Storing a complete copy of the map/level data is a pretty good way to solve this.
That makes everything persistent and the level data is so small it won't hurt anyone. The only drawback I can see at the moment is that it will be hard to patch the game world if needed but perhaps I can write a separate patcher for that.

It would also work well together with player generated maps since it's all contained.

/ Robo

Hello

I'm working on a game that loads (and unloads) maps alot. Whenever you walk through a door and end up on a different map and then return everything on the first map is reset to its original configuration. Now... that's not very convenient so I want to store all the progress the player has done on every individual map. If you've completed a puzzle for instance you wouldn't need to solve it again.

One way to do this would be to keep track of game objects that you've interacted with and store their status in a save file.

How do you guys approach this problem?

I'm leaning towards having certain key game objects stored in a save file and let everything else reset when moving between maps.

/ Robo

I like it and I'm for it. Have you thought about how the different perspectives can interact because I think that is key.

You'll have to avoid the fact that the tiles dont quite match up but I just wanted to check something.
Has anyone ever made a game like this before? Taking advantage of the Zelda-like perspective where sprites are a mix of 3/4 and side on, how playable do you think a game would be if it switched playing styles between 3D movment and 2D side scroller depending on where you were standing?

--- cut ---

I think I would have to adjust the view of the 2D sections so that they still match up with the 3D sections and make a few Escher style tweaks but I think its doable.

I'm sorry I didn't specify explicitly that the game is a desktop application.

It's possible to watch maps online using xslt to translate the map definitions to html but it's not possible to play the game in a browser and I have no plans for it.

Thanks for the feedback guys! I think you're all right.

I'm going to take the advice to ship with all core resources bundled and cache any further downloads to minimize the need for an active connection.

The resources are images, wave-files and configuration files (xml) and no executables so I (knock on wood) think I'm safe security-wise. I'll look into the topic further to reduce the risk for exploits because it's easy to make mistakes. I think I'm handling the download buffers correctly but I won't make that my famous last words

/ Tor

ps. When I said I download script files I meant behavior tree definitions in xml format. Not scripts that are interpreted.

I'm going into the end stage of the game engine part of my game design. The current alpha is loading all resources, images, sfx, scripts and maps over http to make testing easier. In total the current resource footprint is about 500kb.

If I leave it this way for the final release do you guys think people will be upset that the game can't be played offline?

The rational behind keeping the current setup is that I can patch the game serverside and I can extend the world with little effort.

It will make it harder for players to mod the game but I'm opting to either allow loading of resources from foreign hosts or letting players upload resources to my webserver.

I'm happy for any kind of feedback!

/ Tor Robotacon Viktorsson

PS. It's a 2D platformer game with sidescroller elements we're talking about.

I'm a huge supporter of sidekicks in games.
Another World had one of the best side-kicks in history.

The dynamics between a protagonist and a side-kick breaths life into a game.

I'd even say that I favor free floating weapon add-ons in shoot-em-ups over direct changes to the ship just for the reason that it somehow brings another dimension to what the protagonist is and what or who the player is controlling.

I've also had my ups and downs with this problem. It feels like I use every trick in the book.

I pass Levels to GameObjects when I initialize them so I don't have to do that when I run update (which does collision detection) on them but I pass the Screen object to the GameObjects when I call the draw routine which might be fitting when writing a server later on since the server won't have a screen but that was not the initial reasoning behind this choice. I think it's the mental image that an actor is on a map and knows about it's surroundings while the screen is just a projection of the actor that the actor is oblivious of.  

As for AI I have a single resource that keeps the entire HiveMind of stateless Behaviors that each can have references to different resources like the Game or the Level or the tree of GameObjects that are grouped into Armies and then Squads. GameObjects can then have a reference to a Behavior tree. I've found that this approach has greatly reduced the number of references passed which feels much cleaner. If I hadn't written the AI engine after I wrote the collision detection code I would probably have integrated collision detection as a Behavior with access to the Level which would mean that I wouldn't have to pass it when initializing the GameObject.

Thanks a lot for the help! That solved it!
I feel much better now, I had the whole license thing backwards.
I'm going to sleep like a child tonight.

Cheers!

Thank you Mcc that's really nice. Being able to get a cross platform build would be great.
I am developing on a Macbook Pro so I can compile the project and all but my problem is distributing the game to anyone on a Mac that does not have Xcode and SDL installed.

If I understand SDL right these libraries needs to be linked in but can't be part of my release. And even when I try and send the SDL libraries and put them in the same directory as the game.app it still doesn't run. I'm simply not fluent enough in how Mac works to figure out what I have to do to get other mac owners to run my game.

Thanx again for the link though. I'll have a look at it.

I'm going to ask the guys at the SDL forum. Why didn't I think of that?

I can't find a anywhere on the net how to release a game built with C++/SDL for Mac.
I have a buddy who will work on graphics and game design on a game built with my game motor
but I can't seem to send him any files he can run. This makes me worried that releasing this
game will be trouble as well.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

/ Robo

I'd like to discuss alternative ways to model 3D meshes. I've always felt that 3D modeling is really forced and tough to get into even when you're modeling low poly stuff. I spend way too long tweaking things and I struggle with shortcut keys and what not.

PAPER CRAFT / FOLDING METHOD
Does anyone know of a program where you create your UV-map first and then simply fold everything into actual 3d models?

AMIGURUMI / KNITTING METHOD
Knitting instructions shouldn't be impossible to transform into 3D models and they are usually quite easy to create and understand. It's not unlike folding paper.

INJECTION MOLDING / CNC METHOD
Modeling using height maps only similar to how molds are made. I'm fairly sure all molds made with CNC work form regular 3D models but it would be interesting to see if you could backwards engineer the process in any way and find new ways to make 3d models.

Long Time No See
/ Robo

The first time I did that I shot myself in the back and almost died from laughing.
Also, try using a map that is less than a screen wide. It can look pretty funny.

ps. I wrapped the x-axis. Rendering tiles is pretty straight forward but when rendering sprites it's easiest to just rendering everything twice.

Years.
Who the hell writes bug free code?

I'm happy that I picked up Processing for prototyping and tool making.