Another fun pic of Gravitum.

MailChimp.

Sorry for the lack of updates y'all. Gravitum is taking longer than planned, thanks to also needing to do crunching on some contract work. Thankfully crunch is done, and I hope to have Gravitum wrapped up within the next two weeks for the most part.

Then it will be back to M.I.N.T development without any other Retromite projects stealing time and glory.

Health on screen at all times doesn't really work, as some of the builds people make can have over 20 parts.

I'd recommend doing the standard Mechwarrior 2 style display. Especially if your also able to see enemy damage areas, thats typically a pretty big factor in things.

Oh is there actually health per part/section, and can sections be destroyed? That was the first thing that stood out to me as missing big time. I'd really recommend bringing both a health status and radar display into the normal in game screen display.

I think it all comes down to Windows wanting a Direct3D renderer. I keep running into enough buggy OpenGL implementations, that I'm about ready to fulfill that request.

Simple code is the best code you can write 99% of the time imo.

Complex code is the stuff that ends up being full of bugs, little edge cases, and becomes a nightmare to maintain and return to down the road.

Its the same reason I'd recommend to not worry about writing generic systems most of the time. Just write the minimal thing that you need at the time you need it, and move on to the next thing you need. At least for small games, bigger games can start to get pretty heavy at times, without more actual architecture and general planning.

On small projects, its really a trap. Very easy to over engineer, and in reality whatever architecture you write, is going to end up breaking and needing adjusted as the project morphs and new features are added.

My recommendation is to stick with framework level of architecture. You have managers, singletons, classes, or maybe just global functions, that are responsible for basic graphics, sound, input, etc. When it comes to game logic, if your doing OOP try an keep things flat. Then do a favor and save endless time by just using a free framework like SFML, or SDL, etc.

Nice graphics style. Not sure about the seemingly ultra simple combat system though. Would love to see or hear more about that part of things.

This looks brilliant! does the game have a name yet?

Cheers, and yeah its called Gravitum. Little video of a challenge map over here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eWVKTfonmA

Was that the GUI library you mentioned on G+ a couple weeks back?

I can certainly understand the need for a GUI that runs inside openGL. If I were to do a game editor I would want that as well.

Yeah it was. Was my final straw in searching, I'm still not in love with it, especially since its all in russian which I can't read.. but it seems to be doing the job so far more or less.

I arrived at MyGUI after a couple weeks of flipping about. I wanted something that could work purely with OpenGL though, and integrate into a normal game loop, not the other way around. (Which seemed like one of the biggest problems with QT and WxWidgets.)

Do you mean that after a couple of rounds the initial difficulty increases?
Because that's not supposed to happen

I mean it the difficulty jump from like 2nd tier to 3rd tier is really large. It goes from basically 1 and 2 lines taking no effort at all, to 3 lines killing you quickly.  Also you can get 3 vertical lines at once coming down, though I guess you maybe can get around that by the grid wrapping.

Admittedly the random patterns affect this a lot, I just scored around 40pts on another play through which was much easier.

I made 20 some points after two tries, the start certainly seems a little slow, while it jumps from easy difficulty to very hard in what seems like two rounds.

In the end it doesn't matter, just pick a language and start.  I went from basic on a trash 80 to turbo C. Most programming is really about logic and thinking about flow and how to solve a problem, programming language syntax is pretty minimal in that.

On another note, Kawe has started up some mockups of user interfaces, below is an early concept for a unit display.

<snip>

Looking good! What are those bottom icons?

So the basic lineup goes like this it seems.

First: Action Points
Second: Health
Third: Extra actions that need to be recharged, or are one time use, etc.

QuakeWorld, especially with mods like mega team fortress. UT was just so slow, though I will admit to loving some of the low gravity maps.

Also UT had the super area of effect weapons like the combo with the laser, and that instant kill AOE rocket thing, which I always thought was a bit lame. I enjoyed Solider of Fortune 1 more than UT in the end, and Quake more than both.

Didn't ever play the later quakes/UTs much though.

I dunno about editors but you plan an expansion pack called "Condition".
...

M.I.N.T. Condition

On another note, Kawe has started up some mockups of user interfaces, below is an early concept for a unit display.



I'm still tied up wrapping Gravitum, but hope to return to M.I.N.T as soon as possible, and with far less projects competing for attention.

Its all summed up in a classic quote. "Stay on target" and what happens when you don't http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnP5iDKwuwk