Heya,
i didn’t post for some time which doesn’t mean i stoped working. The museum projects grows and grows and i’m doing fine with it.

Also i planned to go on with my old Torque Game Builder game “tBreakout”.
It’s a clone of the traditional breakout game almost everyone should know.

Planned Features:
- 5 different themes
- 10 level each theme
- 8 Power Ups
- 2 Sliders (Bottom and Top)
- Two players (each player controlling one Slider)
- Online Highscore
- Content packs to get new levels, powerups and themes

Estimated Release Date: 31th May 2008

The game itself works perfectly, i just have to add the themes and powerups (already finished one of them).

I plan to sell the game for some dollas (like 5 or less) and see if i’m able to sell games like this. If it works fine, i might gonna on doing small casual games to increase the number of finished projects.

See ya next time!

“I did it!” as Hiro Nakamura from Heroes would say.

I finally managed to create the import GUI with the help of Thomas Bang
Before i had many ideas how to display the current folder and browse through it. It also worked very well but there were always some bugs that couldn’t be change without the use of another DLL function. So i wanted to ask Thomas Bang to write a new function, but in the same moment, he sent me a link to an interesting article about API Save and Open Dialogs for Torque Game Builder (the 2D Engine). Fortunately, it also works with TGE and TGEA.

So now the user can click “Import texture” and browse through all of his folders, choose a file and click “Open”. It delivers a string with the full path to the file.
Then i can manipulate the string a bit to use Thomas Bang’s SaveFileTo function to copy the new file to the folder where the frame is located, rename the file and list it in the texture gui.

As mentioned before, i had a problem displaying imported file cause the engines Resource Manager must refresh before you see the file. There is a small trick to do this:

setModPath(getModPath());

This will re-check the folders of the current game and implement new file.

So the texturing Part is done now. I’m really happy about it and can now go on with manipulating the frame model ingame (make it bigger, smaller, change the ration, etc).

See ya next time, and don’t forget - Save the Cheerleader, save the world!

Well somehow i kinda feel stressed out lately.

I will end my 3 years job training (called “Ausbildung” in german, which is a 3 years course mixed with work and school) in 2 month.
I don’t know what to do after it. If i have luck, i can go on working here on a real 75% job for half a year. The only problem is that i still have to do 9 month of social work (in germany you must decide between military and social work). So i hope they won’t say i have to do the social work first.

It’s actually a lot of time till i really have to find a real job or a place to study, but i’m already worried what to do next. My wish is to go into gamedesign, so maybe to study would be the best way to go. In germany there are no good places to study gamedesign (wether it’s too expensive or my school qualificaton isn’t good enough). So i probably will try to move out to canada or maybe switzerland. A friend of mine lives in switzerland and is doing a gamedesign course. My school qualification is good enough for this one so maybe that’s my chance. I’m already starting to save up money.

I don’t know how it works in canada but i love this country and would prefer to move there. First i have to get more infos to make a decision (which isn’t that easy).

So yeah, let’s see where i will land.

Just a note: “Daily” doesn’t mean i write this EVERY DAY, but every day i worked on the game!

So in my last post i mentioned the missing “Directory List” object and that i will write my own directory viewer then.
Well it’s kinda hard to do so but it’s getting better and better. I can browse the previous folders and look for the files inside. But there are still some problems.

1. I don’t know how to display the current folders, i only can list the files yet
2. When i browse back a folder, the function that reads the existing files in the current folder also browse the subfolders and displays the files. I don’t know how to control this (yet)

Beside this, i installed the import function. When selected a file in the import GUI, i can click the import Button and copy the file to the right folder (and even rename it). But of course there is also a problem - the engine doesn’t realize that there is a new bitmap in the folder. I first have to restart the engine to see the file displayed in my skin list. I probably have to reset some value or re-read the folders. Somehow i think the function “setModPath” has to do something with it.

That’s all for today actually. I got a bit busy with my real work and by watching my new favorite show “Heroes”.

Okay time for my second daily report.

Lets see the ToDo list from yesterday first:

- Creating a loading GUI to add files to the object folder
- When loading a new image, the materials.cs must be updated. I need a script that will do that for me.

Well actually i only finished one task from the list.

I couldn’t get to work the GUI yet cause there is an engine bug in the new Torque Game Engine Advanced 1.7 Version.
When i want to place an Directory View Object (that displays the folders at the current position), the engine will just crash.
So i actually have to write my own Viewer which is kinda lots of work but i’m doing well so far.

The second task is done. Now, if i import a new file (via console since the GUI isn’t done), the materials.cs file will be rewrite to be able to use the new texture.

BUT i finished more stuff!

1. I coded a preview Window which displays the selected image from the list
2. The ratio of the image preview is fit to the ratio of the selected image, but always stays at a max width or height of 200. Even if the image is 23 x 64 pixels big, it will be scaled up so one size is 200 pixels big
3. You can see the Pixel size of the current selected image in the Image Browser
4. Added buttons for the Import Gui

It was kinda hard to get this work without the knowledge of C++. I’m glad i know Thomas Bang, who is a great DLL writer and wrote 1 plugin in Delphi which includes 3 function:

1. A function to copy a file from one folder to another one. I need this to let the “player” browse for his image on his HDD and copy it to the gamefolder and even rename the file.
2. A function to create folders. If a user creates a new “Player”, a new folder with it’s name will be created to store all his files (images, galleries, etc).
3. A function to read the resolution of an image. I need this to rescale the image preview and later on to scale the pictureframe to it’s picture ratio.

Thanks again to him, i really appreciate this efford.

So that’s for today, i’m super tired again and will go to bed now. See ya next time!

Hi,
i just wanted to tell you that i added a “Code Snippets” section which can be found in the link list on the right side of this page.

In this section i will insert code i find useful or needed for any projects.

NOTE:
I don’t say the scripts listed there is the perfect way to create such functions, it’s just what i found and used.
If you have any more snippets and would like to share, just send me an email or leave me a comment.

All right guys, girls and whatever is running around there.
Today i finished several things on the museum project.

First i got some bugs with the GUI for changing the images. Everytime i closed the GUI, the player couldn’t move anymore. So i had to reopen it again to go on moving. This is fixed now and works like a charm :D

Second i changed the script to get access to the image GUI. Before, you could press a key or a button on screen and the image gui will open. To look around, you had to hold right mouse key. Now you just can walk around like a normal 1st Person Shooter game. When you are close to an object that is retextureable ™, you press the action key (”e”) and the image gui will open. You can’t change the cam rotation when entering the image gui but you also don’t have to, cause you want to place the image anyway.
If you placed your image, you can just click it off and go on moving, or away from the object and the image editor will close.

Third i added a button to delete the skin and get the base skin back to the object.

Fourth before the images where displayed in the GUI list with it’s full file path. Now they are only displayed with their filename.


 
Yeah i think that was everything yet. The bug mentioned first took lot of time but im glad it’s solved.
So what’s to do for tomorrow?

- Creating a loading GUI to add files to the object folder
- When loading a new image, the materials.cs must be updated. I need a script that will do that for me.

That’s it. Sounds kinda small but i think the loading gui will take a lot of time. If i should finish everything soon enough, i will already go on with next tasks.

That’s it, i’m super tired right now and will go offline now.

Canvas.popDialog($Kiyaku);

Heya,
just want to write some words about my current project.

To learn torque, Frank Geppert from Dexsoft-Games and i are creating a virtual museum. You will be able to run around in different themes and place your own images on your virtual picture frames, add a text to the frame and adjust the size of it.

When i first was thinking about methods to create this project (code based), it sounded quite easy to manage. To my surprise, it was easier than i thought.

Until now i can say that 60% of the base code are done. I can move around, place frames, open a GUI with a list of available pictures and draw them on my frames. The list for the pictures is generated automatically by searching the folders for the necessary files.

The skin system for the frames is also quite easy. You just have to give the different skins a special name. Just let me give you an example.

Imagine you have your frame model called “frame.dts”. Then you have to assign a texture to the model which is called “base.frame.png”. The other skins you want to apply to your frame can have any name you want plus the “frame.png” at the end. So you can create images like “skin0.frame.png”, “skin1.frame.png”, “anotherpic.frame.png” and so on. The engine will recognize the “frame.png” and assign it to the “frame.dts” file.

To actually change the skin now, you use the function “%obj.setSkinName(’skinname_without_frame.png’);” and that’s it! If you want to apply skin1 to the model, you would write “%obj.setSkinName(skin1);” and the skin will be changed.

So to make the engine recognize the textures, you need to create a “materials.cs” file in the same folder. Just define the texture inside and you are done!

new Material(base_frame)
{
   baseTex[0] = "base.frame";
};

new Material(skin0_frame)
{
   baseTex[0] = "skin0.frame;
};

new Material(skin1_frame)
{
   baseTex[0] = "skin1.frame";
};

Easy, isn’t it?

So to display all available skin for the frame, i search for “./*.frame.png”. It will list all images that ends with “.frame.png” in the GUI i created.

If i have something visually to show, i will post some shots of course.

See ya next time!

How do you want to become better than someone if you follow his footsteps?

It’s been a while since i closed down my old blog. Why i closed it anyway you ask? Cause i got spammed by advertisement and didn’t update it anyway. This time i want to write about my experience with Torque.

Torque is a gameengine made by GarageGames. Actually Torque is not only one but several different engines. There is Torque Game Builder for 2D games only, Torque Game Engine for 3D games, Torque Game Engine Advanced for 3D games and shaders, and so on.

I got the Torque Game Engine Advanced (short TGEA but i will call it just tega, its faster to say) license and left the old 3DGameStudio engine i used before.

It’s not that i dislike 3DGameStudio that much but i want to reach higher quality with my games and torque is the right way to go for me.

It uses several ingame editors like a World Editor to place Models, Triggers, Pathes, and all the rest, a Terrain Editor to manipulate and texture the terrains, and a GUI Editor to create GUIs like menus, HUDs (health bars, mana bars, …) any many more.

I started only few days ago with Torque and i have to say it’s quite easy. I managed lot of code yet for a program i’m working on, but i will talk about this one in a later post.

So i’m really statisfied with the engine and quitting with 3DGameStudio.

This blog is about my projects, experience i gathered and code snippets i find quite useful. I hope i will write more than the last time i did a blog but i’m positive about it yet.

See ya next time :)