Dynamite: Day 5 – Blank Slate
So, I stayed up a bit late last night looking into DOT3 bump mapping and multi-texturing effects. This book explains how to do it. The Crazy Bump software would generate the DOT3 images. I’m not entirely sure if this would be worth it, or if it would even work or not. So I’m going to put the actual implementation of this towards the end of my TODO list. I’m happy with how the game is looking, and I’m sure those features would make it look even better, but I don’t need to get those done right away.
Now I’m thinking over what I need to do in terms of a level editor. I will make the game have two layers, one will be the map layer, and one will be the “codes” layer. The map layer is the walls and floors. The codes layer is the position of the lights, guards, and how things move around. Right now I’m building a list of what needs to be in the editor, and then I’ll start coding it up.
.. time passes ..
Things have gone pretty slowly today, but I’m getting a few things done tonight. I’ve got my tile type definitions in another JSON file, and I’ve got those loading. Really, it would have been quicker to do it all as a C++ definition, but I’m going for the whole “make the game a little bit extendable” so as to encourage a bit more modding in the future 🙂
Here’s an example tile definition:
{"n":1, "name":"floor", "type":"none", "value":0, "view":"floor"},
So, here’s a level .. pre-editing. This will get much more exciting once I add editing controls. This screenshot represents a few hours of code cleanup and prep.
Anyway, I’m going to try and get some reasonable sleep tonight and I’ll try and get the level editor up and running tomorrow. At least for some minimal definition of the word “up and running”.
-Phil
October 4th, 2010 at 10:10 am
I was also thinking about taking my game and making it a bit more data-driven and more easily moddable, but then I also wondered if I would spend so much time on making it moddable where there may or may not be an audience who cares.
So I’ve decided to go cautiously with how data-driven the design is. For now, I’m focusing on making it easier for me to change and insert new things, and hopefully the ease will translate into modding tools as well. If I can’t create/release mod tools with the game, there’s always the possibility of doing an update if it turns out that customers care enough about my game to want them.
October 4th, 2010 at 10:13 am
Yeah – some of it depends on what makes sense. In my game design I’m keeping it simple enough that having a user friendly level editor is pretty easy. In other game designs, you’d be creating a more complex level designer that users might not find so easy.
-Phil