DAY 6…
I’ve been thinking… I’m gonna do a lot of probably unnecessary coding now for file communication, especially with the few ideas I have in mind. It’s still gonna be a progress, so I won’t say it’s a bad thing, but it definitely isn’t the basic game mechanics I wanted to focus on.
Oh well. As soon as I finish with those .ini files stuff I can move towards the cards setup and stars dealing with the really comes stuff…
Have to figure out the hierarchy setup I want to do for the cards. I don’t really know how to do that. I have 2 kinds of cards - people and buildings. And initial buildings should unlock other buildings and people will be trained into warriors and priests and what not if you have the proper buildings constructed…
That is going the be a huge chain of if statements that will be pain to program. I really have to figure out a simpler way to deal with that…
OK, let’s see if this makes sense to anyone…
The UI would be 2 buttons for 2 decks - buildings deck and people deck.
When you click the building deck you see all your available buildings. Every Click of the mouse the UI will check what is build and will only show the currently unlocked cards. Same with the people. When you open the deck, the UI will check and display only the unlocked and trained people you have.
That way I won’t have to program constant if statements in a bunch of different objects. It’s a mouse click on a button and the button itself will do the job.
I was thinking about doing arrays and sorting and indexing and what not, but I think this will be the best option. Its two objects, running one script each every time you click on one of them.
Have you thought about storing the current state in some kind of local sqlite or other file based database? This would allow you to not have to calculate certain things all over, plus would natively allow grouping, sorting and such through SQL Queries.
Maybe im completely off though.
Plus you wouldn’t have to define every single card as an Object or such. You could just have a “Card” Object and all the possible cards stored in the DB.
And you could have “easy” history of all that happend. Allowing for things like easier undo options and maybe even replays without having to change how you store data, or having to come up with history Objects or Log files.
You are not million miles away. There are data structures built in, that allow Sorting and grouping and stuff like that. The issue is I’m not entirely comfortable using them.
I already have a database with all the cards and every instance calls to the database to fetch the data I need for the specific card. Basically I have 1 object Tile, that can be everything and one object Card, that can be everything.
I also have one tile controller and one card controller that just tell each tile what it is. Technical speaking it gives it an index and the object fetches it’s own data from the external file.
Hmmmm…
I don’t think that’s possible. Not without any extra log or storage files… Maybe not external files, but I still need to record events and the time they have happened…
DAY … whatever…
I’m struggling with the .ini files… I’ll wrestle them and may switch to txt files, but for now I’ll fight the .ini files…
I confused myself 
I did some work on the project, then I checked a couple objects in there and I have done the same executions in different objects and I’m getting confused as to what to do now
OK, I will fight my own stupidity now and see what will happen… Hopefully by the end of the week I may have some workable algorithm for the entire map system and stuff…
It worked, god damn it 
Ignore the cards at the bottom, they are here for me to help me visualize roughly stuff… But the mountains in the back and the forests in front of them are what I set in the ini file…
OK, now - fine tuning…
DAY … another one …
So I’ve been thinking. I’m almost at the point where I need to start doing the cards. So I have a choice to make.
- Do all the data in the game itself, so the player never have a chance to interact with it.
- Do external files, like the map, so it’s all clearly visible and easy to edit and stuff.
2 is easier, because all I need to do is use notepad, type directly and be done with it. No need to faff about with the code and software and what not…
1 is more idiot proof, cause the player can’t just go and edit the properties of the cards…
But once I commit to one it’s a pain to switch to the other, so I kinda need to make the choice now before I start coding…
I noticed… Actually I have noticed it before, but now it’s getting to the point where I need to fix it…
print screen doesn’t capture the cursor, but it’s pointing right between those 4 tiles up there with the circles and the idea is, that only one tile have to be highlighted. But the perspective scale only changes the visual sprite, not the collision mask and that’s an issue for me, that I will have to address. I want to be able to drop a building on one tile, not all 4 tiles at the same time.
I may have to ditch collision and just calculate where my mouse is and what tile am I pointing at…
I fixed it…
Yup, works fairly fine now…
I added some extra data displayed.
Anyways, I think I’m done with the basic map extras…
DAY another one…
Today have been super lost day. I learned how I can use external images as sprites ingame, which is good for moding potential, but in general no progress today. Still trying to figure out all the details before I start programming the cards setup and mechanics and everything. So it’s mostly just thinking, considerations, more thinking, and so on…
I must start programming soon enough. We shall see. I’m still reconsidering the deck aspect.
Shall I group the cards as buildings and people, should I mix it up and split it as prosperity, war, religion and culture, shall I just give the entire deck no splitting… I don’t know. I’m still thinking about it.
Then there are the visual queues, but I can’t even think about those before I have any graphics to speak of… Maybe I will just use colors for visual queue placeholders…
OK, map making is going to be fairly easy to program. I was thinking about card creation, but then I encountered a few issues…
- using external images as sprites is possible, but very resource intensive, so it’s not really worth doing.
- allowing people to create their own cards will completely destroy any balance I make, and that’s not an issue really. The real issue is:
- programing card behavior from plain text is complete pain in the ass. I have to create an entire programing language to allow freadom for the moders to do whatever they want or limit them to the point moding will be completely useless…
I think I will stick to map editor and not really a card editor as an idea…
Right, so… slow update because slow progress…
I struggled with the card system for a while. I asked for an advice here and there, changed a couple things, now I’m slowly chugging along with the cards system. The issue here is, I basically must do 3 things at once - the cards system, the decks system, the cards and land tiles interaction, the card unlocks, etc etc… All this have to be programed at the same time. I can’t really test any of those without having the others, so I am making very slow progress in my free time to try and balance the progress in all those sections…
My goal is, with the shit daily job I have, by the end of the month, I want to have the very basic mechanics done - having the cards interact with the land, building stuff, unlocking new cards and training peasants into warriors or whatever.
So now I code… A lot…
I found a bug that is … ironically … bugging me.
I will try and fix it in the simplest way possible by changing some sprites and dimensions and stuff and hopefully that will work out, cause otherwise I will have to rework part of the map system and that will be horrible.
The plan is by the end of the month to have all the very basic systems incorporated and working. We are talking alpha level working - you can do stuff, things Interact with other things, but no real gameplay exist yet.
Ah, also, I have talked with a friend, he agreed to make a small website whenever I reach some decent level of completion and need some publicity.
So there’s that as well…
Bug - fixed…
Now I need to finally do that card system I’m delaying constantly…
Once that is done I have to start work on the UI and damn, that would be a bastard to do…
I’ve been thinking about the story of the game, but I am trying to suppress those thoughts. I’ve been also asking myself, how does updates on Steam, GoG etc works… Do I need to do anything special in the code, or does the storefront automates it to the point it always pushes the newest version automatically and I don’t have to do anything…
Yeah, by the end of the week I should have working card play system…
I may have reached a point where I have to rework the basis of what I’m doing.
Its not working. The ideas I had and the code I wrote is most definitely not working. It’s not wrong, the code, but I hit some limitations of game maker studio, that I can navigate through, but I may need to rework everything I have.
It shouldn’t take long, since I know where I made mistakes and how to fix them…
I asked in the game maker forums for an advice, so if possible not to lose all progress, but I rather do lose all progress if that means it will be easier to work from now on.
They gave me a super simple command that actually will help me massively with the game in general.
So I may not have to rework everything, although I am still considering it…
Restarted the development.
I can get to where I was by the end of the week since I’m simplifying everything so it’s not such a mess…
From now on every question I ask myself should get the simplest solution possible. That should speed the process. The more simple the base is, easier it will be to pile up features on top of it.
I don’t know what else to say.
I have been thinking of some features and stuff, but I want to fix the basics first…
I know you are needing to spend a bit of time sourcing a new job, so don;t have loads to spare, but do you use Unreal engine, did you see the humble bundle?