Gruedorf: If you should strike me down...

Created: 2008-09-04 21:30:48

Gruedorf: If you should strike me down...

don't eat the yellow tile.

So, I just added a global entity colission trigger to verge 3. If you set the global string trigger.onEntityCollide equal to a vc function, whenever an entity runs into an obstruction that function will be called.

It sets the following variables:

event.tx and event.ty are the tile coodinates hit.

event.entity is the entity who did the hitting.

event.zone is the zone of the tile being struck, as long as it was a tile obstruction being hit. Otherwise, -1.

event.entity_hit is entity index of the entity being hit, as long as it was an entity-on-entity collision. Otherwise, -1.

This facilitates pushing entities around, and zelda-like tool use, and entities reacting to their environment in general. Basically everything that people generally hijack verge's native movement system for. So, yeah.

This feature is as of r244 of http://www.verge-rpg.com/svn/verge3/. I haven't fully announced it yet as I'm sure there are bugs and "bugs" in here (for instance, NPCs don't collide with the player yet because that was apparently never permitted in the first place?). However, I really would like some feedback since this is a feature that lets everyone stop hijacking control from verge and gives the power back to the people. Or stuff.

Download the demo here!

Gruedorf: Vacation!

Created: 2008-09-03 16:07:14

I'm on vacation, but I'm still working on stuff!

I fixed the head revision of Maped 3, for one. Now you can build maped 3 from source and save a map and verge 3 can use it again. Yay! (note: this flaw was only in the SVN version, we never publically released a bad build).

I also added some new things to spriterite, notably hooking in the color switcher and the color picker. Whee!

Troupe and I also did some brainstorming on the Perseus Project last night. And by "brainstorming" I do, in fact, mean "got shitfaced on home-mixed long island iced teas".

I'm still drunk 12 hours later :(

Gruedorf: Art tools art great!

Created: 2008-08-28 01:09:25

iPhone Development: project Crux

This week I worked some with Rusty on the iPhone tile engine: we now have full maploading and zooming. yay!

I also worked some on a mapeditor. The mapeditor is a verge game right now, because the maps are simple and I wanted an editor mac and pc users both could use. I'll post that when it's a little further along.

SpriteWright.com

The biggest thing I've worked on this week is spritewright.com. I've been wanting to work on a javascript-only tile/sprite editing tool for a long time now (I really don't know why: blame derangement if you must), and I finally just started tapping it out. It's served pretty well to cement my love and understanding of the YUI and of event-driven programming. Thusfar this has been a non-TDD spike, but it's almost too big now to go without tests. I certainly need to get my house in order before implementing a full undo/redo stack, for instance.

Future Plans

I'd like to eventually have a full database of public tiles and sprites up on SpriteWright, indexed and sortable by tag (omg, the icons of snozzberries are tagged 'snozzberries'!) and/or by what palette was used. In fact, my obsession with palettes and palette-based art manipulation was half of the reason behind this whole thing.

I'd also like to add an open API so other art programs could load and save to the service. That'd be neat.

In the more distant but hopefully not-too-distant future I wouldn't mind implementing a flash-driven web-based mapeditor that tied into the API, to solve once and for all the godforsaken verge cross-platform devtools problem (and to sharpen up my flex skills).

A Crippling Addiction

So, I think spritewright.com is the official name, but I also registered spriteright.com, spriterite.com, and spritewrite.com.

Clearly, I have a problem.

I like the implications of a craftsman that -wright implies, but I also like typing 'spriterite' because you get to spell 'rite' twice in a row. I got the others because if I'm ever pitching this site in the future verbally, I don't want to have to spell it. I'll just be all "Eh, it's spelled how you think it is." and let them get there anyway they think.

Gruedorf: worth a thousand words.

Created: 2008-08-20 04:58:43

Gruedorf: Another fortnight...

Created: 2008-08-13 03:44:59

This week I got a demo running on an iPhone emulator of a tile engine. Tiles render, you can scroll across the map, tap and/or double-tap on a tile to access information associated with it, and draw text. Whee. I did this with the assistance of Rusty Larner from work, while pairing in my living room.

I also started work on a map editor coded in vc. If everything goes well, Overkill will be joining in on this on his next update.

Finally, I updated the Sully codebase to the mark 5 render engine: now with fully functional clickable renderstack items! Yay!