tisdag 30 oktober 2007

Object Communication

Here's a simplified scheme of what inter-object communication might look like...remember these are just suggestions, if you can think of another option using the things in the image, that function will probably exist in reality.

Component Craze

'noon,
Today I finished the basic structure of the object management system by constructing the basic virtual functions of a component, as well as a small messaging system. I've played around a bit with adding components to objects and it feels comfortable this far. Yet, nothing concrete is finished but I think I'll begin implementing the system into the existing engine soon (until now the component system has been side project). This will mean some major reconstructions, but as there aren't many existing types of game objects, the time spent won't be huge. As always: no pictures - no fun...but hang on tight. (I'll get a sketch of the object system up soon)

måndag 29 oktober 2007

Kneedeep

Hi,
Sorry for the last months absence. As expected, the first semester at the university ate most of our time and I can honestly state that we haven't made much progress in October. As of last friday some of our courses ended and new started today. For me, this means 3 courses instead of 4 and hopefully more time to work on the Odd Engine. Today I started a slight restruction-process to be able to implement a new component-based object management system. In short, this means that instead of hard-coding objects like "Car" or "Enemy", you code the components needed to build these objects. Then you define the objects (by their components) in scripts or databases. This is a more general, and reusable, approach to object management. This means a bit more work for now, but it will hopefully pay off in the end. As you might suspect, this is a result insufficient planning of the engine, something that I'll gladly admit as this is part of our learning process. So basically I want to stress the importance of planning, sketching and structuring, for anyone that might be in the same situation as us. I hope to report soon again.
Ciao