JoshJers' Ramblings

Well, I finally have all of the gameplay working. It supports 2-5 players, and is quite enjoyable.

I need to add a, you know…menu, stuff like that. Also, I would love for it to play networked, since it does kinda require the cards in one’s hand be a secret to the other players.

But, the gameplay logic is all done, the last of the (known) bugs is squashed, and it’s time to go play Super Paper Mario!

BEHOLD MY RIDICULOUSLY UGLY SPECULAR GAME PIECES!

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Cube Farm is coming along nicely – half of the gameplay is done.

In the game, for every turn, you place one card, and fill one cubicle (if possible). I have the card-placing portion done.

It involves filling in holes that are too small for a card to fit in as walkable floor space (for the purposes of determining if workers can reach the elevator). Any hole that has room for a card must remain open.

So now there’s a hand of cards to choose from, and you can select one and place it in a legal spot. Also done (though not visible), the code to determine which areas can reach the elevator and to determine how many points a given cubicle is worth is also in. Next up: worker placement!

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More to do, more to do!

The first test of my scripting setup is going rather well. And it’s completely chairless.

I have been working on converting over Cheapass Games’ “Cube Farm” into a digital format (which, sad to say, I’m never going to give out to anyone, what with copyright issues and the like. This is just my own internal test to make sure that I can do it), and it’s going rather well.

While I don’t have any of the scoring working yet, what I *DO* have is very promising. Namely, I have the cards displaying, and you can place them in the world.

Also, I recently added a blueprint-style background which, while it’s a bit higher contrast than I’d like, is a bit more interesting (and fitting) than the original green-on-black grid.

Some screenshots!

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The camera control is simple (and intuitive): hold down the right mouse button, and you can drag the grid around (to move the camera). Holding middle mouse lets you move the mouse left/right to spin the camera around the look-at point, and up/down zooms in and out (and also adjust the angle at which you’re viewing the board).

So far, so good. Next up: Actual gameplay!

Crazy!

So, I’ve been working on the Intangibles. Otherwise known as the Unscreenshottables. Those things that improve the innards of the whole system, but you can’t really show off.

But first! A screenshot of something (to prove that my renderer can display more than just chairs):

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One goal of this whole thing is that absolutely NO game logic will exist within the main EXE. It will all be loaded from script files (and eventually managed code assemblies).

I’ve gotten that up and running. The “scripting language” that I’m using is, in fact, C#. Basically, a script is an entity in the world, or an event, or any number of other things. They all derive from the IScript interface, which really requires three functions be implemented: OnCreate, OnTick, and OnKill.

I’ve exposed certain things to the scripting, like the math functions (vectors, matrices, quaternions), Camera control, texture/model loading, etc. There’s no direct access to the renderer, it’s all through the world data. You add objects into the world (which is setup by the main script), and it handles the rest.

I’m trying to make it as simple as possible.

Here is a sample script (for the rotating chairs that you have seen in videos past):

using System;
using Cubic.Scripting;
using Cubic.Math;

class RotatingObject : IScript
{
  IGameRenderable renderable;

  float angle;
  float rotSpeed;
  Vec3 position;
  static Random ran = new System.Random(190329);
  IScriptHelper helper;
  const float objectRange = 400.0f;

  public RotatingObject()
  {
  }

  public void OnCreate(IScriptHelper helper)
  {
    this.helper = helper;

    string[] filenames = new string[]
    {
      "ChairModel.xml",
      "ChairModel2.xml",
      "ChairModel3.xml",
      "ChairModel4.xml",
    };

    // Randomly pick a filename from the list
    string filename = filenames[ran.Next(filenames.Length)];
    angle = 0;

    // Choose a rotation speed
    rotSpeed = ((float)ran.NextDouble())*0.006f + 0.002f;
    if((ran.Next()&1) == 0)
      rotSpeed = -rotSpeed;

    // Random position in a cube
    position = new Vec3(((float)ran.NextDouble() * objectRange) - objectRange*0.5f,
                        ((float)ran.NextDouble() * objectRange) - objectRange*0.5f,
                        ((float)ran.NextDouble() * objectRange) - objectRange*0.5f);

    // Load the file (the true means to load synchronously, instead of caching the load for later)
    renderable = helper.CreateRenderable(filename, true);
    renderable.Position = Matrix.Translation(position);

    // Add it to the world (static update - which means it can move in place as long as
    // the bounding volume is sized big enough to cover the object's entire range of
    // motion
    helper.AddToWorld(renderable, ObjectUpdateType.Static);
  }

  public void OnTick()
  {
    // Rotate, and update the position matrix.
    angle -= rotSpeed * 5.0f*3.0f;
    renderable.Position = Matrix.RotationAxis(Vec3.Normalize(new Vec3(1, 1, 0)), angle)* Matrix.Translation(position);
  }

  public void OnKill()
  {
    helper.RemoveFromWorld(renderable);
  }
}

All-in-all, not terribly complex. It doesn’t have to deal with the renderer, or any major craziness. It just loads its object, adds it to the world, and goes about its thing.

There’s also a main script, which handles the initialization of the entire system (its filename is hardcoded into the exe – it is really about the only hardcoded thing in the system). Also, type scripts: these are scripts which are used as references by the other scripts, so the scripter can define custom types that can be used throughout the system.

There is currently no sound or network code, but graphics and input are working (well enough for now, anyway).

I still need to add actual mouse pointer support (instead of just mouse deltas), and I want to set up a menuing system, and then I’m going to work on scripting a little card game (which I will, sadly, not be able to distribute because it will be based off of an actual for-sale game, in this case Cheapass Games’ Cube Farm).

It should prove a nice little test of a simple game.

Also, I’ve been working on text and UI display, some elements of which I have working:

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Yes, that screenshot is back to all-chairs. Chairs are a classic!

But enough talk. HAVE AT YOU!

<end transmission>

I got bored and made a video of the chair demo. Why not? 😀

So here it is:

And, if you prefer to watch it in non-youtube-uglyvision, you can get a higher quality (6mb) WMV here:

So. Much. Chair. (I suggest you download rather than try to stream, it’ll go faster)

Yeah, this journal does not get updated nearly as frequently as I’d like, but I’ve been working on a new basis for a few new games that I’d like to try and make (one of which is actually my old 3D racing game). In the meantime, I’ve been working on the backend of the whole thing, including the task management system (to take full advantage of multicore systems) and the renderer. Hopefully within a month I’ll be started on the Super Awesome Scripty System (TM) and the Ultra Mega Material Creation Tool (C).

In the meantime, I thought I’d share a screenshot from the stress test of the renderer. It was intended to test the culling system, to see how effective (and fast) it is, and the results are very promising.

It is the stuff of dreams, and the stuff of nightmares.

This….is…..CHAIRTOWN:

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Anyway, enjoy! Hopefully I’ll have some more interesting screenshots in the near future (though history certainly says otherwise).