Doug’s Blog

..Oops

I feel like a little kid. I keep saying “I won’t to it again I promise”, but I keep doing it. I’m talking about not updating my blog in ages, as usual. Doesn’t it seem a bit funny that the majority of my blog posts make reference to that? Kind of sad come to think of it. Lately I’ve been using Twitter more than anything, so my new rule is that unless I have screenshots or a novel to post, I’ll just use Twitter.

So, what’s new in the world of Doug? Lots of coding. ToH coding! I’ve gotten so far in the past week or so. I’ve added fully functioning multiplayer, a chat system, a menu system, a loading screen, a gui system (still WIP), and a particle system. And somewhat of a dynamic lighting system for the main menu. I’ve also done so many internal changes I can’t even call this nearly the same code that it was a couple weeks ago. Coming soon is NPC AI and a complete rehaul of the game editor–it’ll now be entirely ingame. After that there’s the battle system to get done, items, backpacks, a couple “extras” in the map editor that aren’t completely necessary but great to have anyway, and then from there it’s just a matter of making maps and content. Also I might want to work in some kind of Lua or Squirrel parser for NPC control during quests and stuff–I’m planning on having cutscenes with NPCs running around and talking and whatnot, in a client instance, and I’d really hate to have to hard code all of that and recompile and reupload this 7MB DLL every time I want to change something with the quests. Stuff like that should be easy to access and edit as a developer, and since I have someone else other than myself working on this (who doesn’t have the code), it’ll be a lot better to use some kind of external scripting files for this.

Anyway, working on another concept to get started on after I’m done coding ToH and have gotten the ball rolling with it. I won’t say too much until I’ve completely ironed out the idea, but think some kind of first person space colonization/mining sim. Oh and those gritty, dully colored graphics that we today call “realistic”? I’m going for rich, vivid colors and environments throughout the whole thing. Graphics won’t be amazing since I’m just a lonely programmer, but once they go through all the shading and post processing I’ll subject them to I’m expecting them to be looking like eyecandy. If not better than eyecandy, if there’s anything like that. Possibly not yet, not until I invent it with this game.

I’m about done for this post. Hopefully I’ll post more often, but you know the drill. I shall leave you with this parting gift: a screenshot of my particle system in action. Trust me, it looks ten times better in motion. There’s not much time left until I get some kind of alpha out for anyone to try at any time, so hang on tight.