Hazman's Corner

My fancy skill interface so far. I'm currently using separate children and panes for each individual skill (there are 67, there are likely to be around 100 altogether) which uses 2-3mb of memory with them all expanded. If you close and open a skill theoretically the controls are all reused but I haven't tested this yet. I'm not sure how well the interface will behave over a network but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Each little plus arrow expands the skill next to it. The 0s on the right hand side of the skill list are the skill values for those skills (I haven't actually added skill progression yet). The 0 under the skill name in the information area also represents the level, I plan on having advancement buttons here (new TitanNet is skill point based).

There's also likely to be some major skinning work but that should be pretty easy once I finalise how I actually want it to look (more futury than previous games).

It's crashed 5 times in under an hour of play. And why do 'Ultra High' textures still look rubbish and pixellated?

So, I was thinking today about how TitanNet is basically my single consistantly popular project which I enjoy working on. People seem to like Frenetik, but there's really only so much you can do with that game, and the fact that I can't figure out the damn scoreboard is really annoying.

My first super-original release of TitanNet was essentially my first game release - TitanNet theoretically embodies one of my dream games, a blend of action and role playing a la Deus Ex (the other more or less being the same, but in space. Everything is cooler IN SPACE). The original release of TitanNet was ugly (even uglier than the more recent releases, believe it or not!), buggy and inefficient. After about 6 months of patching, fixing, improving and still failing (somewhat unsurprisingly, in hindsight) to attract a significant number of players I gave up and did something else.

But a year or so later, I started work again. This time I got as far as a dynamic mail system which had letters and packages shooting around in tubes before I got bored.

The third iteration of TitanNet, TitanNet:Prime, I started work on about 3 years ago. With the programming experience I had gained over the years I was able to put together a game most people who worked out how to play found fun, although the lack of a decent host meant it was super laggy and the low responsiveness this caused made playing it a bit of a chore. I also failed in some of the key areas I wanted the game to have: a Titan system for player-run gangs never substantially materialised, and the computer system was basically the buggiest thing I ever programmed. I had no clear vision of advancement, which meant that you could be packing the best guns in the game within an hour of play, and although I eventually put in a cool 'dynamic' mission generator, the fact that I couldn't draw interesting environments, the somewhat limited choice in types of mission (kill everyone, kill just the boss, kill just the boss and steal his briefcase, blow up the big box), and the difficulty of the missions, meant I, at least, got bored of them pretty fast.

So eventually I closed development on TitanNet and more or less copypasta'd the combat system into Frenetik. This, I decided, was the end. Without significant design work, and more importantly, attention paid to that design, TitanNet would never work.

But now I'm starting to relapse. I get the familiar feeling of wanting to program The Bestest Action RPG Evahâ„¢ and I'm starting to consider listening to it.


Also, do I need a new CSS? It's kind of painful to read long posts on this one.

How does it manage to call the wrong function? I don't even mean like some crazy define or something, I literally mean I can step through, watch it call a Register() function, and instead of jumping to the start of the Register() function, jump to the start of the Deregister() function. Also in the wrong class, but seeing as I'm using templates and some crazy type info stuff that's more understandable.
But the wrong function?
How. Does. That. Even. Happen.

I've been thinking recently about starting work on a singleplayer Frenetik game, just to add to the Great List of Unfinished Projects of 2008. Singleplayer play would mean I could add all of the fancy flashy features that I want, while keeping it in nice, easy to use BYOND (although my game system is coming along quite well - I may rewrite my Starsim screensaver using it).
I should probably explain that Frenetik is an action shooter game based on the TitanNet combat engine, featuring a wide variety of weapons, a variety of grenades including smoke and flashbangs, and a fairly buggy scoreboard.
(which obviously wouldn't be making an appearance in a singleplayer game :-P).
The game would include a Story mode, where some stuff happens and there are scripted events and things. I'd be making use of my scripting language, RScript for these, which would make the game the first practical application of the language - although first I need to add a few new features to it (such as more control structures). I'd probably hard-code AI, although if I can get RScript fast enough, scriptable AI would open up a great opportunity for modding should anyone want to do it.
What would people think of a singleplayer Frenetik game? I might take on an artist for environments, since although people seem to like Frenetik Guy, I still suck at drawing environments.