Times of War Development Team

Fixed the snowmen, so they look like snowmen now =). The snowballs also hit things in front of the target (ie, they dont go through trees or other units). Im hoping to get it going so that when a unit is attacked, it attacks back =). Ill also try to add shelters =).

Id also like to mention that this is completely data driven. The snowmen, the trees and the snowballs themselves are all defined through data files. At some point, these configuration files, as well as any media will be loaded through script files, and, to extend even more, these config files will be loaded from map files. The entire game will be fully configurable =).

Z.

OMG thats a cool idea. hehe, can't wait to try the demo. I shall be getting my head down on the editor again as soon as i have free time.

I have exams in early to mid january but after that i can get going like nobody again on it.

Good to hear about that, Psy; I hope your exams go well.

I figured as much as it was data driven :).

Alright, converted the attack code into a unit state... when a unit gets an attack order, it moves into range, and begins to attack. If the target goes out of range, the unit persues, and continues the attack >=).

Still a few bugs hiding in the woodwork, namely with deleting selected objects... to be fairly honest, I need to re-write the object management code at some point... its a bit kludgy right now =).

Z.

Making a lot of code modifications right now =). Should make everything a lot cleaner. Fixed the bug i mentioned earlier, with the selection indicator, as well as a lot of other things... when a unit is attacked, it now attacks back =).

Z.

Good. Do you have time to make the selection box an actual box (not just corners) before Wednesday?

Quote:

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Originally posted by Sastraxi
Good. Do you have time to make the selection box an actual box (not just corners) before Wednesday?

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Nope. Im not allowing mutiple unit selections for this demo, since I havent finished the code to select separate desination locations for each unit in a group as of yet.

Z.

Alrighty... Ive got everything working correctly now... when a snowman dies, he now leaves a corpse for 2.5 seconds... at some point ill fade the corpse out, and such, but for now, itll just disappear. Thats all for tonight =).

Z.

:D

Alrighty... im ready. Everything is zipped and ready to upload at 11:59 =).

Z.

Excellent!

How long does it take to compile (and what CPU do you have)?

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Originally posted by Sastraxi
Excellent!

How long does it take to compile (and what CPU do you have)?

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5 or 6 minutes =). P3 500 =).

Z.

Alright, its up =).

http://www.crystal-rain.com/files/tos_24122002.zip

Z.

Well i have passed the link on to my friends to try it.

I downloaded it and have the same problem as before that when i show the console it crashes my pc. It also fails to load land_ship.texture and the screen goes all weird yucky colours (game window) :(

land_ship.texture isnt a big deal, There isnt a land ship in this demo =). I just didnt bother to recompile after removing the texture from the directory =).

Did you try rebinding the key to bring the console down? You can change it in the config.tcs file in the scripts directory. However, changing that bind will let you bring the console DOWN, but you wont be able to get it back up with a key. Just type "console" in the console to retract it.

Z.

Zaei, excellent. There are a few texture alignment issues but overall it ran great... That's on DX9, btw, so you can all upgrade if you want :)

On the terrain, you mean? Thats just because Im just randomly changing between the ice and snow textures... when we get a proper map setup, you wont see that =).

Z.

Zaei i dont think thats the problem, i ran it again and didnt touch the console and when i pressed esc to quit it buggered my pc just like th eocnsole thing does.

I didn't check whether ESC buggered mine, I went into the console and typed quit.

I think the app just generally buggeres :'( i dont think its something i do.

I really want to try this demo and i know Zaei has put a lot of hard work in!!

Ive told my mates to and im asking now if anyone has tried it.

So it works until you type something? Without question, its the console (hitting esc runs a console command "main_menu", sending you back to that, for now). What are your keyboard settings? Input Locale, and Device name, if possible =). Ive got a feeling its a DirectInput thing. Ill also take a good look through my console stuff...

Z.

Well the first thing that strikes me about it is the fact that my console key is different to the stated one, i think thats due to american/uk keyboard settings.

Secondly, the screen buffer also seems to be realy crap. It doesnt get cleared properly as the mouse moves (i see several cursors). There is a weird thing on the bototm of the screen. Later ill take a shot of it with my digital camera and show it.

Keyboard settings,

Input Locale: Not sure what u mean here, the location (as on the control panel thing) is plugged into the keyboard port LOL.

Device Name: Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard (it ent a natural tho it is a MS one).

Input Locale is what language etc. Mine would be American, for instance.

Z.

Couldnt find a tab in XP that had the keyboard language on it.

On 2K it's Control Panel->Keyboard->Input Locales.

Z.

Not in XP.

Alrighty, Ill take a looksee as soon as I can get to an XP machine =).

Z.

Just finished my 13 hour shift at work :s

Saw less then 30 mins of outside while the sun was out :(

Yikes... I almost die on 8 hour days, I cant imagine 13 hours =(.

Z.

That sucks, Richard. :(
I've been away for the past day up and about, but now I'm back... the demo still works >=) :rolleyes:

Sorry, guys... lots been going on with the holidays and such =). Should be getting back on track in the next week or so =).

Z.

Hi Guys,
Just dropped in to see what's up with TOW. Cool!

I noticed your snowmen and trees. Thought I would post a screenshot from my very first complete 3D game. Gotta say, Z and the rest of you helped to motivate me to learn C++ and OpenGL.

Wish you and the TOW project the very best in 2003. Happy New Year!

Regards,
ChuckB

Wow, Chuck.
Wow.

Looks great, and thanks for your support ^_^. All the best to you in the new year as well!

My only regrets thus far is that I haven't been able to do much yet because of a lack of C++ knowledge... if only. Fortunately, the engine development is coming to a halt and that means GUI and game design :D which Jorj and I will be working on.

Hopefully I'll learn Blender this year and start some 3D modelling. I've got a pretty cool idea how I could rapidly develop humanoid models, but I'm not sure how far that will get as far as existing 3D modelling software support goes.

Z, I need an answer: does the engine support PNG loading or have you been converting these? If so, I've got some PNG code I've been baking up in VB that is true loading with no dependencies {save zlib}. Should be done in no time at all, exporting the uncompressed bytes of the PNG and its respective alpha channel will be done within an hour of coding.

Well Chuck, thanks for showing us that :) What did you use to make the snowmen (and they look freaky BTW :)).

Chuck: Nifty... youve been getting a lot done!

Ive been comverting them, Sas... shouldnt be much trouble to modify the loading, though =).

Z.

*sigh*. VBF's going down the dumpster, it seems. Where is everyone?

Sorry, ive been very busy with things here recently.

I should be getting my arse into gear once my exams are over!!

Im around... not doing much at the moment... still recovering from the holidays =). Ill get soem work done soon, though =).

Z.

Ok, finally got that template manager going... almost ready to implement scripting (going to use Lua, since its easy).

Z.

Nice. I saw a demo a while ago that had Lua in it and it was pretty damn cool.

Lua? Is it GPL'd? Is it open sourced? What is it? Where can I find more info about it?

I don't want to use something that we'll have to do royalties for.

GPL i think, defo no royalties to be paid!!

Google for it ;)

www.lua.org , I believe. It is open source, and several commercial games have already used it.

Z.

You'll be pleased to know im re-writing the TOW Editor in VB.NET

Starting now...

You're in VB.NET too, eh? I love it :)

Well things are going slow seen as im new to .NET and im trying to get my head around all the new things :s

Multithreading and interoperability are the best. Also, unsigned 32- and 64-bit longs are a plus for things like CRC checking :). Gonna be fun :D I'm also just getting my head around it.

heh, havent heard of interoperability before, thats something to do with mixing the .NET components and the old COM ones isnt it ?

ive ordered a book so :)

No, it's that (I believe) you can have a solution with C#.NET, C++.NET, and VB.NET projects in it, all working together (haven't tried this but it's the general word).

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Originally posted by Sastraxi
No, it's that (I believe) you can have a solution with C#.NET, C++.NET, and VB.NET projects in it, all working together (haven't tried this but it's the general word).

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Yeah, thats the idea behind .NET. Everything compiles down to the same bytecode, so you can write the various modules in various languages, kind of like Java.

Got Lua to link with the engine last night, but before I go and start to integrate it, I need to write a composite file library. Simply enough, a bunch of files in one file =). Im not making it full fledged, so once the file is created, it wont be able to be modified (ie, im not going to write output functions for this, just input). The final idea is that a map file will contain its heightmap, tilemap, and various scripts all in one file.

Z.

Ok, I think I have the composite file input stuff done... just need to write the file maker, and test it out.

Z.

I can't wait :) The first step to scriptedness! :D

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Originally posted by Sastraxi
I can't wait :) The first step to scriptedness! :D

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Yes sir! It should be a pretty flexible system... for instance, a file in the composite called "triggers", which gives the names of other files int he composite for map triggers... othe fun stuff... sounds like fun?

Z.

Sounds like a linux-type construct. I like linux-type constructs :D

Well, after you finish this up it's my turn >=). Today I'll design a GUI; tomorrow I'll take over the world! :)

Quote:

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Originally posted by Sastraxi
Sounds like a linux-type construct. I like linux-type constructs :D

Well, after you finish this up it's my turn >=). Today I'll design a GUI; tomorrow I'll take over the world! :)

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Oh, it is =). The compiler(im just going to call the composite file maker the compiler from now on =) will read from a config file that controls the file compilation =).

Z.

what happened to divinity script thing that we had ages ago ?!

I'm not sure. I was thinking that Lua gave access to your C++ objects and variables and stuff from whatever script language you were making.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Sastraxi
I'm not sure. I was thinking that Lua gave access to your C++ objects and variables and stuff from whatever script language you were making.

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No, lua is a language all its own...

DScript was just too much, for the little I was planning to use it, and it wasnt flexible enough...

Z.

Alright, thats fine! Just think about the good stuff:

- Many already know Lua
- People would be more inclined to learn the language if they could use it elsewhere
- More flexible and proven in the field

So, I suppose this is just as good as we had :) On my end, I got a new, sleek, Logitech MX500. The reason why I bring this up (other than necessary bragging rights ;)), is a question. Can you map button combinations to mice, or assign mouse buttons beyond the 5th in Divinity? If not, it's a feature I'd like to see implemented.

This mouse has 10 buttons: left, right, scroll, scroll up, scroll down, cruise up, cruise down, task switch, back, and forward. Most mice have 5 nowadays: left, right, scroll, scroll up, scroll down. Many have 3 (left, right, middle), and some have 2 (left, right). We should be able to accomodate all types of users.

4 buttons, scroll up and down, for now... I think I can change that to 8 buttons, though.

Z.

Yes, a correction, it is actually only 8 buttons. The cruise up/cruise down buttons are the same as wheelup/down. Since I don't think any mice at this time have more than that many, I think this would be a safe amount to shoot for, okay?