CONGRATULATIONS to me! With this post I'll have had 10,000 visits. The 4 people that read this can give themselves a pat on the back. [cool]
What I've been doing...
I made a level class which is configured by an xml file. Levels are divided into scenes which are initialized via scene elements. Cameras, scene meshes, collision data, triggers, lights, entry points, gems, characters are all setup in the xml file. Another class which contains a list of all characters is setup with xml too. Very mod-able. I made a base character class and derived the PC from it and overloaded the update function. So much...so much...and such a poor description. Added a silly 2D interface and some billboard gems which can be collected. Still haven't implemented the trigger controls for the camera system. I did add some rubber banding to the camera but it needs work. I must add the "Force" to interact with the scene. That will be so cool. Jedi Troll!! ( I may be a little tired - can't tell )
As of now I'm manually building the xml files but if I were to take this game into full production I'd have to fabricate some tools in 3ds max so I could use it as a level editor and export to xml that way. I thought of a max script to randomly generate and place gems throughout a scene. That would be a big time saver. The Neil from 2 weeks ago would have probably wasted countless hours building his own level editor. But he is no more. Instead I'll use the tools that I already have. "Hey! There's a concept that works!"
Another movie...
Here is another flash movie. The quality is so craptasticly special at 20fps. Like I said the camera still sucks but at least you can see what I've done. It's a little over 2 mb to load. Bye-bye now. Movie Link
