D4K: Hopping Sectors, Part 2

And we're back!

Intent on fulfilling my threats promises, here is an animated .gif showing some more progress. Details after the break.

D4K: Hopping Sectors

What's this? Another update? So soon?! This is madness!

Things on display:

• The Doomie now has legs! And animated to boot! It's rather cute to see it hop merrily around.
• The red lines are the collision lines of the underlying sector system. For now it's just a visual representation, more on the sector system later on.

I should look into making animated .gifs to show off progress without having to upload video.

I'm also going back and forth regarding the title of the game. Guess I'll make up my mind when I finally draw the splash-screen / logo.

D4K: There Be Tiles!

Most of the progress I've been making lately is still "under the hood", and hard to demonstrate in a screenshot, but at least a few things can be showcased:

So, new stuff what can be seen here?

• Tile Map: A prototype of the Tile Map system. Underneath, the map is defined as a binary empty/full grid, and the system automatically assigns the tiles based on the nearby neighbors.
• Layering: The animated white noise background is drawn under the map, and seen through the empty spaces. That will eventually become a background.
• Directional Sprite: Hardly noticeable, but the Doomie helmet is facing south-west, and will turn to face the movement direction.

What can not be seen?

• Frame-Independent Movement: Movement of the Doomie helmet does not depend on draw speed, which does not seem like a big deal, but it is the foundation of a computer-speed independent implementation of the engine, something anyone who plays old games in new hardware knows is vital.
• Encapsulation: This is what I've been focusing on, moving each element (game logic, graphics rendering, user input) into its proper package, and making them interact with each other.
  The final result is shaping into a plug-and-play architecture where I can swap modules around as needed.
  That is actually my main goal here, to have the ability to add different modules with different gameplay logic, or rendering algorithms, and thus be able to quickly compose different games.

So there, an actual update. I'm still thinking about how to rename the whole project. I'm also spending a lot of time with normal-based lighting I might never use, but I'm learning lots!

Refactoring and You

So lately I've been suffering a severe case of coding-burnout back at work, which has delayed game development.

To relax myself, I've taken to doing something I quite enjoy, and find quite fun sometimes: Code Refactoring!

Namely, I take someone else's source code, and delve into it, re-organizing to fit my tastes, and learning new tricks along the way.

I find it is an interesting way to learn, as well as a zen-like relaxation exercise.

I usually look at the source code from entries into the Java4k competition, mostly because, needing to be as compact as possible, the code often lacks comments or a coherent structure, which forces me to actually understand what it does while refactoring.

As I've said before, the DooM4k project came about as I refactored Notch's Left4kDead source. Good times.


As for the DooM4k's status? I should make a post on normal-based dynamic lighting and why Java2d hates me.

There is a reason working titles exist as a concept...

... and that reason is that coming up with a decent title for a project is neutronium-level hard.

I personally don't like the DooM4k title for a series of reasons, chief among them being:

• It is an unispired title
• It is not a Java 4k game
• It might get the project confused with the (hopefully) upcoming DooM 4
• It is very uninspired
• Feels like I'm trying to ride on the coat-tails of the DooM franchise, instead of making a homage.
• Did I mention uninspired?
• There is no BFG4k planned

The confusion with the still in development hell DooM 4 has me specially worried, as it might attract the attention of zealous lawyers seeing me as a threat to their IP.

So I'm looking for other options. I'd set up a poll, but I don't have either the audience or the confidence in said audience not choosing the worst possible option just for laughs.

My current runners up are the following silly plays on the title:

• DooM-Dee-DooM
• (Big) Ba-da-DooM
• DooMieS
• Bah-DooM-Tish

Ok, I'm only serious about one of those. Let me have my fun.

Rogueliking-it

Recently, in my quest for cutting corners inspiration, I came across an interesting project with similarities to mine:

Apart from being a kickass roguelike, this project is similar to mine not only in theme, but also in some general gameplay aspects, such as:

• Top-Down perspective.
• Line-of-Sight mechanic.
• Procedurally-Generated maps.

The big differences would be in my project being real-time and meant to be played as a Cooperative game, as opposed to the single-player turn-based focus of DooMRL.

Another important similarity is that both projects make use of their own assets (images, audio, map layouts) rather than using the originals, thus giving each their own personality.

DooMRL, in fact, even has a "pure" roguelike mode with ascii-art!

So I guess what I'm saying is that, if you like both Roguelikes and DooM, you owe it to yourself to check this game out!

Moving Never Ends

So.... 

Since the end of January I have been subjected to the horrors of moving to a new place, including all the rent-the-place-and-fix-all-the-things tango.

Right now I'm still unpacking stuff and setting up furniture, which means my workstation is sitting in between a few boxes, possibly cowering in fear.

Will I ever finish the move? Will I get back on track with development? Will I get a new sofa?

Find out, next time! Or not...

From Wandering Bohemian Photography