Even though the title sequence still needs some work to get it up to standard, we decided that it was something to come back to later as there will soon be enemy droids going into the game. Obviously, without having the transfer game in place, it’s going to be just the shoot-em-up aspect of Paradroid we’ll be testing and fixing, so it’s time to get that done now so all aspects of enemy droids can be set up in one go.
(more…)Bug fixing and text formatting
Started ripping out the temporary text lines I’ve been using for testing the scrolling information. Had all sorts of fun and games creating a routine to load in a text file and then display the text using a DS_list. Because I’d been editing it on the virtual PC it had inherited all sorts of stupid formatting codes that weren’t visible and caused the formatting to go all over the place. Eventually got that all sorted out and finally had reasonably formatted instructions doing what I wanted.
(more…)Project maintenance
Busy doing other things today so, rather than attempting to write code in a short amount of time, I went through what I actually had to comment it all up so it’s readable by Aaron as well as myself. I have to remember sometimes that I’m working collaboratively now and this stuff has to be done for both our convenience.
(more…)Title sequence update
Today was a day of pretty heavy research looking into the most effective way to do the scrolling system on the title screen. As mentioned previously, I’ve tried a few different ways with varying success but the general rule appears to be to use a surface to get it done properly. This did turn out to be true.
(more…)Scrolling the title screen with GMS 2
Hands up all of you lot that remember the original Paradroid? Quite a few, I suspect, so you’d be the people remember the attention to detail that showed up in the title screen with the scrolling screens of text, use of colour, and even formatting of the scroll text, within the limits of the font size Andy was working with. It’s down to me to realistically improve on this while staying as close as practical in feel to the original.
(more…)Paradroid ongoing
Development is going pretty well on Paradroid at present so, pretty soon, I’m going to be posting up some work in progress of both development images, and the game as it is at present, running.
(more…)Numpty
I found my missing code from yesterday. Turned out my back up to the QNap had copied the working directory after all.
I shall now endeavor to make my crap prototype even crapper.
Parallels and Gamemaker Studio 2
Tinkering with side-projects like Mancala has taken a back seat over the last week, despite my previous raving about wanting to get back into Blitzmax once again. Aaron and I discussed the relative merits of using something huge like Unity for Paradroid and we ended up deciding that it’s overkill for the type of game we’re trying to recreate, and probably for the types of games we usually prototype or develop as well.
(more…)Putting it all on screen
With a mocked up game board in place it’s straight onto probably the hardest part of the project, which is handling all the objects needed for the game. There are 14 holes to keep track of on the board, and 48 pegs. We need to know the hole location of each of those pegs, the x and y positions of them on screen, the status of these pegs (as they could be moving between holes) and what kind of pegs they actually are.
(more…)Mancala & stepping back in time.
Today was possibly the most productive day I’ve had programming in possibly as much as a year. If any of it is of practical benefit, apart from the pursuit of knowledge and keeping the mind sharp, I’d very much doubt, but I like to think that any time spent in front of the computer putting code together, working with development systems, and just generally plugging away at getting it right is always a good thing.
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