I moved to a new URL! Check it out!

posts tagged with: otter

Otter Updates

Otter Updates
I just recently pushed some updates to Otter with a lot of changes to various things!

* The Controller class had some changes to allow for recording and playback of input. This is best applied to controllers used by Sessions. You can now record input to a compressed string, save it to a file, and play it back. This probably only works in fixed framerate mode.

* The performance of the game is now more accurately reported.

* Started working on an ImageBatch class that will batch rendering of a bunch of images sharing the same texture into a single draw call (or will try to minimize the amount of draw calls.) I might end up switching all of Otter's rendering to this technique at some point, but for now I'll leave it up to the user to decide what to batch.

* Various bug fixes across the board, and updates to the documentation. Note that the most recent version of the docs is in the repository and the ones online may not be the latest yet.

More updates are on the way! I'm planning on using Otter for a game jam this weekend and we'll see how it goes.
otter csharp sfml programming
Posted November 5th 2013 11:44 AM (Otter)
No Comments

Otter Documentation

Otter Documentation
Just a quick update about Otter! If you don't know already, Otter is a 2d game making framework that I'm making using DotNet/C# and SFML 2.

I just pushed a first pass at some documentation. This should be enough to at least help some people out with basic questions, but I'm sure it all has a long way to go. It's being generated from the source using Doxygen.

I'm going to be attempting to use Otter for a game jam coming up next weekend, and I can't wait to see either what I can make with it, or what horrible bugs will reveal themselves! I've been tinkering away on two different projects in Otter and so far so good, but you never know until your deep in the trenches of a game jam...
otter csharp programming sfml
Posted November 1st 2013 6:32 PM (General)
7 Comments

Dev Log: Boring Code Stuff

Dev Log: Boring Code Stuff
With the release of Otter I got a brand new handful of bug reports and other things to fix, so I've been busy churning away at those over the past couple of days.

My collision code for AABB test was off by just one pixel (because I guess I needed to use >= and <= instead of just > and <, oops) so I got that fixed up. I also fixed some other bizarre bugs in the collision code that was mostly caused by me just using the wrong variable for some things.

I recently changed the input components around to allow for external sources of input. This is a pretty cool feature that I personally like a lot because it goes along with one of my methods for making computer controlled entities, like enemies or characters or whatever.

As an example, I like to code all of my enemies in games as potential players... meaning that they control themselves with input from a controller just like a player would. Instead of just moving left and right by changing their speeds, an enemy will push left and push right on its movement axis, and then other code will read that input and change the speed. For some reason I like doing this a lot because it feels like the enemies are operating under the same rules as the player -- and if I ever wanted to give players control over specific enemies or characters I could easily do that!

Even Dinobaus from Offspring Fling is internally controlled by a fake controller that is being fed input by his "AI."

This also allows for people to potentially record input over time, and then play it back by taking external control of the state of Buttons and Axes, a feature that is often cool for replays, or attract modes.

The one bug I'm currently stumped on is that there is a crash when you close a game in Windows 8 in Debug mode when using an Intel HD graphics card. A very specific weird thing that I have to hunt down... and I have no idea what could be causing it! The joys of programming.
dev log otter programming csharp
Posted October 30th 2013 12:55 PM (General)
2 Comments

Otter

Otter
For the past couple of months I've been working on a little framework using C# and SFML, and I think it's time to finally release it (in beta form) to the public!

Check out Otter!

Image


Right now Otter is only officially working in Windows with Visual Studio, but if anyone wants to figure out how to get it working in other programs and operating systems then let me know! The SFML dll files should be able to be used with Mono for Mac and Linux, but I don't know how to do that yet.

It's important to know that this is a beta release of the framework. There's still no official documentation, so you'll have to fumble around on your own for now if you're planning on using it. I also would advice against tackling any huge game projects for now unless you're comfortable digging into the source and changing stuff around yourself.

I'll be posting updates about Otter here on my web zone, and the latest version and updates will be available on Otter's website.
otter csharp sfml programming gamedev
Posted October 26th 2013 1:54 PM (Otter)
1 Comment
« newer posts