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[RabidFrog]

Hi all,

I guess i'll start my devlog with the simple pitch of the game i'm currently developing;

• Urban Zombie Apocolypse Setting
• Tower Defense / RTS mashup
• Cannon Fodder art style
• Sense of great loss from each unit's death
• Individual unit identities with skill progressions
• Fortify and defend a central base
• Must break out into the open to expand to new areas, find food and gain new units by rescuing trapped survivors
• diverse enemy ai that'll make you think about how to best deal with them
• Selectable "Extreme Arcade" mode, designed for instant pickup, short bursts of gameplay with instant gratification and constant rewards, refining and streamlining many genre defining actions to their bare mechanics allowing for rapid gameplay

It'll be slow going, i have a job and a girl who take up a lot of my time, but i'm an iterative prototyper, so i'll be posting stuff as and when its interesting.

I'm developing in C++ with GLEW & GLFW using OpenGL 3.1, it'll be for Windows first, but i'd like to think i can port it to Android at a later date, it'll be mouse controlled and will only use 1 button, so controls will be easy to translate, i'd imagine it'd make a pleasent tablet game..

Current Status:

Target: Milestone 1
My major goal for the first milestone will be to get font output on screen, maybe have a sprite class outputting to the screen just some diagnostic nonsense

Updated: 10/01/2013

• Created the Visual C++ 2012 Project
• Written the GLFW + OpenGL init class
• Written some basic math functions to calc hypotenuse, draw circles, calculate vector <-> cartesian conversions etc
• Written the timer tick class, allows for multiple ticks at different rates
• Created basic quads for simple output, caching them in display lists
• Written some basic input handler code for keyboard and mouse
• Written the (first pass of a) class that will hold all my entity information
• Created Human & Zombie entities and started adding some basic behaviour to their logic functions
• created basic collision detection based on bounding circles

** GitHub Repo for the Source Code

[RabidFrog]

I should add it'll be 2D, using quads as sprites.

[Mango Man]

Something like Atom Zombie Smasher?

[RabidFrog]

Something like Atom Zombie Smasher?

Thats a little zoomed out and a lot more generalised, mine is more up close and plays like a tower defense game with units that you can move around that have specific roles.

[Mango Man]

Ooh that's cool. Keep me posted! :D

[RabidFrog]

I'm learning, so i don't know the value of this, but would anyone be interested in like an SVN repository of my code as i work on it?

Just an idea

[RabidFrog]

Started working on the font stuff, this is my first crack at it and i know it wont be perfect, but it'll allow me to output diagnostic info directly to the screen and will aid continued development.

I fully envisage revisiting this nearer the end and doing a better job of it

Here is an image of the font i'm using, and the effect i'm applying to it;

http://imagebin.org/207438

It's only meant to be clear and easy to read, i'll do something more arty later

[peous]

Hi,
You could use this kind of software
http://www.ironstarmedia.co.uk/2010/01/free-game-dev-utility-fancy-bitmap-font-generator/
http://www.codehead.co.uk/cbfg/

[RabidFrog]

Hi,
You could use this kind of software
http://www.ironstarmedia.co.uk/2010/01/free-game-dev-utility-fancy-bitmap-font-generator/
http://www.codehead.co.uk/cbfg/

Awesome, Going to have a look at CBFG when i get home tonight!   Looks like it could be what i need..

[RabidFrog]

Hi,
You could use this kind of software
http://www.ironstarmedia.co.uk/2010/01/free-game-dev-utility-fancy-bitmap-font-generator/
http://www.codehead.co.uk/cbfg/

Awesome, Going to have a look at CBFG when i get home tonight!   Looks like it could be what i need..

Decided to roll with my own font solution, got a good idea whats needed, just implementing it now

[RabidFrog]

Just Added - GitHub Repo for the Source Code (bear in mind i'm no pro (and i'm learning)

[RabidFrog]

Farmed out my texture loading and quad drawing to member functions of my engine class, with 6 lines of code per letter, i can now output to the screen.

Next step is to build the font class itself and get it to run through a string.  Chose a monospace font to start with, to keep it easy (consolas)

 

Code:

// The following is on a per-entity basis;
glLoadIdentity(); // Reset the matrix
glTranslatef(250, 250, 0); // Set the x,y,z co-ords
glScale(64,64,0); // Set the size on x,y,z (set to texture size as we draw the quad as a single pixel and this is a multiplier)
glRotatef(0, 0, 0, 0); // Specify rotation on x,y,z

glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, textures[0]->data); // Set the texture to use

engine->drawQuad();  // This is ripe for a display list entry as it never changes

The rest is updated on the github

[RabidFrog]

Decided i'm going to spend a little time learning OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects instead of using Immediate Mode..

Also got a real hankering for making the GFX all ZX Spectrum like (same palette and resolution, including attribute clash!)

But that might just be misty-eyed nostalgia triggered by the humble speccy's 30th birthday 

[RabidFrog]

Decided i'm going to spend a little time learning OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects instead of using Immediate Mode..

Also got a real hankering for making the GFX all ZX Spectrum like (same palette and resolution, including attribute clash!)

But that might just be misty-eyed nostalgia triggered by the humble speccy's 30th birthday 

Interesting factoid:  If you want to use Vertex Buffer Objects with SDL 1.2, you can't.  Well, you can, but you need to link in some extra libs, the easiest is GLee and the supplied libs don't work with VC++ 2010.  Luckily they allow you to include the GLee source directly in your project, so problem solved!

Now if only i could find a VBO example that works (and is less than 10 pages of code  )

[RabidFrog]

Also, trying to figure out why i can't get a 3.2 context up and running is annoying the hell out of me..

Ok, so rather embarrasingly it turns out my work pc has a HD 2000 IGP and so is limited to OpenGL 3.1 max, i'd been shooting high, so i could make sure i wasn't learning redundant code, but it seems 3.1 is plenty high enough anyway, with the bonus of being availible to a wider audience to boot.

So i have switched from SDL + OpenGL 1.2 to GLEW+GLFW + OpenGL 3.1

I have an OpenGL window running, i just need to get some rendering code in place.  Had a full on attack of RL recently, so no code in weeks, but i've got a 2 week holiday next week, fingers crossed i can knock out a chunk, maybe get some sprites flying around