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!