Thornwind Progress

[Sirridan]

Well, things are actually moving on nicely so far. I have it in C#, the display and input is separate from the core game, and the whole thing is event driven. Any ideas for a good place to host the code so others can look at it easily?

So far all I can do is run around a pre-generated map, I'll add collision detection tomorrow, its a bit late and I'm getting sleepy, but it will be easy to do.

Screenshot included.

Current Issues: Screen flickers when moving (double buffer? or maybe add a boolean to repaint only if something changed). Also screen doesn't show up immediately until a key is pressed, this is due to the events I think... I bet if I push a "REPAINT" event to the game core it will display immediately.

[Sirridan]

Flicker is fixed. I had it working where it displayed initially, but now it doesn't, oh well. That's a very minor issue I'll figure out later, now I'm working on collission detection.

[Sirridan]

Collision detection added, anyone interested in the source or the .exe?

[Sirridan]

Added a monster, and it chases me! AAAAH!

[Sirridan]

Okay todays goals have been met:

1. Display no longer flickers.
2. Collission Detection
3. Monsters added
4. Monsters chase player and collide with him (however they can still move through each other)

Tomorrows goals:
1. Monsters cannot move through each other
2. Player can attack and kill monsters, vice versa
3. Monsters can sleep and may be unaware of player
4. LOS

If anyone is interested in the code, or the exe let me know and I'll zip it up and post it. Currently it's building under visual studio 2008, should work in 05 though.

[Pete Mack]

I'd take a copy, but I'm only running OSX at the moment. Are you using the same base class for player and monster? (It makes things much easier if you are planning on complex monster behavior like pets, etc.)

[Sirridan]

I'd take a copy, but I'm only running OSX at the moment. Are you using the same base class for player and monster? (It makes things much easier if you are planning on complex monster behavior like pets, etc.)

Actually no, they are separate for the moment, although that's actually something pretty easy to change right now.

class GameCreature
class Player: GameCreature
class Monster: GameCreature

or I could make an interface and have the monster/player implement it, we'll see.

I'll put the source up a little later after I wake up and you, and anyone else, can take a look at it.

[Pete Mack]

interface isn't the right model. GameCreature is an isa, not a hasa. You'll want abstract functions for some things, but Move(Point()), Hp {get; set; } can be implemented as concrete methods.
You may even want to inherit from a base object, VisibleObject, which encodes the basics for location and appearance.

[Sirridan]

interface isn't the right model. GameCreature is an isa, not a hasa. You'll want abstract functions for some things, but Move(Point()), Hp {get; set; } can be implemented as concrete methods.
You may even want to inherit from a base object, VisibleObject, which encodes the basics for location and appearance.

Yeah, I think you're right about that one. I'll have to rewrite a few things, but in actuality it will be nice to have some reusable code. I'll post the source after that's done.

[Sirridan]

Thorn Source

Here's the code, and the EXE if anyone wants to try. The exe is in the bin/debug folder, ThornEngine.exe

Some things are still NYI (not yet implemented) but movement and monsters chase. No combat yet.

Any questions/comments let me know!

-Yes, I will be actually commenting this code.

[Pete Mack]

I took a look. You might want to consider these design patterns before you go much further:

Normalization -- dependent values should not be duplicated. (That is, the symbol for a monster species is fixed--it's a descriptor of the species, not the monster itself.)

Flyweights -- Similarity between objects can be extracted out and represented only once.

These ideas are somewhat related; the second is a generic caching scheme; the first is the canonical way to represent large numbers of similar data.

[Sirridan]

I took a look. You might want to consider these design patterns before you go much further:

Normalization -- dependent values should not be duplicated. (That is, the symbol for a monster species is fixed--it's a descriptor of the species, not the monster itself.)

Flyweights -- Similarity between objects can be extracted out and represented only once.

These ideas are somewhat related; the second is a generic caching scheme; the first is the canonical way to represent large numbers of similar data.

Good ideas, I'll look into my code and implement those where it's needed if not already. I should probably look at my software engineering textbook and find a copy (at least online) of the gang of four's patterns.

Right now I'm making it as such.

Basic overview:

OS - ThornInterface (Abstract) - Game Engine

ThornInterface is the abstract class holding methods to display, capture input, etc. Creating this and passing it to the game engine should be all that's required to port it to a different system, or change the way it's displayed.

ThornGame Guts of the game, event driven, events are pushed by ThornInterface and by some things in ThornGame.

VisibleObject Contains data for color, display character "@ for player, etc", name, and position.

Monster Extends VisibleObject, contains data for monsters

Player Extends VisibleObject, contains data for player

MonsterCollection List type object with some methods to deal with all current monsters in the level.

AI Monster AI, right now only stationary and chase AI is implemented, others will follow. I also need some LOS calculation methods, that will come soon as well.

[Pete Mack]

VisibleObject Contains data for color, display character "@ for player, etc", name, and position.

This is what I meant by normalization. VisibleObject needs things like a position and an abstract (delegated) Display() method, but the actual symbol it encodes is probably an attribute of some other class (like a monster species, or a feature type, or an object type, etc.)

[Sirridan]

Alrighty, I'm hoping to get something "playable" done today, where you can at least kill monsters.

We'll see how it goes... although I may get distracted trying to free my paladin from the unholy grip of Gorlim's helmet... heh.

[Sirridan]

I have combat ready to implement, that is collision detection is ready and I know exactly where to add combat code. But yeah, did some code restructuring and as I said collision detection is implemented.

Woot!