http://www.bezzy.net/Downloads/[email protected]Getting there, bit by bit. To be honest, I feel a bit like I want to move on. I've almost tackled all the important issues with this prototype, which was the *point* of the prototype. Developing it further... I think I'll leave that until I have something worth developing it for.
Outstanding problems:
*Still have deformation problems. I need an elegant way to "leave" an arc, such that the siblings of the arc you just left aren't either crunched up tiny, or really huge.
*If I can fix that, I can fix the "auto exit arc" problems (sometimes you get ejected INTO an equally big sibling arc and just bounce back and forth between them).
*Still need to get on-the-fly loading/culling of arcs. This will enable recursive stuff like the original Dasher. This is one thing I aim to get working before I put this prototype to rest and move on to other stuff. It's a bit shifty, though, because it involves freeing up render texture memory on the fly, and that can give a fair bit of a frame rate drop if not handled nicely.
*NOT going to concern myself too much with text readability issues or visual niceness at this point. This is more about getting the fundamental issues sorted (the deformation and the recursion). If I use it for something more final, it'll go in that.
*May add sounds for entering/exiting, just so I can learn how that's done in XNA. Will also add a pitch-shift variable to the XML so that you can set up hierarchies with different notes in. yee haw. Hotdogdiddlydang!