Quark Robot dev blog

Week #7 update

Quark Robot -

What I've done this week##

Overall, quite a lot was done. Nothing major (apart from AI) was done to the core code-base, but I'm still happy with what we've achieved. The game is slowly coming together!

In case anyone had ever thought "I wonder what kind of source control they use?", the answer is none. I thought about using Visual Studio Online but, to be honest, was a little overwhelmed with it. I'm sure it isn't too hard to use (I thought Microsoft Azure was extremely perplexing until I suddenly got the hang of it) but I don't really have the time. GitHub is also not my forte.

What we do is simple;

  • we both start with the same copy of code
  • he does his thing and I do mine to that same copy
  • when he has finished what he is doing, I email him my copy
  • he incorporates his changes into mine and emails it back

Editor

  • Nothing - YAY!

Game

  • fixed flaw that allowed heroes to get themselves out of a snare trap by pressing down if the snare was set up on top of a ladder
  • fixed some quirks with monks falling into blasted holes;
  • monk would fall off a ladder adjacent to hole instead of stepping to the hole and then falling in like the original
  • monk would occasionally get out of a hole and be standing on the opposite side
  • fixed issue that caused a player to rapid cross ladders when coming off a ladder and standing on top of another
  • fixed issue that caused a monk to fall through a blasted hole on some occasions
  • improved the original big bomb explosion: this will be covered in the next "Same, but different post"
  • incorporated AI and path-finding into the project. It is by no means complete or accurate at this stage (monks don't leap off ladders like that) but it is a huge step forward and is a morale booster seeing the game coming along more towards completion.
  • fixed issue that caused the monk to stand about doing nothing after he died (needed to tell the lazy bastard to follow his path)
  • added support for monks to stalk the hero nearest to them
*Here we have a Monk looking for a spot of lunch*

Gareth is currently working on is improving the night-time mode for two-player puzzles. You may have noticed that there isn't actually a darkness mode for two-players which is a little bit of a shame really. Here is a mock-up in MS Paint.
More detail of this will be covered in the next "Same, but different post".


Two-player darkness mode mock-up

General

  • read up on MonoGame and cross-platform support
  • Windows and Linux appear to be straight-foward, OSX on the other hand I've no idea about yet
  • fixed quirk that caused the background to show when skipping the intro logos
  • checked all the cut-scenes to make sure they are correct
  • filled the background around the dark mask for the Dark World cut-scene
  • fixed audio quirk for a frame repeat
  • fixed issue that caused ALT+TAB to not toggle full-screen on some occasions
  • fixed issue when taking a screenshot that sometimes caused the entire screen to be captured and not just the game window
  • fixed issue that caused some message boxes to not show
  • Removed the Un4seen Bass audio engine - there were just too many issues;
  • could not overcome the issue that caused Bass to hang for 10 seconds when trying to go full-screen
  • the cheap workaround to stop Bass destroying some audio handles for no reason
  • the cost of €950 which is currently about $1,380 Australian

Bass sound effect play-back was replaced with the standard XNA SoundEffect and playing music with DynamicSoundEffectInstance courtesy of Nick Gravelyn's wrapper that uses NVorbis to decode OGG audio files and DynamicSoundEffectInstance to add streaming support.

A small mod to BufferedReadStream.cs was needed to support streaming from the Presage resource files where all the original music calls home.

What I'll probably do next week

  • progress with the AI
  • monks colliding with other monks (didn't get around to it last week)
  • whittle away some of my TODO list