Category Archives: Design

After the recent updates, I’ve arrived at the point where I’m making meaningful gameplay decisions every time I design another part of the game, where the decision are no longer obvious- not like the past, with design decisions like “Sound: … Continue reading →

Saving and loading is the task of the day.  I’m rapidly becoming comfortable with rapidXML (harr) now that I’m using it a lot in a short period of time. The question in terms of design, though, is save types.  Exactly … Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

I’ve got a plan for the UI, and am now in the process of writing all the C++ funcitons to display and manipulate the separate elements.  Then I’ll finalize the file format for storing the data, then I’ll hook LUA … Continue reading →

I really thought I was done with the emitter stuff.  Then I decided the performance needed improving.  Then I read this. So now I’m going to try to do that.  It does mean that I’ll now be requiring shader model … Continue reading →