Sorry this one is going up late. The last few days have been pretty busy. Good busy, since I was hanging out with family, but busy. I still got a thing done here and there, though. I fixed all of the compile-time errors, so it builds properly now, and then fixed the errors in the prototype editor created when I changed how entities work, then fixed the errors in behaviors created when I changed how behaviors work. As of now, it seems to be functional to approximately the same level as before – so far. I’m sure I’ll uncover a few more bugs as I go, but all in all it’s been about as painless as I could reasonably expect.
So what next? Over the next week I’ll be going through the entity editor, making sure everything works properly, and making sure that it interacts properly with the levels themselves – that is, that it will be possible to save and load entity data using the new centralized standard, and easy to modify levels entity data as necessary while I run the game. I’m pretty tired at the moment so I haven’t thought through the full process, but I think once I get my hands on it it should go pretty fast.
After the entity editor is definitely completely functional precisely as I want it, I have a choice: I can either tackle the detail editor, which I had to leave off from a month or so ago to do this restructuring stuff, or I can get melee hit detection working. It should probably be the latter, honestly, since that’s the main thing keeping me from creating a complete prototype animation set – once I have enemies that can deal and receive damage, I can start testing out what kinds of hit animations, both programmatic and artistic, will serve my needs. In fact, this may even end up interacting with the detail editor, since it’s entirely possible I’ll want to create particle effects that use the same system. Well, we’ll see when I get there.
Regarding regular blog updates, the big essay I’ve been working on still isn’t done – it’s shaped up a lot, but I still need to create a few illustrations for it, find some nice images to spice it up, do more editing for clarity – and, hopefully, create a little prototype game demonstrating the ideas I’m talking about. I think I’ll try to get something short written this week though. I don’t feel comfortable leaving the blog essentially un-updated for this long.