Status Report - September 26

[Karl G.]

Well, I'm still buried in classwork but when I'm not, I'm coding nonstop to try and get the resource editor in a usable state. If you're curious what's taking so long, here's the gist of what's up:

When I released the last version of the map editor, I realized that the maps needed much more to them than just objects and ground. Maps aren't interesting without spawn points, solid walls, special effects, music, etc. Therefore, in order to let you guys build a game world that isn't quite as...not-game-ish...as the one I made (where you're chairs and you can walk through everything and you don't sink in water) I needed to expand the map editor. Small problem being, the basic way the editor stored its data couldn't be converted to do this.

So, I started writing another editor from the ground up (late July, early August). Everything was going well and I got most of the texture, 3d model, sound and music code working; however, I found that I was having to write the same loading/saving/merge/sort/display routines over and over with very minor changes. Because I intend to expand the editor significantly in the future--the technical term is "scaling"--I realized that that method wasn't going to fit the bill. We're now at mid-late August.

I've since changed the most low-level way that the resource editor stores its information, in the process creating a library (which borrows its name from an old project of mine) called DirectCraft. As of yesterday, I'm nearing the end point in finalizing this library, which will take care of all of the tedious code for me and let me focus on developing game components (most of which are finished and I'll just need to convert).

Hooray!

[lawn gnome]

sounds great Karl, cant wait for it dude.

[Massive]

Sounds like good news - thanks for the update.

Dare I ask when reasonably playable version might see the light of day...?