Author Archives: Alex

Plot direction

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Alex

I’ve been contemplating where I’m going to be taking the game, and how I’m going to justify the gameplay I want in terms of a logical plot. I don’t think orienting the game strongly towards a traditional step by step … Continue reading →

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Gravity lines

Posted on December 30, 2010 by Alex

A significant recent addition to the game is “gravity walls”.  The mouse right and left click weren’t doing anything, and I wanted to do something with the precision of the mouse cursor besides use it as an aiming device, and … Continue reading →

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Sound, new equipment system, new player data system, AI target motion prediction.

Posted on November 25, 2010 by Alex

I’ve been experimenting with sound, and the results are pleasingly straightforward.  After appropriate linking and placing of files, it takes a total of six very simple lines of code to load a .wav and play it at full volume.  The … Continue reading →

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AI, with improved collision avoidance

Posted on November 13, 2010 by Alex

I’ve rewritten the “AI”- at least, the part of it that determines, millisecond by millisecond, what direction the ship should be applying its thrust.  The problem is pretty complex.  First, I’m not realistically able to run the AI by pre-computing … Continue reading →

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Projectiles, slightly improved once more

Posted on October 23, 2010 by Alex

I’ve added in some more projectiles using the new system, and added in a fragmenting, shotgun-style effect.  The player starts with seven weapons now, bound to keys 1-7.  1-3 are the same as always, 4 homes, 5 is a spread, … Continue reading →

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Projectile system, vastly improved

Posted on October 21, 2010 by Alex

Homing weapons are in and functional, and the projectile system in general is reworked to read in an XML file and generate weapon types based on that.  All arguments are optional, with default values.  There is no longer any projectile … Continue reading →

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A galactic economy

Posted on October 10, 2010 by Alex

I’ve been thinking about possible ways of interacting with or building an economy in the game.  In most games, a trading post is just one town, or one merchant in a town, or one space station.  So then it makes … Continue reading →

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UI design, updated.

Posted on October 5, 2010 by Alex

The UI can handle updates now.  Interacting with it in significant ways, like pressing a button or moving a slider, triggers a function which sends the full state of that display group to LUA, which then has the option to … Continue reading →

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XML

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Alex

I’ve taken a break from the UI, so the news for today is I’ve stopped using: stardata.txt planetdata.txt wormholes.txt and replaced them all with a single universe.xml.  XML, if you’re not familiar with it, is a way of representing arbitrary … Continue reading →

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UI editor

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Alex

I’ve written a new tool:  the UI generation program.  It lets you draw boxes, then generates a decent chunk of the LUA it takes to display them in game, leaving you to fill in the types, and any data specific … Continue reading →

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