Hi Danimal,
Danimal {l Wrote}:Amazing upgrade Bertram, in your opinion, how is the actual state of the code? how many vital functions are missing or faulty? is feasible to start adding gameplay related element in the near future or will it have to wait ?; and lastly what is your current TODO list (god, i sound like a bossy foreman)
Thanks.
I just hope some devs will be ok for me to push that, since I base my next stuff onto this.
The current state of the code is still not good looking, even if the code is working after all. The most surprising thing is the tangle of several key functions that make the game management really uneasy to follow, and overall, I'm working on this. There are also incomplete constructors/destructors that are making memory leak, or on the other hand a few redundant functions that don't help either.
Note that I don't blame anyone in particular, while I can't ignore facts. I hope nobody gets hurt by my changes or comments. I simply do think they are necessary. But I'm open for comments too, of course..
The key points on my TODO list are:
- Discover the last features code, simplifying things along the way, filling missing constructors/destructors, fixing small design mistakes along the way.
- Simplification of the map loading code, and map memory management.
- Making the app able to unload correctly a map, and permit to load several ones without crashing.
- Fix or at least reduce the app quit crash causes.
Once I'm mostly done with those problems that aren't that big but really hurting the understanding of what's going on, and somewhat leading to even more errors when adding stuff, I think we will be able to move on.
Also, out of fanciness, I'd like to add those things:
- Simplify a bit the current map format:
-- Without any big revolution here, I'd like to remove the need to specify the number of things you're going to declare.
E.g.:
- {l Code}: {l Select All Code}
160000 # Num of tiles next to this line
Tile ...
Tile ...
to this, for instance:
- {l Code}: {l Select All Code}
[Tiles]
Tile ...
Tile ...
[/Tiles]
-- Move the creature definition in a separate file.
- Improve the Editor:
-- Addition/removal of creatures.
-- Addition/Removal of rooms.
-- Basic save support.
The patch I've made about claimed walls is a prerequisite for actual rooms support:
I do no know what you exactly want to do about this, but IMHO, room tiles should be put only on claimed ground tiles surrounded by claimed wall tiles. This means that to be able to place a room tile, the tile should be made of ground, be claimed, be next at least one same team claimed wall tile, or a tile of the same room type. Am I correct?
About the other next features I think we could be able to add first, I think we can add custom spawn pool support (but maybe once the creature definition is in another file to make things clearer), biomes support (since it's about texture swapping if I got it well), and support for creature that can dig, but aren't workers.
Feel free to comment.