Hello everyone!
Can you believe the first ten days of April are already behind us? I have been going through a bit of a hectic time in recent months, moving to a new city and changing jobs, which has limited my free time.
But onto the exciting stuff! I’m currently optimizing my editor, and it’s proving invaluable for refining some demos. This project is quite ambitious – I’m tackling the recreation of 3 boss battles from a classic PlayStation 1 title! Some of the player mechanics and boss AI are really cool, and I can’t wait to show you.
As always, polishing the visuals and editing videos takes a bit of time. In the meantime, here are some screenshots showcasing the Editor’s new look. I’ve moved all the windows outside of the jME scene frame, which has really improved my workspace.
If the stills aren’t enough and you want to see it in action, my previous YouTube video has you covered!
Stay tuned for more!
PS: In any case, the SDK remains an excellent tool for static, non-real-time scenes. I encourage everyone to use it. However, I await the release of the latest version with @tonihele’s fix to run custom AppStates in the editor [see Issue 640]
Project Explorer, EditorTabsExplorer and PropertyInspector Sections
Wow @capdevon , your tools always looks so good and encouraging.
I am super impressed.
Hope you found your feet with the new Job and home.
I cannot believe it is already April, time really goes by so fast.
From my side, I finally settled to make my first Steam game and has just started with the planning and prototyping. I really want to get a playable demo out to people to play the soonest I can.
I looked at moving to Unity and then just didn’t feel at home there, so I decided to not go that route.
I really like developing in java and just want to prove a point to the gaming industry, if you know what I mean.
Anyways, like to see everyone’s cool projects. I will hopefully share some progress soon.
Hi @ndebruyn
Thanks for the kind words about my tools, I really appreciate it!
Good to hear from you and to know that you are doing well. Yes, the new job and house have settled in nicely! Seems like only yesterday it was January. Time really does fly by!
It is great that you are sticking with Java! I have no plans to change either. The reason is also professional, since I work in IT and programming in Java is part of my job. I look forward to seeing your progress when you are ready to share it!
The water block is a temporary visualization of joinPoint which defines where and how the rooms can connect to each other. They carry metadata about type (eg. DOOR, EMPTY_BLOCK).
as of now:
a) the prefabs are parsed from files openly available to the users (by default a prefab is assumed to be have AxisAlignedRotation.FACE_NORTH_PLUS_Z_AXIS)
b) each prefab is then rotated to AxisAlignedRotation.FACE_EAST/SOUTH/WEST and stored (leetcode matrix rotation anyone? )
Map generation has 3 stages (as of now almost entirely non functional as im experimenting)
a) PreGeneration - setup of original environment (currently supported algorithms are BSP, CELLULAR_AUTOMATA
b) PrefabPlacement - skippable (if allowedPrefabs is empty), with additional rules (though i havent really explored additional rules not contained within the prefab metadata itself)
c) PostGeneration - postprocessing of the map, for now entirely empty (i’d like to use it to postprocess the map + entity data according to gamemode rules)
3 prefabs (+ starting room that is hardcoded in the middle of the map)
There are still some issues, but it comes along nicely, and it will fit perfectly when i develop a map editor in the far future
edit:
additional progress to not spam:
a) room chances during generation are now weighted
b) added a lookahead when placing a room (repeating recursively up to lookaheadDepth):
when a room “A” placement is valid (can be placed), “consider” it placed
see if additional room “B” can be placed after. If no, then re-generate “A” at different joinPoint or with a different prefab altogether
this essentially eliminates issues such as “spawn 3 straight corridors to the north - congrats, your map is a straight line because no room can be attached at the very border of the map”
c) added entity data to prefabs (“this prefab always contains a mob/decoration/trap in this place”)
nice to see your videos. just do some simple things. make it more playable and use good sounds. also try to make camera rotation in car driving good. following the car inside building or parking nicely. keep it up !!
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