FreeGamer Article Discussion

FreeGamer Article Discussion

Postby Bertram » 18 Mar 2014, 10:32

Hi Charlie, :)

charlie {l Wrote}:Hey Bertram, perhaps a good way to get a bit more interest might be a Free Gamer article on OD. How about you posting a summary of the challenges you/paul/etc have overcome the last few months (so add a bit of a story/background to the release) and I bet we could get a few more eyes on the project.


This would great for the project, indeed. Plus, Elvano asked for the same thing in the OD new site in the making.
I can post a summary of what has been done, and what is about to be done (from nido, Paul and me, for instance), this would help us sum where we are, btw.
But I won't be able to post much about history / background of the OD project, since after all I'm a noob, right?
I'd thus request help from ReZ, Danimal, Skorpio, Elvano, oln, nido and Paul for that (I hope I'm not forgetting someone active) . And for the fresh spontaneousness of the overall article, maybe we could use Julius and you for the reviewing?

So, what have been done the latest month in OD:
- Used something like two months spare-time on my machine to let OD try to compile on windows with many, many failures. This alone proved how naive I can be. XD
But in the end, OD finally compiled fine using MSVC11 (2012), which the minimal version that has the necessary C++11x features required, btw.
Compiling OD dependencies using MingW was tried at first, but ended up with unlinkable dependency files, due their source being compilable with different flavour of GCC only. The problem was seen between Ogre and CEGui and I hope that in the future they will improve that because those project's guys are cool, helping and all. They simply lack time supporting this.

Paul also helped porting the code to the newest dependencies version, effort that was necessary to make windows binary possible, btw.

- Started a long (and not yet finished) code cleanup process. OD code is unfortunately still mostly badly indented, filled with ill-formed statement (with useless spaces and useless newlines, for instance). Some of its parts were also overcomplicated, with too many deepness in the code. (Note that I'm not judging anyone personally there, only code, it's always easier to enter someone else's room and tell what's not tidied in there.)
I started to cleanup the code warnings at first, and ended up cleaning files after files, with the hope it would help other devs to keep on the coding effort.
This helped me understanding OD core mechanisms, and little by little, I ended up removing useless local singleton references, and fixing little design mistakes that can easily be done when in the rush of programming.
After some time, it permitted me to remove useless stubs, move functionalities where they belonged more, and actually implement a few todos, with the comment and advice of the rest of the team. ;)

Now the latest development version has got:
User side:
- A cool new main menu GUI. (Yeah!)
- Working console again.
- A fully working game and editor camera handling. (Except for middle mouse click, as Danimal pointed out. But I think it should be fixed pretty soon.)
- Textured critters again with the help of Skorpio and the Ogre material documentation.
- Rooms/traps can be placed even when creatures are on the tile you're placing the thing.
- The cursor light is working more accurately now.
- The Kobold (worker/digger critters) are a bit more reliable when going to dig some walls.
- Orc creature movements fixed thanks to Skorpio.
- The creatures start at full health (but are weak at game start).
- The coloring of claimed tiles (tiles to get painted with your team color) has been fixed.
--> Overall the game is rather playable, since I was able to win once, and lose a few times. ;)
- Support to add several tiles at once, and fixed drag/drop of creatures in the editor.
- The editor toolbox is usable again.

Dev side:
- Dependencies to CEgui 0.8.x, Ogre 1.9.x, and SFML 2.x thanks to Paul.
- The game modes are now loaded through a stack and the overall logic is more streamlined there.
- Removed a lot (but still WIP) of useless singleton local reference. This will help with the problem of intertwined singleton initialization,
as it permits to make sure when an object doesn't really deserve to be a singleton, for instance, and to make the life-cycle of objects easier to understand.
- (Still WIP) Removed empty or stub classes, useless files and or duplicated objects.
- (Still WIP) Removed quite some useless code complexity (Mostly done for the game and editor logic, and the game modes system).

What's on the short-term road atm, AFAIK:
- Paul is working on fixing certain missing wall tiles problem, and on the next config system.
- Nido is working on the overall dependencies config and use, and the CMake scripts.
- I'm working on fixing the problems seen by the team in term of game usability, (such as the middle-click crash)
and I'll keep cleaning the code from bad indentation, useless spacings, and removal of small design mistakes.
I'm also on adding better map editor support with the implementation of little features missing, like:
- Improve the editor toolbox layout
- Adding the missing wall tiles, add the ability to remove a wall and let ground only (which is a tile type actually).
- Add the possibility to add/remove creatures.
- Add the possibility to save.
- And finally: Fix loading several maps within a game session. (This one won't be easy as it is touching each and every code components.)

I hope I wasn't too much exhaustive.

Best regards,
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Re: [DONE] OD Windows binaries

Postby Danimal » 18 Mar 2014, 11:35

Bertram you sure resurrected this project :D ;

For that article i think this could be added about the gameplay planned changes:

Setting:

- Story: we are evil, humans are stupid and deserve to die, we want to make the game feel genuinely evil
- Two sides: Evil keeper against hordes of heroes and rival keepers
- Monsters have their little life and hobbies: each creature perform their prefered activity in the dungeon when they are not killing something
- Start small and go big : progession on the build up of troops along the game, expect to have critters like flies and spiders as your minions on the first levels, and end up commanding a screaming demonic legion.


Play style planned changes: we want to add more deepness to your dungeon experience :cool:

- Keeper specialization: choose to go down the path of War, Magic or Stealth; each one of them grant access to exclusive creatures, spells, traps and bonus. Ex: do you prefer to be a Mage keeper specializing on Chaos magic or Death magic?, or just became a warlord and storm your enemies with hordes of weak creatures, or why not be sneaky and send a team of high level assesins to destroy choice targets and then banish them back to your dungeon.
- Different enviroments: who thougth there would be so many biomes underground?; levels will have a different decoration to represent jungles, swamps or other enviroments depending on the story setting instead of just rocky ground.
- Each enviroment grants you different creatures, making your army composition dependant on what enviroment you are.


Did i miss something? anyways we have to flesh all of those ideas on the long run, team help is appreciated
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Re: [DONE] OD Windows binaries

Postby Bertram » 18 Mar 2014, 11:56

Cool! :)
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