Sponsor Appreciation, Open Game Art

This is a quick shout out to say thanks to Open Game Art for giving this project the web space and bandwidth needed to keep us all together working on the game. The owner Bart funds the entire site out of his own pocket because of his love of open source and free artwork.

If you have any spare cash please consider donating on his website so that projects such as this one continue to have a home.

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Making it easier to build on windows

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

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.

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Dev Update #16

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

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.

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