View this page "Session 1 - Dungeon Man"

[Trey]

I've done a write-up of our first project here. I'm pretty sure both
of you are able to edit it, and you're welcome to do so if you think
there's anything that needs to be added.

[Evan Eubanks]

Awesome write-up, Trey. I'm probably going to be using some sections of the code I created as a portfolio for my Guildhall application, so you might seem some SVN updates from me that's basically just a clean up :)

Evan

--
Evan R. Eubanks
Quality and Assurance Level Two
Gearbox Software, LLC.

[Trey Tomes]

I've been doing a bit of a clean-up job myself.  You know how some people compulsively steal, or compulsively blurt out obscenities?  I'm a compulsive coder. :-)

Chris Koenig, our local Microsoft Evangelist, was at the XNA Users Group last night when I demoed our game to everyone.  He thought the game was cool and wants to show it to some Microsoft academic people.  That'll be awesome if anything comes of it.

~Trey

[Evan Eubanks]

What did everyone think of the demo?

[Trey Tomes]

It went really well, and it sounded like people are interested in taking a close look at what we did in the code.

Apparently there is a lot of stuff we did that people are interested in learning more about; game components, the behavioral AI system we used, the 2D lighting.  Chris thinks it would be a great tool for helping grade-schoolers get into game programming.

I personally think it's a fun game.  I'm hoping we have time to stick some more levels on it.  Maybe program some slime monsters.

[Evan Eubanks]

I need to change up the fire behavior so that any sprite/actor that wants to use it doesn't need to be programmed any further. Right now it only works for crates =/

If it's doing the "spread fire', them maybe it should be a FireSpreadable behavior or something.

[Trey Tomes]

I'm thinking that we need to add a CanBurn attribute to the Actor class.  At the top of the ExplodeOnImpact behavior, you're checking to see if actor.Name != "Crate".  Instead, do !actor.CanBurn.

If you look in the Actor constructor, you will see that I converted the Attributes collection to use Reflection.  That means that all you have to do is add the public property for CanBurn, then you can use it in the Xml.  Warning though, the attribute names in the xml are now case-sensitive.

[Matt Meyer]

Excellent write-up Trey! Hopefully by next session I will have learned a bit more about c# and xna to help out with the coding. In fact, I'd love to get with you Trey and go through the code to help me understand it better.


--- On Tue, 3/24/09, Trey <trey....@gmail.com> wrote:

[Trey Tomes]

You and I definitely need to dig through the code together.  I'm not sure what my Saturday schedule looks like yet, but I may be available that day to meet if you want.

[Matt Meyer]

Saturday is all booked up this weekend for me. Sunday evening would be much better if that's okay with you.


--- On Wed, 3/25/09, Trey Tomes <trey....@gmail.com> wrote:

[Trey Tomes]

Sunday's out for me, as is the following weekend...  We might be able to do a weeknight, but I don't know what day is best yet.  What evening works best for you?  I'll get back to you for my part.

[Matt Meyer]

All I've got open in the evening time is Wednesday of next week the 1st. That is unless you're off on friday like before, then we can get together during the day on friday.

PS, when I updated last night, my version of Dungeon Man stopped building.

[Trey Tomes]

Yeah, I've been changing stuff...  You probably have a conflicted file.  There are three options for you at this point:

1. Resolve the conflicts.

2. Delete the conflicted files and get the from subversion again.

3. Delete the entire directory and get everything fresh.

I recommend number 2.  When you do a SVN update, it will tell you which files are conflicted.

Let's plan to meet next Wednesday (April 1st) at Panera, around 6pm.  Everyone is welcome to come; doesn't have to be just Matt and I.  I'll let you know in advance if Wednesday doesn't work out for some reason.

~Trey

[Matt Meyer]

That sounds good to me. And thanks for the help.

I'll try to get it resolved later tonight. If I'm having troubles I'll send you an email.

You know, I was thinking about we should surround the player with crates
from the very beginning to let the player figure out that the crates can
be moved.

[Trey Tomes]

That might be a good idea.  We'd need to make that portion of the map bigger, which isn't very hard at this point.

I added the capability for intro-text to the latest version, so when you run the game it'll tell you what to do at the start of the level.  You can see it in the xml.

[Evan Eubanks]

I was thinking, to cut down on the collision calculation, that we should divide the map up into a quadrants upon load. That way the player only need check against the items in his quadrant unless he's at the edge.

What do you think Matt?

[Evan Eubanks]

Er... what do you think, Trey? :)

[Trey Tomes]

Sort of like a quad-tree?  That would be cool...  Oct-trees are used in 3D games to reduce calculations, with quad-trees being the 2D equivalent.  Check it out on wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadtree.  We could parse the entire tilemap structure into a quadtree upon loading.  That would be fun to implement.

~Trey

[Trey Tomes]

You think you'll work on the quad-tree thing Evan?

[Evan Eubanks]

Yes sir - won't be until this weekend though. Is that alright? I would have fun implementing this.

[Trey Tomes]

Definitely go for it; I look forward to seeing what you come up with.  We're not on any sort of schedule here, so you can get to it whenever you have time.

I'm thinking about working on the graphics this weekend.  I'd like to submit this game to the IndieCade competition.  There is a $35 fee that I can pay on our behalf.  The one catch is that we can't use SquareSoft's graphics. :-)

[Trey Tomes]

One thing though, try to leave the TileMap class alone.  We're using binary serialization to save the ".map" files, so any change to the data in the TileMap class will render all of our maps unusable.

[Matt Meyer]

I just wanted to say that I like the new transitions and the new map!  My first time I went down the "DOH" side.  hahaha   One thing I need to mention thought is when I tried the "Full Screen" option, my monitor couldn't recognize the mode and therefore I had to unplug my computer just because nothing else seemed to work.  I tried Ctrl-Alt-Del and pressing my power button but nothing worked.  I just thought I would pass that along.   Other than that, the game looks and feels great.  I need to add some more different music and sounds to help flesh out the levels.

[Evan Eubanks]

BTW Matt, I can make the sound stuff script based so you don't have to compile every time you want to change the sound. I can make it so there is a different sound for behaviors and different maps.

That fine?

[Trey Tomes]

That would be cool.  What kind of scripting system would you use?  I was thinking IronPython (http://www.codeplex.com/IronPython).  At some point, as our actors become more complicated, we will need to incorporate a scripting system into the mix, like a "Scripted" behavior.  Did you see how I attach the attributes to the behaviors in the level xml?  We could probably use that same system for attaching a script to the actor.

I definitely think that the music should not be hard-coded like it is now.  We could stick an attribute on the Level xml for the music name, and load that at the beginning of each level.

[Trey Tomes]

Did you talk to the man in the first level? :-)

[Matt Meyer]

That sounds like a mighty fine idea there Evan! How many maps do you think we're going to end up having? I was thinking about creating 2-3 more songs for different areas.


--- On Fri, 3/27/09, Evan Eubanks <sayai...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Trey Tomes]

We could probably keep making maps indefinitely. :-)  What kind of stuff would you like to see in the levels?  I'm still wanting to make some slime monsters.

[Matt Meyer]

I like that water world level that you made and we could use that as a theme for several different maps. As well as the stone castle map etc? Just whatever we can come up with. I remember you saying something about working on changing the graphics. Perhaps we can have a lava level too?

--- On Fri, 3/27/09, Trey Tomes <trey....@gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Trey Tomes <trey....@gmail.com>

[Trey Tomes]

Lava would be cool; we could have the whole level glowing red.  I want to upgrade the resolution on our graphics; right now we're using 16x16 tiles stretched out to 32x32.  We could have a lot more resolution, I just have to draw the things.

So far I like the level of detail in room1 better than the stuff I've put out.  And we definitely have a lot more themes we can go with as far as tile sets.

You were thinking of making an overworld on Saturday; I think we're pretty close to being able to do that.  We can make a village with the tileset we have, and populate it with characters based on the purple man I put in the beginning map.  We could also create a Door actor that opens and closes when it's touched, and acts as a transition when it is open and you collide with it.  I know I have door images around here somewhere...

[Trey Tomes]

We could do something like the first Diablo game, where you have a village that you start out in to buy junk and get quests, then descend into the dungeon.

[Trey Tomes]

I've managed to fix a major frustration with the level editor in the latest upload.  You remember how we add crates currently?  Click on the crate button, right click on the board, click on the crate button, right click on the board...  Really tedious.

Now it works like this: click on the crate button, use the left mouse button to draw unlimited crates on the board.  Click on a treasure box button, draw unlimited treasure boxes on the board.  It's great. :-)  Use the right mouse button to select an actor or light already on the board, and the left mouse button to move it around.

I uploaded a map into the mapdata direction, "VillageMist.map", which is an exact  replica of the Village of Mist in Final Fantasy 2.  I don't have any plans for it right now, it was just fun to make.

[Matt Meyer]

Awesome! I can't wait to check it out. This should help make level design alot easier. Trey, we're still on for tomorrow at Panera right?

[Trey Tomes]

We're definitely on for tomorrow.  I'm going to probably get there around 6 and start hacking around with the code.  What time can you be there?

[Trey Tomes]

Make that 7pm.

[Matt Meyer]

7pm sounds good with me. See ya then!