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I always knew the dwarves would save me

February 25th, 2008 by mikeleon

Drawing hud elements in a 3d world is a lot easier with code like the stuff found here.  A lot easier than trying to figure out the math to switch the camera and view vectors, offset the polygon to the right part of the screen, and then make sure that the polygon maintains the same size while being close enough that it doesnt get pushed behind a wall….   I bet the axe helped…

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Update

February 24th, 2008 by mikeleon

Using a program Joel showed me I was able to get the visual studio pro iso’s burned.  It was very easy to use and can be found here.  If you think you are ever going to download images from Microsoft you might as well get that program because it makes it easier to burn their .iso format.

Anyway, I was able to get VS pro installed which is good since that means I can start coding again lol.  I couldn’t find a simple way to code a timer online, so I made a basic timer class that keeps track of how much time has passed since you started the timer.  That is going to be used to enforce time limits on solving the maze.  I based it off the system clock so i think you could cheat by changing your clock… but the maze isn’t that big and if someone wants to cheat that bad, meh.

(I also finished the 401 midterm last night woot)

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The Newest Plan… Seems to be working

February 19th, 2008 by mikeleon

So I postponed writing my blog on Monday until after Joel and I had both talked to Prof. Polack and figured out what we were going to do.  Monday afternoon we both talked to her and then over Monday night and today we figured out our basic plan.

While the source sdk from half-life 2 can make some really awesome stuff, if you want to use it, you should probably give yourself some time to get into it.  While both Joel and I had some stuff working in it, we decided that there was going to be too much of a learning curve to really use it to its fullest this semester.  So as of Friday night last week we started talking about trying to go back to a openGL & GLUT and then trying to mix in some Allegro.  After talking to Polack on Monday we dropped the Allegro idea and are now back to just openGL and GLUT.

So what are we doing?  We are sticking with the maze idea and I think Joel is dropping the bsp tree stuff for loading maps and just hand-coding the level.  Then using those mazes we will continue our original plans.

So what do we have done?  I revamped the key mapping stuff and made it more intuitive as far as how you use it.  I also fixed a couple weird things in my code that i guess i had started to implement at one time and then got sidetracked with something else and forgot they existed.  Joel put together a maze and got that all textured and everything.  Then tonight we spent a few hours in the lab working on throwing it all together again and getting that running.  After working out the kinks we have the maze loading in properly, the keys working, and the camera working.  The problem is though, once you start the game (bring up the maze) the response time  for user input drops way down and thus the camera moves really slow.  We haven’t figured this out yet since the maze runs just fine in the little app he wrote, and the program responds just fine throughout all the menus.  Also, the port shouldn’t have affected how fast it runs since it is still all rendered with openGL and we know that they responsiveness to the keyboard input works fine with GLUT.

So that’s where we are now, sorry for the day late post, but it made more sense to me to wait and have some meaningful stuff to post.

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Valve Stuff

February 12th, 2008 by mikeleon

Joel’s post here, gives a pretty good intro in our attempted switch from writing a game engine from scratch to trying to use the Source SDK from Valve (particulary half-life 2).  Like he said we have managed to get some maps up (one of them is a maze) and are trying to build from there.

So far I have managed to get a Panel into the game screen.  Panels are basically containers that hold all of the UI elements.  The panel I made shows up as a little greenish colored box in the bottom left corner of the screen, and has the capability to hold pretty much anything.  The good news is that it looks to be pretty straight forward from here as far as adding different HUD elements go (There is even a gui editor you can use while the mod is running to manipulate the UI).  I am trying to actually code in the hud elements and avoid the gui though, and I think I can have a working button of some sort by wednesday, or at the latest thursday.

P.S. Forgot to say how long I worked.  A rough estimate is a couple days.  It took about 2 full days and nights to get Steam updated and the Source SDK downloaded and running over our wonderful network.  After that probably about 1.5-2 hours reading various documentation and guides on the valve developer wiki, and then probably about 2.5 hours getting the panel to work.

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Map Stuff

February 5th, 2008 by mikeleon

So I spent about 3hours and 15minutes tonight helping Joel out with a map.  We were using the half-life map editor and were trying to put together a maze.  What we ended up with was pretty nice looking, everybody should be able to see it at the meeting tomorrow.

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Since Our Meeting…

February 4th, 2008 by mikeleon

Before I start talking about how much time I spent on what this week, I have to ask what was everyone’s favorite commercial? I really liked the dorito’s one with the mouse, but I also thought the lizards dancing to thriller was pretty cool (though I know not everyone liked that).

Anyway, I spent about 2hours trying to upgrade from visual studio express to pro (not counting download times) and never got it to work, so I am still using express.   After i gave up on that I spent about 6 hours working on the keymapping stuff, but that is all working now.  I didn’t get a chance to talk to Richard about the images, but that’s not a big deal.

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