ja_koniga

So, we have all been on holidays since the last update. That ends soon, and progress will be made with the prototype.

I have planned out most of my data structures and processes for the demo, and should be able to code it fairly quickly...At least that is the hope. One week of solid coding should have me about 80% done with the first prototype. If I make the structure expandable enough, I will be able to easily modulate and extend it for further iterations. 

 Stay tuned :)

Zac

Well, my laptop kicked the bucket spectacularly, getting itself stuck in a bootloop from which I couldn't break it. The idea then came to be that I would format the thing and install Windows 7. This has happened, and I am completely without my software. I was in charge of the prototype coding, and dbpro is GONE. I will be installing the demo off the website, and getting it all going that way. This will mean a rewrite of what I had done, but this is a good thing. I can now set up my data types with a little more purpose.

To do -

Light beam bounces - Trev has helped with the two stages of this so far. 

Reflective surfaces - would be cool for them to have different properties

Movement - self explained

Game states - make the demo finishable!

 SO I will try to get that started!!

Zac 

- FIXED - RSS is now WORKING. It updates every 12 hours.

My attempts at hacking together an RSS feed have died miserably, so it isn't working. Don't JUDGE ME!

I will be rectifying this.

Zac

I am currently trying to bash out a very simple prototype for LGP, and as I do so, I am running into a few problems. These generally spring from my ineptitude in the area of programming, but I do know what I want, and how to get there...it's just difficult :)

The hurdle I am now facing is the lovely task of finding the x and y position of the intersection point on two lines. Basically, I need the ray of light to be bouncing off faces, with the character controlling the position and rotation of the beam. I thought that it wouldn't be too hard at first, and it isn't in theory, but the line intersection code is, as I remember from similar attempts previously, kind of difficult to get your head around, especially after a rowdy night and one too many shots of brandy (side note - I am bad at guessing if the next card will be higher or lower). I have found suitable algorithms, and a doc or two on the formula needed, so hopefully the implementation won't be too long away. I am confident of handling the reflection, falloff, and other such things, as they will essentially be variables doing their thing. This is a simple screenie of what I have so far. It's very basic. Note the cube being the character, the line being the beam of light, and the sphere on the end is the width of the beam. It can be changed with the mouse wheel.

Also, I jumped into Blender 2.49 and, using the game engine for the first time, attempted to make a bit of a prototype for us to geeze at. It came out really nicely! I hadn't used the game engine for anything previously, and I am very impressed at the power and ease of use. I haven't got my head all the way around it yet, but enough to make a rather spiffy looking thing with movement and the such. The light on the end of the arm casts shadows, and is a rigid body joint, so it has full physics attached to it. Pretty fun to mess around with! The arm rotates too.

I am hoping to have a little more progress to report on this in the near future.

Stay tuned!

Zac