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[4E6] "Jed, Ted & Fred" [Withdrawn]

chuckbo2006 · 2008-01-15T08:42:20

Hi, Contingent upon my wife's approval =) and some considerable free time over the next 6 months here is what I would like to create. Please let me know your thoughts. Criticism is always good. Target Audience: Those who like the challenge of getting rich in a production environment in the old west. Concept: Time is late 1800s somewhere in mountain country in the US. There's a demand for newly discovered crystals. Red seem useful for healings and illnesses, green helps crops grow and blue brings forth rain/water from wells. Wars, droughts and famines produce the need for any one of these crystals. You own a mining facility. Workers bring up the crystals and load onto pony drawn wagons. The crystals are brought to distribution building..and placed on a pony drawn barges which move the crystals from the mining facility, via the canal to the city. Unpurchased crystals sit in a warehouse under guard. The demand for crystals will change throughout the game. There is a $ cost associated with everything. I.e. miners must be paid $2/day. Food for ponies, opening new mines, storage of crystal, etc. all cost money. The challenge is to grow the business without going bankrupt. Why could you go bankrupt? * If no one buys the color crystal you are producing it costs money to store (floorspace and guards). * A mine explosion will injure miners and close off mine. This will stop production. Need a new mine opening if you haven't already planned for it. The player is the mine owner. The bookkeeper (accountant) is the guide who moves around quickly sweating over minutia...he is constantly worried...almost nagging. Sometimes he gives good advice..other times his advice may have financial consequences. System Stuff: Platform: Windows OS Visual Format: Top-down, maybe isometric (I've never done one before) Graphics: DirectX 9 (2D) Sound: FMOD Language: C++ Tools/Editor: Combo of C++ and VB6 Time Issues: I'm obligated to participate in 2 to 3 more game programming challenges over at gameinstitute.com over the next 6 months. I really need my wife and family's support on this one. =) Regards, Chuck [Edited by - chuckbo2006 on January 14, 2008 6:02:24 PM]

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Started by chuckbo2006 October 02, 2007 05:29 AM

38 comments, last by dmoonfire 16 years, 6 months ago

chuckbo2006

150

Author

November 06, 2007 08:48 PM

Update
======
Jorge created some bird's eye trees and rocks. They look great. The following screenshot shows the tree rendered numerous times with varying scales and rotation angles.

Most of the data can be loaded from data files. A couple of hours of work and we'll be able to design the basic game world and change sprites without having to recompile. That'll be nice.

Team Status:
Art: Jorge
Programmer: Myself(Chuck)
Writer: Position Available
Musician: Found...awaiting commitment.
Sound Effects: Found...awaiting commitment.

We've got a more comprehensive..moment by moment thread over at gameinstitute.com in the Community Project's forum.

Regards,
Chuck

chuckbo2006

150

Author

November 07, 2007 08:17 PM

Hi,
We've got the program to read several data files for graphic images, sprite definitions and landscape placement such as trees and rocks. Jorge is working on more art...lots of things to try. The most interesting will be hills and the flowing stream.

The screenshot shows a railroad track (ties only) being constructed by the player using the mouse to layout and add. Its not remotely as cool as Railroad Tycoon but it certainly is one of the most interesting dynamic things I've ever programmed the player to do in a game (usually its just jumping or shooting =) ).

Regards,
Chuck

chuckbo2006

150

Author

November 09, 2007 08:28 PM

Update
======
Jorge has been doing a great job on the concept art. The framework is functioning. The player can now do the following:

* Add railroad tracks
* Add train engines
* Navigate the game world (corresponds to 320 x 320 yards)
* Select object to add using control panel

Regards,
Chuck

Servant of the Lord

33,739

November 09, 2007 09:00 PM

Woh, that looks really amazing, excellant work! I'll have to try it once 4E6 is over.

chuckbo2006

150

Author

November 10, 2007 07:22 AM

Thanks.

The project is coming along well. Of course we are having our share of development issues:

* lowering framerate
* sluggish keypress behavior (movement of sprites)
* pointers on the heap not being deleted
* trying to delete pointers not on the heap =)
* program freezes when closing the program

The map now reflects the track as it is drawn. We're modifying user interface as required to make the game more natural to control.

BEST LESSON LEARNED SO FAR: We're posting the latest functional program every couple of days...no matter how much we've added. We have been getting great feedback from the coders over at GI.

Here's a link...please provide feedback...our skin is 'thick' so criticism is okay...after all its only an 'alpha' release...and feedback is always easier to receive now then after the final product has been submitted. =)
Demo 2

Regards,
Chuck

awesty

124

November 10, 2007 07:45 AM

I had a go and I think you have done the railroad builder nicely, but I couldn't figure out how to get the trains moving :P

Also what is GI?

Servant of the Lord

33,739

November 10, 2007 10:08 AM

I tried it out and was getting 73-76 fps. Despite that there wasn't much to do (at this point), it was enjoyable due to the graphics.

The buttons in the menu seem laggy, they don't get highlighted when I hover the mouse over them, until after a few seconds, depsite the fps I was gettting.

It's hard to make two ends of a train track connect. (So it goes in a loop)

Also, there's sand off the edge of the map. (Screenshot)

(I'm assuming you just haven't added collision detection yet, becuase the tracks go through the rocks and trees)

But it looks like it'd shape up to be an enjoyable game.

chuckbo2006

150

Author

November 10, 2007 04:31 PM

awesty,

I'm anxious to get the trains going too! =) I don't anticipate that will be a problem...but there are several issues to resolve first with this framework.

servant,
I've got a friend digging into the DX trying to understand how to get the FPS up. I believe its the update() method that might be dragging things down. Just a theory.

I'm still having some mouse and keyboard issues...you're right about that.

I'll fix the auto connect for the railroad tracks...on the list of to do.

I've got a reference issue with the sand...its only an experiment to see how affective splatter can be...of course if I animated the splatter on a blue surface we might be able to create a believe stream of water.

No collision detection yet.

Thanks for checking this out. I've added several things to my list.

Regards,
Chuck

chuckbo2006

150

Author

November 11, 2007 08:33 PM

Hi,
We have a game editor to support the construction of the landscape. This consists of tiles for grass, splatter, hills, trees and a starting point for the tree.

This is a whole lot easier than manually creating 2000 lines of text file data.

Regards,
Chuck

chuckbo2006

150

Author

November 13, 2007 03:40 PM

Hi,
I would like to welcome the newest team member to our Team...SteveJ. He will be serving in the capacity of 'Software Engineer". He will be responsible for things such as:

* Memory management within the game engine.
* Getting fullscreen to work.
* Memory leaks (I add them...he reduces them).
* Doing the fancy code profiling and efficiency checking.
* Creating a complete installation program for the final project.
* And other improvements as he sees them.

I appreciate Steve's in-depth and practical knowledge about those annoying and (in my opinion) boring details of coding a big project.

NOTE: Since starting on this today he has found several memory leaks, tripled framerate and incorporated fullscreen. Totally awesome!!!

Regards,
Chuck

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[4E6] "Jed, Ted & Fred" [Withdrawn]

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