Flash/C++ Game Project

[Brad]

Finished the basic chat system. Set up for everything besides person to person "whisper" chatting. Global messages, system messages, party chat all that stuff will work. Except that I don't happen to have any method of sending out system messages, nor any sort of party system that you can join...

So what should I work on next? Basic movement and player communication is complete. There are lots of things I can do at this juncture...

Some possibilities:

• Start working on the battle system, enemies, attacking, damage calculations, etc... biggest area I haven't even started programming yet.
• Buying and selling from merchants. This was completed in the text-based client but nothing so far in the flash-based one. I haven't started this yet because I am not sure how quests will affect the dialogue system (and therefore all NPCs including merchants)
• A map editor written in C#. The map files are all written in XML with a space delimited string for the map data, but it is really hard to design maps once you get over 10 tile types. Stuff doesn't line up properly anymore... I am going to write this in C# because it makes Windows forms easily and I don't want to do it in VB.net.
• The party system. Join a group of adventurers and hang out in a really inconvenient chat room.... as there isn't much else to do yet.

GIVE ME YOUR INPUT!

[Nick]

The battle system sounds the most fun. But the map editor sounds thr most useful. If I wasn't tring to make a drupal module I would offer to do some map maker work. I stil am offering to daw any map tiles you need though.

[Brad]

I was thinking today that I may need to change my maps, npcs, quests and dialogue to be stored in the database rather than in XML files. Then I can just load the maps when players are currently on. This would allow for a much much larger world, without running out of memory. I could also increase the allowed amount of players as well, not that I think too many players will ever be a problem.

Then I will work on the map editor. It'll be a C# windows app. You'll just point it to the location of the database and it'll give you a list of existing maps or let you create a new one. Basically you'd choose a tile from a scrollable tile list, click on the map and set that tile's type.

In the future it can be expanded to do NPCs, dialogue and quests as well.

[Brad]

Finished switching the maps over to using the SQL database. Still need to write a "garbage collection" thing which removes unused maps after they have been loaded, but otherwise my "load upon request" map system is up and running.

This allows me to now start to create my map editing program.

[zourtney]

C# FTW (as they say). Learn some XAML, Linq, and general .NET 4.x stuff for me. I have too many other APIs to learn at the moment.

Do you need help with anything? I probably have about six other things to work on instead, but I can always offer.

[Brad]

Yeah, I guess if I am going to learn C# I may as well use Net 4.0 while I'm at it.

[Brad]

So I wrote a map editor for my game. C# .NET 4.0 and SQLite. It works too, only thing it can't do is delete maps (not sure why I didn't add that...)

Here is a screenshot. Source code is in the SVN. To use it you'll need to set the paths to the database and images files yourself (download the flash client and server source to get these files). They are still hard coded, haven't gotten around to making them be stored in a settings file yet.

[zourtney]

Cool. I'll have to look at it when I get back in town. I haven't done any .NET 4.x stuff yet. Did you use the XAML stuff for UI? Did you use the Linq(?) features for data access?

Oh, and the screenshot doesn't seem to be working for me...

[Nick]

I can see it. Hmmm.

[Brad]

Nope and nope. The UI is already so simple and so is the querying that I didn't really need to delve into those. I'll get around to it eventually as I work more in C#. I think my next learning goal is going to be XNA though.

[zourtney]

Yeah, XNA is probably pretty cool. I want to learn that...and those other things...and maybe some Windows 8 stuff. All I know about them is their names.

[Nick]

I didn't even know their names. I had to look them up.

"...and XNA came to stand for "XNA is Not an Acronym"." Really? Another self referential acronym.

[zourtney]

Wow. Ok. I like how that has no citation, either. I just knew it was an Xbox SDK, which is presumably PC compatible by now (Wikipedia says "any .NET platform"). Like a DirectX++.

Too many things to learn. Not enough time.

[Brad]

It is for Windows, Xbox and Windows 7 phones. With mono I think it could work with other OS. It uses Direct X but makes it quite a bit easier to use. It is actually pretty cool to use.

[Nick]

Wikipedia made it sound like a nice way to easily develop simple games. I think it would be worth playing with for that reason alone. Especially if one could adapt it to other platform without too much more work.

I have thinking that (along with all my other projects) learning some mobile programming would be a rather good idea. And fun.