts of codes to me seemed obscure and not really clear, even though I was the one that wrote them... and that is understandable since I had not touched them for a couple of months, especially the ones around the TileEngine (which, as I said, I took from Nick and slightly modified).

That is the main reason why I realized I do have to keep my code clean and well commented, to save troubles later on, when I have to come back to what I've already written and change/polish/optimize it, it really bothers me when something is unclear and entangled, spaghetti code is a bad thing and generally leads to bug and glitches, which I'd rather not have in the final product.

Exploiting the awesome feature of Visual Studio 2008, I've just started adding comments and a small documentation on my code, for every line of code, member, method, class, whatever... It is a very boring task but, in the end, it is very rewarding because the end-product seems really professional and it is easier to be modified and re-used for later projects as well... and who knows, I may also leak it around the intertubes for people to use it on their own projects... as long as it appears good, working and clean enough.

So far I'm not even at a quarter of the way done, so I'll keep on going and commenting everything I have to, while sipping a nice cup of fruity tea and watching my awesome Opeth DVD on the Xbox360 in the background. It's very mellow and relaxing, the perfect mood to get a nice job done.

Everything will probably be done tonight or tomorrow night at most, then I'm back to coding... That battle engine won't get completed on its own (yet... hehe)!

Cheers! ~Morgy

New rush kicking in

Welcome back Morgy!

Thanks Morgy, I'm back!

Yeah, that's it, I'm finally back on this project. Since university kicked in (*ahem*Aion*ahem*) I didn't have much time to program and I felt kept out of my own project. I found it harder and harder to go back to it, but I promised to myself I had to complete this, especially if I want to even try to participate in next year's DreamBuildPlay (if there is one). That (and a lot of boredom today) is why I finally managed to get my head focused on this and read back to pages of code I wrote and now I'm back kicking, programming the game once again.

Today I improved my battle screen management, adding a BattleSkillList screen for the skill selection. I don't like "hard-coding" everything since I want to keep my classes as flexible as I can, however I had reached a real dead end with this BattleScreen stuff. I had to resort to have one screen of each action type (skill, attack, enemy select, item, etc etc) coded slightly different from the others if I wanted to keep going with this. Probably there was a better solution, but as long as I can get this to work and I don't drawn entangled into my own lines of code, it should be ok. In later versions I may try to revisit it all once again and make it better, but so far it seems to be working.

The real problem now is that I can't do any real testing yet, since I need to plan skills, animations and battles and I'm not in the condition for that (need editors, designers and all that stuff, which I'll be looking for when the basic engine is complete). If you feel like helping me out, with any kind of character art, skill art style and stuff, just feel free to mail me , I'll be glad to include them in the game if I find them appropriate. Any help is well-welcomed.