Making it easier to build on windows

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Andrew

This weekend I spent 48 hours trying to make building the game on windows a much better experience. I first started by grouping together all the dependencies required to build the game into one repository dedicated to building the game on windows. Normally you would get these yourself however it is so complicated that I wanted to make it much easier for people that want to join in. This means if you want to quickly get into building and working on the code you simply download an extra repository before running the build system.

I also updated the windows instructions on the forum. Anyone who saw it before will notice that it is a very big improvement. Unfortunately I have not been able to get a visual studio linking the code. If it doesn’t build then do not be surprised, however please do file bugs or post in the forum’s code section. It should currently compile but there is some issue with the libraries that needs sorting.

Hopefully soon we will have the game working on windows and not just linux then we can start working on an OSX port too.

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Dev Update #17

Posted on July 4, 2010 by Andrew

Since my last news update I’ve been working on porting the code base to MyGUI 3.0.X and placing the editor into a window. At first I didn’t want to do this because it’s wasting time that could be better spent building new things, however on second thought I decided it better to get it right first time.

A common complaint about open source projects is that the user interface always looks bad. It isn’t something I want my project to suffer from; unfortunately I’m one developer and haven’t got much skill in UI design.

Apart from programming I’m also interested in getting more people involved in the game. A few people have expressed interest in helping out, however no one has yet got back to me with anything. If you have any ideas on generating interest then stop by our forums and post them.

Posted in dev update | 3 Comments

Dev Update #16

Posted on May 6, 2010 by Andrew

This week I was able to track down a bug to do with saving the building’s rotation. Along with some code refactoring I have moved on to changing the user interface to be a little more pleasing to the eye.

new building editor changes

Since I am using a third party library called MyGUI to do all the menu work in, it was very simple to replace the old style. I simply edited some XML and after 10 to 15 minutes of tweaking had things in place. Problem is that since changing the user interface I’ve discovered a flaw in the drag and drop code that needs fixing. Not a big issue but it has given me a reason to experiment with the new version of the MyGUI library which I hear might be better for what I want to do anyway.

You may have noticed an empty space under rotation and position. This is going to be for selecting different materials to apply to the building pieces however I have not yet decided on how it is going to be implemented. Designs and suggestions are welcome of course, just make a post on the forum.

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Dev Update #15

Posted on April 12, 2010 by Andrew

I’ve been pretty naughty and have not posted anything new for the last few weeks on the blog. To be honest there is not much to tell. Work on the code is progressing nicely (however I wish I had some more help getting the code to build on windows).

There is a lot to be done before our 0.1 release. So far you can login to a game, edit the level and save the data. According to the road map I previously posted I also want to get the main menu and some other map editing features in.

The idea of the 0.1 release is that it will give content creators something to play with and get their art in the game where as the 0.2 release will be focused on getting the flying implemented.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Weekly dev update #14

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Andrew

Last week there was no developer update as I was sick with the flu. This week however I wanted to do something different so I have been working on the sky in the game.

My first attempt was to simply place a skybox into the game with a star background. A skybox is simply a box with an image on it.

As you can see the results are not very pleasing. I tried numerous ways to increase the resolution of the image displayed however nothing seemed to work, including increasing the image size.

Instead I tried something completely different. I read about SkyX in the Ogre forums and decided to give that a try.

Firstly however I had to convert the shader code from HLSL to CG and then get it working in linux. Below you can see the results.

I am unsure that it is working 100% correctly at the moment. The screenshot with the dark clouds should show a star background which doesn’t seem to be displaying. The second screenshot with the white volumetric clouds seems to be working correctly however has very slow FPS.

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