Brainfold On Python, game development and everything

13Feb/09Off

Good news, bad news

The good news is, suddenly I got a whole lot more free time for game development.

The bad news is, I don't have a job anymore (yay for the economic situation).

I didn't just freeze and panic though; instead, I called a friend at a game company I was applying to for the summer, and told I might be available for work a bit earlier after all... I hope to hear more from them next week, so wish me luck!

As for other news, I have been working on Artillery Brawl a lot, though still no particle effects... I think they might be cursed, since every time I get close to implementing them, I run into problems or some other thing I just have to fix. Anyway, the good thing about this is that the entity system and a lot of the code in general is starting to look really good and reusable. This is how I should have approached building a reusable codebase to begin with; writing a game, then generalizing the solutions that work.

9Feb/09Off

Triggering (explosive) payloads

As part of my effort to integrate Lepton for particle effects, I have been implementing a system of triggers and payloads to make projectiles more interesting in general. The system is heavily inspired by the similar payload system for my old artillery game, Arty, which I wrote about earlier, but of course redesigned and modernized to make it more generic and cleaner. I haven't settled on an interface yet, and looks like I'll have to make yet more changes to the entity system, but every change is a step closer to perfection, right? Anyway, about triggers and payloads...

Any number of triggers and payloads can be attached to entities. For now, they will only be used for projectiles (artillery shells), but later they could be used for many other gameplay applications. Triggers can react to collisions, height from ground, proximity to units, or they could activate after a delay. Almost anything is possible, really, but I'm starting with just collision triggers. Payloads are triggered, well, by triggers; they are the "meat" of the projectile system. Again, I'm starting simple with just kinetic (contact damage based on mass, velocity and an armor piercing multiplier) and explosive (yay, particle effects and shrapnel projectiles) payload, but almost anything would be possible. For example, it would be easy to make a cluster bomb that explodes above ground (height trigger attached to directed explosive payload) into many small bomblets (individual projectiles with contact triggers attached to explosive payloads).

More on the triggers and payloads when I get the system implemented.