It seems ray-casting doesn’t work as I expected (they don’t work well with edge shapes). Send your complaints on the Box2D forum. So no working hitscan weapons for a while.
At least I got a nice weapon working in the game. Sigvatr is also working on HUD graphics. They look promising.
I’m not showing any screenshots cause we agreed not to post any game content until we have a proper game working.
Added a little widget on the right side of this page. It is a tool that tracks time that I spend on the computer. All the stuff there should indicate how much time I spend working on the game versus time spent on doing other things (procrastination). I don’t know if it works correctly (there should bars for coding, communication etc.).
As for Link-Dead:
Yesterday I managed to do gun management. That is picking up and shooting. Bullets are working too.
If you’re tracking my development you’ll notice I did this the second time. To explain shortly: I’ve been basically rewriting the whole engine for the last couple months. For example switched from Newton Physics to Box2D.
Today I’m going to update Box2D to the latest version so I can use ray-casting.
Here’s a new version of the player movement and physics test box. There are a lot of minor changes here and experimentation. Tell me how you like it (is it better than the previous one?). The keys remain the same (see post below) except dropping from platform.
Change log:
Known problems:
UPDATE!
– added config file (config.txt) for changing all variables for anyone that likes to experiment
– jumping is sensitive to key pressing time
I have a little treat for you.
I’ve been making this little application for the past few weeks. It is a test for the new physics (Box2D) in Link-Dead/Berserker as well as a test for the player movement. The graphics are really simple, just lines, so I have to present an explanation.
This test shows how the movement system will work. It is pretty much like in platformers. This is the best way I could think of to make players move around a 2D map without flying like in Soldat.
If you create the ragdoll you can drag it with the mouse. You can’t resurrect the ragdoll so you have to restart the program to play again.
The known bugs are
– floating onto the platform/stairs
– some ragdoll collision issues
Some new amazing concept art from Sigvatr. This is a soldier. Click for bigger image in HD.
Today I integrated Box2D ragdoll physics with my Character Builder. I had 3 options to do this:
I decided to go for option 2, because I already have two systems and this was the easiest way to integrate it. Basically it works as if the physics ragdoll was tied with ropes to the animation ragdoll. You can see this on the video. The green lines are for the animation ragdoll and the blue is the physics ragdoll. Animating this is super easy – you just drag the blue limbs. Click for more to see the video. read more »
I want to try making really short reports about the progress on building the new game. I’m planning this for some time now, but I need to write what we were doing and what was done up to this point. So in an extreme short version, in no particular order, this is the current state of the Link-Dead/Berserker engine and game.
That’s what we were working on in the past couple months. It doesn’t seem much when it is written but I can’t really show you anything because most of what is being done is internal engine stuff. The graphics that Sigvatr is painting is top secret and we won’t publish them until we have something real and working in the game.
That being written I’ll see how writing progress in a very brief way like this works for me. I want to keep you guys updated but on the other hand development logs and blogs have become a distraction. My main reason for all of this is to create awesome games. Always was.
I’m feeling really pumped right now! And that’s because I’m really enjoying pumping states of entities via snapshots at each server loop!
Well if you know what I mean… besides being a geek I am really enjoying programming the network code for Link-Dead nowadays and I decided to write something about it.
I think the biggest challenge in producing a multiplayer game is the network code. It took me 2 years since starting to work on my engine to finally get to it. I wasn’t really thinking about it for this whole time, I was procrastinating. There was always something better to do than the net code.
As you come to understand certain processes in human life you can’t be ignorant to them anymore. Procrastination isn’t some kind of disease. It is a strictly logical output of the way you are thinking. You don’t do things because you’re thinking about them in a wrong way, or not thinking at all. You can predict with mathematical precision whether you will finish something or not based on what is going on in your head. Procrastination absolutely isn’t an issue once you know EXACTLY what you want and you believe that what you want to do will make YOU HAPPY.
read more »
As you know we’re looking for a tools programmer. We want to have a fully featured map editor, not only for Link-Dead, Berserker, but for all other games and mods that will be built on my engine. My original map format will be changing. If you’ve missed on how I did it, here are some links:
Map format preview
New map format – collision
New mighty lighting efects
To recap the maps are currently several layers that are painted in a graphic program and then blended and compiled together in a simple tool I made. This will be changing cause Sigvatr found a lot of problems with this approach: read more »
