Proto Cog Culture » Developing

Actionscripting 3 – Day… I don’t know

Administrator — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:19:13 +0000

A last year I created games that I solely developed while on the train going to and from work. I should say I started to develop, because I could only work on it when I had the time. Since then my workload exploded in to a mess of content management systems and repair work for other studios. That left me with little time on the train to think about side and personal projects. And then my office moved, shortening my commute to the point where I didn’t have time to even open my laptop (let alone have space on the more crowded train) to continue my same development methods…

Combat, was the game that I last worked on. I was working on a 16 player version(all local with USB controllers) for an art piece I wanted to display on my 30th birthday. But my 30th didn’t turn out anywhere near as cool as I wanted it to, leaving me with an incomplete project and a broken heart…

So, here we are in 2010 I decided to not only pick this project back up and finish it. I wanted to start over again and build the entire thing in Actionscript 3 with networking. I CAN actually make the USB gamepads work and do things locally, but I’d rather build something I can easily carry around, than focus on a proprietary system I have thought out. I’ll save that for later. For the past week and a half I’ve been rapidly cramming and trying to relearn the “proper” way to do games in Flash without picking up another book. It’s been quite difficult for me but I’m managing.

The problem I was having over the weekend was getting my now rebuilt G4 to properly run the server software, but I believe it’s working because I have the send and receive commands working. Now I’m shifting my focus on making sure that all of the players/tanks react when the commands are received.

Monday’s update.

Administrator — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:11:05 +0000

Gross. I hit a major major snag and I’m trying to figure out what to do about it. For the past few weeks I’ve been trying to see if I can buy an older version of 3D Studio Max to no avail. To make matters worse, I tried installing the latest demo on a rendering machine I’m borrowing(until I get my good machine up and running) and it says I don’t have the right kind of processor. It looks like I’m going to have to move to different modeling software to do all of my tests after all.

As far as the engine I’ve been working on goes. I installed some additional code to Torque Game Engine Advance(version 1.8.1) to allow me to use a better camera. After looking at what a bunch of other people have been doing, I feel pretty good about what I can and maybe can’t do with Dig. I have a lot more experimenting to do before I have something solid to show. And I also need a 100% functional test machine… and not something running Windows 7 Beta/RC1.

The browser based plugin I was working on hit another snag as I need to now come up with additional monies in order to afford the version of Visual Studio to easily create the DLLs I need to create. I guess I’m going to have to sell off a few more of the games and stuff I’ve collected over the years to get my money up… or maybe I should stop buying books (I picked up 6 books this weekend at various flea markets) ’cause every little but counts.

I think I found the code I was looking for.

Administrator — Thu, 07 May 2009 19:35:04 +0000

I have a lot of Torquing to do this weekend. That and trying to juggle mother’s day, I have my work cut out for me. I’m going to try my best to post something Monday as an update on progress.

I have GOT to get back in the swing of things.

Undoing the done (player controls)

Administrator — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:56:03 +0000

The past few years/weeks/months(depending on when you think I got started) I’ve been tryign to rip out the controls for Torque to allow for a camera completely separate from the player object. After finding “Advance Camera for Torque” I tried applyign that along with another technique I saw to add a second player. It was very glitchy. So then I attempted to control an AI character using Torquescript exclusively. That worked, but had a few bugs that I couldn’t deal with.

So now I’m trying again. I think I’m going to have to unwrap the code for the player object/datablock and write my own. Which bothers me because I haven’t really touched raw C++ in a very very long time. I’ve moved on to C# which is similar… but I don’t know about similar enough that I won’t run into issues. Maybe I should pick up a new C++ book and pretend I’m starting over.