Pandora League Dodgeball - Help Wanted

[Zuk]

Well you probably want to keep the collision area the same for all characters or some would have a advantage or disadvantage (or you would need to balance that out with a stronger throw, etc.), so going with a fixed 16x32 for the sprites seems good to me.


You could make so characters can be up to say 18x34, but all pixels outside the centre 16x32 area are not taken into account for collision detection - so there is some room for single hairs sticking out or certain frames being slightly larger.

I currently have custom values for each character for their run/walk speeds, frictions, strength/throwing speeds, resistance to damage, ect... size could be one more thing that wouldn't be any harder to throw in and the other values could be set to handicap or help to offset size differences. I already calculate a character position and then offset the drawing of the sprite from there so it is always centered above. Some of the animations flux between 16 and 18 pixels wide so I did it that way.

I am not saying the game should run at 10FPS or something like that. The game obviously should run at 60FPS (especially if you are only calculating collisions every frame, which it sounds like you do) - usually I would even advice to run the update loop (collision, movement, etc.) on a much higher framerate (500 or 1000FPS) and only update the screen (render, flip) 30 or 60 times per second.


That all does not mean the sprites have to be animated at the same rate, you could easily just display a new animation frame every 6 screen frames, which would give you a sprite framerate of 10 FPS.


So, what I am trying to say is, keep the animations separate from the global update loop to allow assignment of custom framerates per animation. (In Penjin for example every animated sprite has its own timer to keep track of updating the animation, totally independent of what framerate the game is running at. So in Greyout I have some animations running at 10FPS, some at 15, one even at 8, while the whole game is running at 60FPS).

I see what you are saying there. Right now I have it kind of like you described. I have the game loop running everything on every loop and have been basing all the animations off of that magic 60fps. I have variables in the character structs that keep track of what animation they are doing, what cell in the animation they are on, what frame they are on, and how many frames that should be displayed before moving to the next cell. I translate the frame per cell definitions when it loads the character to the target frame rate. I never thought about running the main loop without drawing the screen every time, though, because I don't know how to track how fast it's actually moving. I think the screen drawing is probably the simplest thing going on logic-wise. It's pretty much (right now) just a depth sort and slapping about 30-50 sprites into the back buffer. I think all of the sprite stuff is hardware accelerated and not really bogging anything down.

 

[foxblock]

The Greyout character for example already is 16x32 so converting would be a matter of drawing the missing throw, hit and catch animations - but for that a reference sheet would be needed.


Well, best thing for me to do right now is wait for a first playable version, so I can see myself how the game works and feels.

 

[Zuk]

Hi all!


Just an acknowledgement that the project isn't dead. I have not written a line of code since the last update because work has been "kicking me in the buttocks". The quote is a huge improvement from what I want to say.


I'm a network engineer (NE) by trade, now all of a sudden I am a SharePoint (SP) admin (plus my NE responsibilities). I was previously aware that there were complexities with SP and Microsoft Active Directory (MS AD). I didn't know to what extent. I also didn't know how bad SP sucked to admin. Cisco is sooooo straight forward and logical. With MS, you have to guess what the people were getting at when they wrote the code.


I knew I didn't know what I was getting into when I accepted this assignment. I didn't have a clue it was this bad. I thought, all the SP I have used before was bad because there were bad admins running it... wrong assumption. SP just pushes lists of Docs on you like a MF.


Anyway, the point of the post is I will work on PDL when I get some free seconds that I am not recovering from SP drama.


This thread could probably be moved to development or beta software. I don't want to clog up the general section with this anymore. I'm not really looking for help at the moment.


Thanks for your help mods!

 

[pmprog]

Well, I hope you find time to continue this. I'm looking forward to it

 

[Fzero]

Me too, this is one I want to enjoy one day.


OT ps: pmprog, your avatar/logo is proper nice. really like the design of that -- sorry slight derail had to comment on it though. Back to PDL

 

[Zuk]

Thanks for the interest! I'm not declaring it dead, but it's just going to take longer than expected. I was making a lot of good progress, and now I'm just tired at the end of the day and need some relaxation time. Work has been driving me to drink a little more often on my days off (hence me being so chatty on the boards lately). That also has been cutting into coding time because I really don't feel like coding hung over.

 

[Zuk]

In my efforts to turn this into the "Why am I not working on PLD" thread, I present to you another project I did "instead". It's nice to actually build something with my hands instead of trying to reverse engineer sharepoint at the end of the day.


I finally got the parts in to complete my other arcade joystick. They feel and work great. I still suck at fighters with them. LOL! Street Fighter X Tekken is still kicking my butt.


I guess the PLD news is I have default MC Cthulhu controls built-in now.

 

[pmprog]

Look nice, but how are you getting on with PLD? Any teaser screenshots?

 

[NearTao]

Hey Zuk...


SharePoint is a nightmare. If they bring up TFS or MS Project integration run for your life!


I stepped up to do the SharePoint admin work at my place and it's been hell. We had a Microsofty start working recently on my team who said he'd take over and help integrate TFS and stuff because it's 'easy'... and guess who's holding that bag now .


I'm not going to say Microsoft software sucks because I've never gotten any 'proper' training or certifications on it... but boy do some people seem to drink some tainted koolaid.

 

[Zuk]

I'll see if I can throw some time at PLD tomorrow. The screens on the current build don't look anything different than the vid I posted earlier in the thread, only there are less character actions/no health bars/no ball movement implemented on this version right now. When I do work on it, it goes pretty fast as I already figured out most of the problems (up to where I got with the last revision).


You know, if they would have just let me build the web page in ASP VB with JQuery UI, I would have had it functional by now. I was told if I gave it an honest effort in sharepoint for a month and proved it couldn't be done, then I could make it from scratch. There are some nice AD integration functions in sharepoint, but stitching together and re-purposing the built-in web parts is driving me insane. I know how the stuff is supposed to work, and I know how to program it from scratch. Loading up something that wasn't meant to do what I need it to and then figuring out how to hack it and shoe horn it into my requirements frustrates me. What they want is to hit that export site as a template button so they can give the tool to other sites with minimal effort. I get that. It doesn't take much effort to set up IIS server, MSSQL, and paste some files in a web folder, though.

 

[Zuk]

I spent some time the other day and got ball movement implemented. It needs a a bit of tweaking still (as it did before). I also implemented a new feature. If the character is holding a ball and the throw button is held, the character can deflect a throw. If the button is held more than one second without a deflect, the character throws the ball. Otherwise, the throw is accomplished when the throw button is let up. Various other fixes and implementations were added.


The coolest thing about this project, for me anyway, is learning that when you code things correctly that the other things just fall into place. I've never programmed a real time game before. This is also my first real object-oriented project. I've never used functions in objects/types/structs before this and I don't know how I coded anything without it before. This is awesome! Need something extra, just add an extra object or function! I can scale my game from 3 balls max to 100 balls or more than can fit on the screen, or 2 players to 6 players without changing the code that much. Maybe a line or two per change.


Wow. I've really been missing out since object oriented programming got invented! I'm probably over using it now because I haven't used it before. LOL!


So, the plan now is when I have a playable level I will put out a pre-alpha PND for bug testing.

 

[NearTao]

You can't over use object oriented programming, but you can use it incorrectly. If you really care to learn more about OOP and you want to ensure you're not refactoring code all the time you should probably take some time to do design work and documented UML diagrams to show object hierarchy and inheritance, polymorphism and all that stuff. If you get that far it's really worth taking some time to write up system level block diagrams with swim lanes to show from 'user input' down to the guts of your object hierarchy how things happen.


Trust me, it's a lot of work, but from personal experience any good coding project that is worth your time is worth investing 30% of your time in documentation and design... it'll help you focus your thoughts, work out design errors before you start coding and give you a pretty good roadmap to show what needs to be done first.


Good luck!

 

[Zuk]

Sorry guys. I'm in the middle of a divorce or something close to it. I haven't been around a lot lately. I have promised a lot of donations and bounties to various sources. PM me if they come up. I do want to honor those promises. I have the money to do so. I'd like to donate to Ari64 and I have a standing 1Ghz upgrade to Pickle (that ED needs to help me on still). I've probably got some other drunk donation promises and bounties to others and I will most certainly honor them. I just need a prod or reminding. The promises are good. I'm just not going to be around for a while as I sort out the international mess that is my life/marriage. Please PM or e-mail me if you know I have promised something to someone and maybe I haven't completed that promise yet. I don't want to become the guy that promises donations and doesn't follow through.


My e-mail is: kevin.zukley@gmail.com


Thank you for your understanding,


Kevin

 

[pmprog]

Sorry to hear. Hope you get everything sorted smoothly.