Posts Tagged ‘ Asset Manager ’

One down Ninety nine to go…

This weekend I went and saw some films, so again, I didn’t get much done.

But, I did finish the Sprite sheet Compiler v1.00. This is the first developer only utility going forward to the full Game developer suite for SystemX this one builds the sprite sheet and compiles it for the game engine to load.

**REMEMBER** This is a developer only tool, it will only work if you have MSBuild and XNA developer suite installed. **REMEMBER**

The next thing I want to work on is the workspace compiler this is the thing that defines a project for the game engine, where the content directory is, want are the sprite sheets, fonts, menus, and the start-up script.

There is still so much to do before I can go public, as yet I still don’t have anything worth a screen shot, and my progress is still slow, mostly from only working no this project Friday, Sunday and Monday night. my plan for working on one small project at a time seems to be holding for now at least. I’m coming up on one month in the new blog space and I’ve managed to keep to my target rate of one good sized post a week, go me!

2008
09/28
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Dave
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Game Development
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Big Ideas small progress

This weekends development was hampered by two things, 1. My lack of understanding of MSBuild 2. going out for most of Sunday.

After I listened to Shawn and Eli talk about the content pipeline I realised I was gong to spend far too much time faffing with file loaders and stuff when I could just use an Automated MSBuild to compile the content that I could then load into the Workspace object as needed.

I was using the “Win-Forms Content Loading Sample” as a basis for my experiments and if I use the standard importers and processors everything is fine but there are custom object that I want converted and for that I need to have Content Pipeline Extension Libraries to achieve the desired results, like combining the alpha channel mask with the sprite data, building the sprites into a single sheet, storing the custom object data. I just can’t figure out how to add them to the build so that they are used, like in VS, I know it can be done I just can’t see how :-( , I sent an email to Shawn to ask for pointers and to see if he was going to cover such things in his blog but I doubt he’ll reply.

I also took time out to see an old friend so lost time on development, oops, but worth it.

2008
09/14
POSTED BY
Dave
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Game Development
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I’m still alive, even if I don’t feel like it…

Well I have plague(read cold) again and as such have taken the day off work, then I found an email from Pyro pointing out that it’ll be a month since my last update. So I’m typing this wrapped in a blanket, sweating and surrounded by soggy tissues just so you get a nice mental image.

In the last month I have been working at my new job in Bristol and the commute time is rather long. I’m out of the house by 6:40am and home by 7:45pm and asleep by 10:00pm to be up again at 6:00am. A small side effect of this is that I don’t get to work on my projects until the weekend where I have to fit them in around spending time with family.

I have managed to get a fair bit of the MapEd program done and sorted out a couple of things I didn’t understand about C#, like I can now data-bind arrays of custom classes to windows form controls like TextBoxes and I’m getting better at writing my own custom Controls.

Over on the sidebar menu you notice I’ve changed the “Dodge” and “Bert Higgins:Redux” links to a “Projects” link under here you’ll find the old pages and a new one for MapEd.

When I stop hacking my lungs up I’ll try and do more regular posts.

2008
07/17
POSTED BY
Dave
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The subtle art of code conversion.

Well last night I spent a little time working on the MAP file loader for the Asset Manager program, and I have this to say about Paul’s code, YOU’RE A GIT!! Who in their right mind writes their own “getword” method that swaps the bytes around?

Most normal people would use something like:-
Return = (short)(getc(file) << 8) + getc(file)
NOT:-
Value1 = getc(file);
Value2 = getc(file);
Return (short)(Value1 + (Value2 << 8)
WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!!!

Added to that is the fact that the LRE compression for the file is just a little odd rather than keeping the whole logic in the one method it’s spread over three methods with a global short for the value you just got, but I think I’ve got most of it sorted.

2007
11/29
POSTED BY
Dave
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Game Development
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So little time, so many components..

I’ve finished work at Source Software Ltd now and I’m starting at the new place on Wednesday, so with my four day weekend I’m spending my time split between tidying up some more boxes, Project Redux, HM Tax & customs, spending time with Crispy.

Yesterday and today I did some work on custom components for the Asset Manager for Bert mostly sprite selectors for editing the data object in the game. Tonight I’m going to Newcastle with Crispy, shes working, that means we’ll be back sometime early Tuesday morning and then I have to go to the Tax office Tuesday afternoon to sort out my self assessment stuff from about three years ago.

I’m hoping to have a screeny by next weekend.

2007
11/18
POSTED BY
Dave
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