shellpit.de

Keeping track of your resources and assets in a game is a crucial point in every game framework.

In Infestation I had a ResourceManager which basically had an array for every resource type. There was an array for images, an array for sounds, etc… On game startup I created an instance of ResourceManager which read all resources and created objects in the corresponding arrays. The references to these resources were hardcoded in ResourceManager.

This served me well but had two major drawbacks: I loaded all resources at once. No biggie if you have just a handful of graphics and oggs. But as the game grows, more assets are added which lead to longer loading times and more references to this ResourceManager are made which makes later refactoring more comlicated. Another drawback is that while loading this blob of resources you can’t give any feedback to the user while the load method runs.

So time for a new ResourceManager until it’s to late

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Source: tagesschau.de

The german shipyard “Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft” sells a submarine type “Dolphin” to Israel. This type of submarine is capable to load intermediate-range missiles which can be fitted with nuclear warheads and travel distances of up to 1500km. To seal the deal the german defense minister  Thomas de Maizière promised, that the german government will fund 1/3 (135 million €)of the costs.

So the german government takes our taxes to build and fund a f*cking submarine to sell it to some unstable, warmongering  region in the middle east?! And five minutes later they tell me about the bad economy and how we all need to take a step back and save every dime we can? And this deal is already the sixth in a series?!

Seriously, german government – the only thing that comes to mind is: Fuck you and go die in a hole!

Recently I was asked how to change the default font of twl to another font and how to create and use a TWL combobox.

Read more after the break:

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Just uploaded a sneak peek of the upcoming 0.1 version. I thought it would be time to show some actual graphics before we hit 0.1.

Sorry or the lack of audio and the overall bad video quality. I’ll do a proper commentated version once I finish v0.1 and get my video codecs working.

What’s basically shown in the video is a first draft of the main menu, loading/saving, the basic equipment screen where you can only swap weapons at the moment and the gameplay. The gameplay has turns implemented, basic “follow-me-AI”, killing, movement directions and finally killing the alien.

As you’ll notice there’s 1 AP missing on the players turn, the hidden movement screen isn’t a hidden movement screen and the vertical door is missing the proper open door sprite.

grab it here: Download Sorry, made an upgrade on the blog which broke the d/l plugin. Fixing asap

Wiki entry /tutorial will follow soon…