Changelog:
Akradion
- Added a score counter
- Brick score values are set individually, allowing the creation of hard to reach high-value bricks.
- Added lives
- Launching extra balls can be done at any time, but each one costs a life.
- Added Tough Bricks, which take several hits to break.
- Smoothed out ball movement a bit.
DFEngine
- Added a ‘draw’ script callback, which occurs when the game redraws itself.
- This is for more complex display stuff that the graphics component doesn’t cover, like text
- Added global script variable support
- Added the ability to retrieve and modify object data from any script, given the object’s id
- Viewports now only display what the game wants them to, but scale the output as much as possible and letterbox the rest.
- Mouse coordinates are now a percentage, rather than an exact pixel position. They are also clamped to the game view.
This week didn’t seem too productive, but I guess I was wrong! It’s now a whole lot easier to get work done thanks to some of the engine upgrades.
Global Variables
Currently, this is one of the best ways for objects to all share data. All I had to do was give the game object one of the same data storage components that all of the entities use. Now, the game can hold important information, like lives or score.
Data Retrieval
This is really useful. Basically, it lets any object access another object simply by knowing its’ id. This means that:
- Objects can make new objects, and give them specific info that they have (e.g. spawning something at their current position)
- Objects can exchange ids to always stay in touch, and can send signals and other data between each other.
As you can see, this is pretty sweet, and is another great feature that makes DFEngine’s second incarnation easily beat the original in terms of power.
Views and the Mouse
This change should’ve been here originally. Now, the view only shows what the game wants, and makes this as big as possible without drawing things outside of the screen. The letterboxing and clamping mostly exist to prevent cheating and confusion, but they also make fullscreen look much nicer. Next, I’ll need to make the game’s view more dynamic. Being able to smoothly switch into a widescreen view for a cutscene, or zoom out for an impressive set-piece would be pretty sweet.
The Game
It feels like I can do so much now. I think within a week or two I’ll be able to focus on adding tons of content, and then I can finish up Akradion. That would be impressive, and I hope I can finish it up by my birthday of June 25th. That’s not a hard deadline, but I’m feeling pretty optimistic about this.
Making games is fun again!