More Progress

Damn it feels good to be a gangsta. I finally, after about a week of doing research into using Separating Axis Method for collision detection, and working on the collision systems for the engine and for Barricade on a whole for about three weeks, finished the narrow pass collision detection. I want to do some cartwheels right now because the whole process was kind of starting to get under my skin. Reason being, I'm no mathematician by any means and the only resources available out there are written from a math theorem perspective. But anyways, I've complained about the process too much as I did it, which if I didn't complain as much I probably would have been finished faster, but it's done.

So.. I can finally go back to concentrating on building a wider spectrum collision management system for the game barricade. They systems already about 75% done at this point, I just have to continue to tweak a few more things. I was worried I wasn't going to make my goal of having a playable proto-type for next months game development forum meeting, but it looks like things should be a go. There's still a lot that I want to get done before an official public release however, but that will hopefully be ready by the first of March or round abouts.

Things that still need to be finished at this point include, but probably aren't limited too..

Finishing the Wide area collision management system.

Remapping some key textures for sprites and animations.

Getting the texture fonts mapped and loaded.(Currently using bitmap fonts for the game.)

Getting some temp sound effects for the demo and getting those inserted into the correct places in classes and adding the proper audio updates.

Replacing the temp graphics made by me with actual graphics made by Dwayne for the game.

Implement the bullets class and resolve bullet to block collision.

Add the ability of blocks to drop powerups and other items upon being destroyed.

Implement chain effects for blocks(Not sure if this one will make it into any of the demos because of lack of information on how this is supposed to work regarding how damage effects different block sizes and Mike Pool is no where to be found for comment.)

Implement powerup effects.(Not sure if this will make it into the demos for the same reason mentioned above.)

Implement gamepads.

Implement general scoring system for the demo.

Create a general level manager in charge of dynamically selecting play arenas and calling the functions related to generating blocks upon the start of new rounds.

There's a lot more stuff to do from there, but once those things are taken care of, a public release of the proto-type will be done. Then we'll have to see how things go from there.

I know after that I need to get back to working on the editor scribe and really start focusing on having the engine be more dynamic and taking care of all the design elements that I made sure to put in place last year. I'll post some screen shots later in the week once I start getting more things up on the screen.