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Author Topic: Post 2012 Holiday Wrap Up...  (Read 17127 times)
pspeed
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« on: January 02, 2013, 01:13:56 PM »

So, as many of you know, I spent the majority of my 2012 holiday vacation heads-down working on Mythruna.

The visible results are that there is a shiny new menu system.  That doesn't seem like much that got accomplished in 10 days so I thought some more explanation about the internals was worth posting.

When I first wrote the main Mythruna engine almost two years ago, it was in a frantic two weeks of coding.  Some of those original structures live even today after four or five refactorings.  However, the age of some parts of the engine clearly starts to show.  New features or subsystems were added elsewhere and older code was not converted to use them, etc..  It is almost impossible for a two year old project not to accumulate this sort of stuff.

The physics and menuing system were both opportunities to freshen things up a bit.  The physics system by its nature replaces some of the cruftiest systems.  The camera control and large parts of the networking layer get whole-sale pulled out.  As far as the menuing system goes, the framework I wrote to do user interfaces for that can be used for so many of the existing UIs... basically all of them.  This will clean them up and make them more standard.

Rather than trying to retrofit all of this into an existing working engine, I chose to create a new project and then copy the stuff over to it.  Some stuff (like the entity system) that is pretty solid gets copied over directly.  Other things like networking, sound management, camera control, etc. get moved in pieces and cleaned up or just completely replaced with something new based on lessons learned and places I know I need to go.  (Sound management being a good example of something that was going to fall over at some point.)

This also gave me a chance to start implementing the real plug-in framework.  Any engine component I copy over now fits into this framework.  This simplifies a lot of the code and makes it more modular/replaceable.  (This also makes it easier for licensing total conversions down the road.)  Many things I added later that should have replaced existing systems but didn't.  The object actions were kind of a mish-mash of new scripting goodness and some old more hard-coded entity commands.

All of these things I get to readdress.  I've written more design notes in the past two weeks than I had in the past 6 months, I think.

So, when you see a shiny new menuing system and a new starting dialog, it's important to remember that these things are also show-casing the plugin framework, new streamlined scripting layer, UI framework, etc..  I'm actually excited enough about the possibilities that it's hard not to waste time daydreaming about it. Smiley

That being said, there is still a lot of work ahead to finish.

The other positive thing is that I plan to leave some things completely by the way side.  The current dichotomy of "build mode" and "game mode" will hopefully disappear.  What constitutes "build mode" now will become some new undroppable inventory items (like a build wand) in what is now "game mode".  The ability to place and move property may become a skill, etc..  All of these things will still be added by default to all characters on my server but it makes it more flexible for me to play with the real game mechanics.  I may also get around to adding resource tracking (still with unlimited usage on my build server but it would be nice to track anyway) and things of that sort.

It's kind of exciting because I'll be forced to build some features that will pay dividends later.  I mean, we are still no closer to AI but everything else gets closer... some so close I can taste it.


My current really aggressive schedule is to try to get the conversion done and releasable by mid February.  This will be the two year anniversary of my original Mythruna release.  It's kind of special so I'm going to try really hard to make it.  If the slow conversion takes too long then I may just shoe-horn in some systems into the new plugin framework and replace them with better ones later.  But I'm going to try to "hold the line" as long as possible.

Something for the social networking posts to pick up as a thumbnail... Smiley
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FutureB
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« Reply #1 on: January 02, 2013, 01:44:02 PM »

sounds good paul [: im sure all of us cant wait to see it for ourselfs when we open up mythruna, one question will there still be the same starting screen with the display settings or will that also be changed Tongue
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pspeed
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« Reply #2 on: January 02, 2013, 01:51:27 PM »

sounds good paul [: im sure all of us cant wait to see it for ourselfs when we open up mythruna, one question will there still be the same starting screen with the display settings or will that also be changed Tongue

That's already incorporated into the in-game menus and it remembers your settings from one run to the next.  It picks a decent default windowed setting to start with if no previous settings exist.

Instead of the current display settings popup there will be the login popup that I already showed.  I will add a button to that dialog to reset graphics to defaults "just in case".
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Ghelmaron
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« Reply #3 on: January 02, 2013, 08:28:57 PM »

Thank you for the status update, Paul. I hope things are moving along smoothly.  Smiley
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Moonkey
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« Reply #4 on: January 02, 2013, 08:40:55 PM »

Haha, I see that picture of the world generation is different from last time.
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« Reply #5 on: January 02, 2013, 09:36:21 PM »

Haha, I see that picture of the world generation is different from last time.

Yeah, that temporary UI is basically complete.  I just need to hook up the "preview" and "create" buttons to actually do something.
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Michael
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« Reply #6 on: January 03, 2013, 02:22:53 PM »

Haha, I see that picture of the world generation is different from last time.

Yeah, that temporary UI is basically complete.  I just need to hook up the "preview" and "create" buttons to actually do something.

And that's it o.O!

Does the seed creation work for Strings too? isn't there a method like .toInt() 'cause i know there is one that is turning an integer (or any other number) to a string with .toString()
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pspeed
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« Reply #7 on: January 03, 2013, 02:53:05 PM »

That's it for that particular menu.  There is still a ton more stuff to do.

The preview and create buttons aren't even enabled unless the seed is a number.
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belgariad87
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« Reply #8 on: January 03, 2013, 04:28:56 PM »

always glad to hear an update  Smiley keep holdin the line sarge!
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« Reply #9 on: January 03, 2013, 04:38:36 PM »

After putting the fractal plugin stuff in place (uncalled but there), I decided to play with the rings a little.  I got them rotating and it looks really cool... I can't wait to show you guys.

I will end up being able to use them for the world preview after all.  I was just going to leave the static image back there for show and put the map on a parchment or something.  I'm kind of excited about it.
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belgariad87
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« Reply #10 on: January 03, 2013, 07:32:11 PM »

After putting the fractal plugin stuff in place (uncalled but there), I decided to play with the rings a little.  I got them rotating and it looks really cool... I can't wait to show you guys.

I will end up being able to use them for the world preview after all.  I was just going to leave the static image back there for show and put the map on a parchment or something.  I'm kind of excited about it.
Paul, i'd be scared if you weren't excited about it  Wink
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Michael
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« Reply #11 on: January 03, 2013, 08:27:56 PM »

After putting the fractal plugin stuff in place (uncalled but there), I decided to play with the rings a little.  I got them rotating and it looks really cool... I can't wait to show you guys.

I will end up being able to use them for the world preview after all.  I was just going to leave the static image back there for show and put the map on a parchment or something.  I'm kind of excited about it.
Paul, i'd be scared if you weren't excited about it  Wink
I'm scared either way Undecided
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Moonkey
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« Reply #12 on: January 03, 2013, 08:51:09 PM »

After putting the fractal plugin stuff in place (uncalled but there), I decided to play with the rings a little.  I got them rotating and it looks really cool... I can't wait to show you guys.

I will end up being able to use them for the world preview after all.  I was just going to leave the static image back there for show and put the map on a parchment or something.  I'm kind of excited about it.
Paul, i'd be scared if you weren't excited about it  Wink
I'm scared either way Undecided
Hahaha, Unn made a funny.

Edit: 1000 posts record is almost in my grasp.
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Michael
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« Reply #13 on: January 03, 2013, 09:02:33 PM »

After putting the fractal plugin stuff in place (uncalled but there), I decided to play with the rings a little.  I got them rotating and it looks really cool... I can't wait to show you guys.

I will end up being able to use them for the world preview after all.  I was just going to leave the static image back there for show and put the map on a parchment or something.  I'm kind of excited about it.
Paul, i'd be scared if you weren't excited about it  Wink
I'm scared either way Undecided
Hahaha, Unn made a funny.

Edit: 1000 posts record is almost in my grasp.
D:< no!!!
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pspeed
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« Reply #14 on: January 03, 2013, 09:52:32 PM »

After putting the fractal plugin stuff in place (uncalled but there), I decided to play with the rings a little.  I got them rotating and it looks really cool... I can't wait to show you guys.

I will end up being able to use them for the world preview after all.  I was just going to leave the static image back there for show and put the map on a parchment or something.  I'm kind of excited about it.
Paul, i'd be scared if you weren't excited about it  Wink
I'm scared either way Undecided
Hahaha, Unn made a funny.

Edit: 1000 posts record is almost in my grasp.

And the Mythruna forums are nearly to 10,000 posts.  o_0
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