Doodle Post
Drawing on a tiny tablet on my laptop is definitely an adjustment.
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posts dated from: september 2015
Dev Log: Shoots and Ladders
I'm continuing on my journey of focusing on my little platformer prototype and ignoring all of my other projects for the time being. I'm still having fun with it, and it's what I've been working on when I set up in coffee shops around the Phoenix area. I'm still in the middle of moving so I've just been working on my laptop. I no longer have access to four monitors for the time being, but maybe that's a good thing?
I've been poking around with adding ladders to the potential game idea. I like the idea of ladders that can bring the player (or any platformer object) through solids. I don't think I see ladders in many platformers and I'm starting to see why as I try to code these things. I thought it would be pretty straight forward but it's a little bit more tricky than I thought.
Having ladders that can pass an object through solids can create a way to totally separate different spaces of a level which I like, the only problem is the weird edge cases that appear because of those rules. I have ladders mostly working now, but if a moving solid interacts with the player currently on a ladder then some pretty messed up stuff happens. I still have to figure out what's going to happen in that case.
Another thing to consider is moving ladders! Which might make things a little crazy. Right now all of my platforming objects operate independently, but I might move to an approach that involves a manager object that controls the order of execution of certain events. For example having all moving solids, moving ladders, etc, do their thing first might make things way easier. Also having objects check for neighboring objects all at the same time before and after movement would be more ideal than each object just moving and checking in its execution order.
That's it for now. Back to work! I have to catch up on some things I've been neglecting for this project, whoops.
I've been poking around with adding ladders to the potential game idea. I like the idea of ladders that can bring the player (or any platformer object) through solids. I don't think I see ladders in many platformers and I'm starting to see why as I try to code these things. I thought it would be pretty straight forward but it's a little bit more tricky than I thought.
Having ladders that can pass an object through solids can create a way to totally separate different spaces of a level which I like, the only problem is the weird edge cases that appear because of those rules. I have ladders mostly working now, but if a moving solid interacts with the player currently on a ladder then some pretty messed up stuff happens. I still have to figure out what's going to happen in that case.
Another thing to consider is moving ladders! Which might make things a little crazy. Right now all of my platforming objects operate independently, but I might move to an approach that involves a manager object that controls the order of execution of certain events. For example having all moving solids, moving ladders, etc, do their thing first might make things way easier. Also having objects check for neighboring objects all at the same time before and after movement would be more ideal than each object just moving and checking in its execution order.
That's it for now. Back to work! I have to catch up on some things I've been neglecting for this project, whoops.
Otter Updates!
I've been pretty productive on coding stuff lately so with that comes some updates for Otter! Here's some of the things that have changed or been added lately in the dev branch:
* OgmoProject has a lot more utility methods now like GetValue() and GetLayerData(). If you need to check out level data before actually loading a level into a Scene this can be pretty useful.
* Added OgmoProject.RemapAsset() for when you need to assign a different path for an asset being referenced in your Ogmo projects. For example if you need to take the path of a tilemap from the ogmo project and reassign it to something else when being loaded into the game.
* Fixed a thing that I broke in SetHibox on Entities.
* Util.Clamp now supports Vector2 input and output.
* Added shortcuts to Scene methods like GetEntity<> on Entity just to make code a little bit less verbose at times.
* Added Button.LastPressed and Button.LastReleased. These are both timers that will count up since the last button press and release respectively. Pretty useful for doing input buffering type stuff, or waiting until an input has been released for some amount of time before changing state, and all that kind of stuff.
* Added GetFillRect() to NineSlice.
* Made Debugger.RegisterInstantCommand() public and added Util methods to go along with it. You can now add debug commands that can be used immediately instead of executing them at the next update. Also fixed some bugs in the debugger related to this.
* Fixed the rendering of GridCollider (it was too large by 1 pixel for each cell.)
* Added GetTileIndex() to Tilemap and GetIndex() to TileInfo.
* Texture.CopyPixels now actually works (warning: blittng operations are very slow.)
* More Collider parameter options in all of the Collide, Overlap, etc methods.
* Added Scene.GetEntitiesWith<> which is a weird way to grab a list of Entities that have a specific set of Components. This is probably very slow and should be used sparlingly, but it might be useful to some folk.
* Various small fixes and tweaks that don't really effect end users.
* OgmoProject has a lot more utility methods now like GetValue() and GetLayerData(). If you need to check out level data before actually loading a level into a Scene this can be pretty useful.
* Added OgmoProject.RemapAsset() for when you need to assign a different path for an asset being referenced in your Ogmo projects. For example if you need to take the path of a tilemap from the ogmo project and reassign it to something else when being loaded into the game.
* Fixed a thing that I broke in SetHibox on Entities.
* Util.Clamp now supports Vector2 input and output.
* Added shortcuts to Scene methods like GetEntity<> on Entity just to make code a little bit less verbose at times.
* Added Button.LastPressed and Button.LastReleased. These are both timers that will count up since the last button press and release respectively. Pretty useful for doing input buffering type stuff, or waiting until an input has been released for some amount of time before changing state, and all that kind of stuff.
* Added GetFillRect() to NineSlice.
* Made Debugger.RegisterInstantCommand() public and added Util methods to go along with it. You can now add debug commands that can be used immediately instead of executing them at the next update. Also fixed some bugs in the debugger related to this.
* Fixed the rendering of GridCollider (it was too large by 1 pixel for each cell.)
* Added GetTileIndex() to Tilemap and GetIndex() to TileInfo.
* Texture.CopyPixels now actually works (warning: blittng operations are very slow.)
* More Collider parameter options in all of the Collide, Overlap, etc methods.
* Added Scene.GetEntitiesWith<> which is a weird way to grab a list of Entities that have a specific set of Components. This is probably very slow and should be used sparlingly, but it might be useful to some folk.
* Various small fixes and tweaks that don't really effect end users.
Dev Log: Platforming Prototyping
My travels for the year still have not ended! As it turns out I'm currently in the process of moving, so everything is at least a little bit chaotic. I'm staying with friends just going to coffee shops with my laptop to work on stuff, and in that way it still feels like I'm on the road even though I'm just a few miles away from where I used to live.
I'm using this time to focus on my platforming prototype for now and totally neglecting almost every other project I have spun up. I suppose at some point I'll do a review blog post to go over the status of all my projects.
Most of what I've been working on is the core "physics" of the platforming stuff. I'm referencing Matt Thorson's technique for most of what I've been working on. One of the things I'm playing with transferring momentum from the platforms to the player when the player stops being a passenger for the platform.
I'm slightly referencing the memory of the Mega Man X games for this which have a little bit of this when you jump out of a moving mech. You keep the platform's speed with you until you collide with something.
On top of that I'm working on slopes, which can be a huge pain in the butt most of the time. It's easy to get them going, but then a lot of the simple assumptions that are made with the physics engine get a little more complex. It's no longer the case that a player is against a wall to the right if they have a slope next to them, and all that kind of stuff.
Whenever I work on a platformer system I always think of the past however-many platformer systems I've made and how they're all pretty much the same. I've more or less been making the same platforming engine since Bonesaw: The Game and I've just been slowly refining it over the years. I still run into a lot of the same issues whenever I go through it which is like some sort of weird Groundhog Day type nightmare, but platformers are the most fun thing to work on (I think) so it's totally worth it.
I'm using this time to focus on my platforming prototype for now and totally neglecting almost every other project I have spun up. I suppose at some point I'll do a review blog post to go over the status of all my projects.
Most of what I've been working on is the core "physics" of the platforming stuff. I'm referencing Matt Thorson's technique for most of what I've been working on. One of the things I'm playing with transferring momentum from the platforms to the player when the player stops being a passenger for the platform.
I'm slightly referencing the memory of the Mega Man X games for this which have a little bit of this when you jump out of a moving mech. You keep the platform's speed with you until you collide with something.
On top of that I'm working on slopes, which can be a huge pain in the butt most of the time. It's easy to get them going, but then a lot of the simple assumptions that are made with the physics engine get a little more complex. It's no longer the case that a player is against a wall to the right if they have a slope next to them, and all that kind of stuff.
Whenever I work on a platformer system I always think of the past however-many platformer systems I've made and how they're all pretty much the same. I've more or less been making the same platforming engine since Bonesaw: The Game and I've just been slowly refining it over the years. I still run into a lot of the same issues whenever I go through it which is like some sort of weird Groundhog Day type nightmare, but platformers are the most fun thing to work on (I think) so it's totally worth it.
Dev Log: Map Stuff
I'm almost at the end of my great travels in the Pacific Northwest, and I've spent a lot of time just jamming on some metroidvania type stuff in Otter. Yeah, I know I probably shouldn't be always starting up new projects when I have a bunch of other projects that still need to be finished, but I think right now I've just decided to do whatever makes me feel good and right now that's make some metroidvania game systems.
I spent some time redoing most of what I had for the map system to enable the ability to have weird shaped rooms. The most common case of a weird shaped room is an L, and more rare than that might be an O shape, but beyond that now nearly any shaped room is possible. After I got that working I changed some of the guts of the code around to support rooms overlapping each other's bounding boxes, so that a 1x1 room can exist inside of a 3x3 O shaped room.
Going back to the desert in just a few days and I'm not sure what I'll be working on when I get back, but for now I'm having fun with this thing.
I spent some time redoing most of what I had for the map system to enable the ability to have weird shaped rooms. The most common case of a weird shaped room is an L, and more rare than that might be an O shape, but beyond that now nearly any shaped room is possible. After I got that working I changed some of the guts of the code around to support rooms overlapping each other's bounding boxes, so that a 1x1 room can exist inside of a 3x3 O shaped room.
Going back to the desert in just a few days and I'm not sure what I'll be working on when I get back, but for now I'm having fun with this thing.
