Life is a Highway

Its so true that life is a highway, but every now and again you hit a freeway where your just going along for the ride.  This is especially true when your sporting 3 kids under the age of 7!  we had a flu role through that landed my 15month old son in the hospital being checked for all sorts of stuff that turned out to be a viral infection (TG!)  it was scary and pretty much put TileMAX at "bottom of shoe" in terms of priority... I'm sure you could understand or relate.   In any case that reminded me after-the-fact that I need to have a contingency plan so TileMAX continues on should I vanish for some reason... This could take the form of a partner (such as an artist, or another coder) who could add value to the end product but also be there to handle TileMAX's future should I disappear for example.  Anyway... Its a thought I may consider further.

So.. as you guessed it, I have only progressed TileMAX a little bit.  So far the Tile Map is working perfectly (rectangular only), Sprites are working and tracking on the TileMap if selected, collision code is present but buggy... I lost track of something there so I'm re-writing it more clearly.  Working on it...

I've never professed to saying that I have a specific target date of any kind in the future for release, just that I will continually develop it.  That doesn't mean I don't get excited to get Version 1 out there though.  I've just honestly realized that I can only work as time permits... enough for now, our close friends just had a Baby and I've got to get to the hospital to give congrats...

Things are looking great!!

I guess I should listen to my own posts and post something LOL

TileMax is moving along again.  The sprite system is working A1 and its all integrated into a single render call if configured that way.  I'm really feeling good about this.  I discovered a bug in one of my "I thought" stable components... TMAnim.   It was offsetting sub-image tiles by the full image width! How did I not see that!  In any case its fixed, its all aligned, i'm just finishing up converting the collision code to the new parameters and I might be darn near getting all this out into Alpha!  oh... after a few days of documentation :P

This next release encompasses a lot of components that will be a good starter for anyone getting going with a game.  I wish I could have gotten back to the GUI system... next time.  plus theres lots of GUI's out there in the mean time.

More to come...Cheers

Distance is an evil thing

It seems to me as I continue to develop TileMax that communication is key.  When one fails to communicate, they leave the floor open to conjecture and criticism.  As I move through life I try to learn lessons from the mistakes and gains of others around me.  And recently the developer of the language I'm using seems to have shunned from communicating with the community that uses the product.  The lesson I seem to be observing is that silence is a confidence killer amongst a community of product users.  All the conjecture and criticism about what is happening with the product festers on the forums and without response from the developer lots of people within the community loose faith.  Then, when the developer engages the community he gets scrutinized and the apparent speculation comes out in droves by nay-sayers.  This would be incredibly frustrating as a developer and could very well run the risk of spinning ones drive to develop into the ground.  I can speak for myself while I now consider whether or not I have chosen the best language to suite my needs.  And that is sad since I've been a very faithful follower of it over many years.  So, now I consider porting to another language.. a thought that is really depressing.  I'm not saying I'm ready to jump ship yet... the developer has hinted at a very cool development... but with some very critical points made in the forums looming in my mind and the developer not speaking to them, I find even my confidence waining.  We'll see... for now it does what I need it to... no reason for a harsh change in course.   But my next project start might have to be reconsidered if I don't see some more professional communication from the developer soon.

Well into Beta

I've released the first Beta of TileMax and boy what an awakening that was.  People will always use your system for something completely unexpected which of course introduces errors that you didn't screen for and usually ends up adding a few methods to support better.  But hey, all for the improvement of the system right!

So now I've moved back to the TileSystem since I think its going to be the big "difference" between TileMax and other frameworks and its also the coolest part of them all.  Its all compiling and I can run both the editor and the sample2 demo which is great, but I want to transform actors into sprites (which in itself is a search-replace operation) but then i want to use a particle as its screen-presence which pretty much means I have to rework all the parameter references in the actor code to store and modify particle attributes.  Such is the life of the indie coder lol.  The other bit I want to complete is allowing a flexible number of layers instead of a fixed number and let the system user decide which layer the collision layer should be.

Enough for now..

 

Yay a milestone!

Fwew.. what a busy month r 2.  Sick kids, birthdays, other crazy family stuff ;)  anyway, in all that I managed to debug the particle system and get it out there.  A BIG THANK YOU to my alpha testers!

Here it is... Its a simple demo created by an alpha tester, and expanded by me into a micro-game.  It demonstrates the particle system...
http://sites.google.com/site/skullyproductions/Home/downloads/SamahSkully.zip

The system you see at work is a combination of particles that can behave like sprites, an Animation control system, a Timing System which includes sequencers, a graphics control system, a math module and I think thats it.

The documentation is coming along nicely.. I usually hit that for a while each time I get coders brain cramp and need something less challenging to do.

There are many components to progress:

The Tile Engine has to be revisted because I'm converting the "actors" to extend particles with parenting.  It shouldn't take long.. all the other code for collisions etc is already there... just needs converting to the particle system methodology.  There were some timing system changes to account for as well which means some balancing... and the anim type changed to TMAnim which means a mass search-replace is in order.

The HUD/GUI needs serious work... the base gadget and button is there and its cool, but I need to expand that now with all the other necessary gadgets for a typical game... sliders, proportionals, blah, blah.. The only reason I am writing my own is that I want one that can move around, rotate and stuff and not just sit in a box.  [a http://www.gregory-phoenix.com/]The Mysterious Past of Gregory Phoenix[/a] was my inspiration for that.

Others like the language system etc could be posted sooner but I want to concentrate on specific areas first... right now I'm debating whether to get the Tile System out or the GUI... decisions decisions!

Into alpha land

Well, that was an experience!

I released the Alpha version of TileMax containing the ParticleFX system, Timing, Anim, and Graphics systems. But little did I know that I had two deep seeded bugs that were going to haunt me.  Shortly after releasing the particle system, particles would just start randomly disappearing... sometimes they looked grouped.  But I began pulling my hair out trying to find it.   Finally... I discovered that I was running old array packing code (forgot to comment it) and my new one... so I got the disappearing particles problem ironed out!

Of course, shortly after that one of my alpha testers (samah) created a sequenced animation of a bubble that would cause a null reference error.  Again.. the bug was not obvious.  in fact, the bug did not surface until a specific combination of sequencer nodes is created.  But, looking back... i'm not sure how it worked at all!  So those are ironed out!

So, initial steps into the alpha were interesting.  I was wise to step into it with the Particle System and not the whole system... because now that certain aspects of the particle system are ironed out and proven.. I can go through each of the next sections a little slower and prepare for the next alpha release featuring...whatever makes the most sense.

I can see the light

I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel... there is still quite a bit to do but I am now calling for alpha testers.

Details can be seen http://www.blitzmonkeys.com/index.php?topic=310.0;topicseen

This site is hosting a private forum for alpha>beta testing.  If interested, contact me via email or comment.