Archive for March, 2005

Screenshot of NZ Particle FX Editor

Nilesh hasn’t had time to update the website and post new screenshots, so I thought I’d post a pic showing what our particle fx editor for NZ looks like:




(I’ll post a pic of the map editor soon)

New Server

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past 2 days migrating DR to a new web server. Basically, just a lot of small things to take care of. I’ve also setup a personal page for myself. Right now it only has my resume and a link to this blog, but later on I’ll post more exciting stuff.

On the programming front, I’m still working on the new GUI stuff. Two things left to take care of: list boxes and volume controls (the two hardest). I’ll try to have this stuff finished tomorrow night. I also need to make 1 critical addition to the NZ map editor, that is the ability to flip tiles horizontally and vertically. I originally throught tile flips would be unnecessary, but after playing about with the latest tile sets Nilesh created, I quickly saw that tile flips are essential to NZ map making. The process itself is easy (just shift texture coordinates), but when you have to make the changes to the map ed., the map compiler, and NZ, things become messy. Especially considering the map ed. and NZ use different rendering engines and are written in 2 different languages (C# for the map ed., C++ for NZ).

On the writing front, I haven’t forgotten about the NZ story and script. The intro story is, for the most part, finished. I just need to make some minor modifications and correct some grammer errors. I’ll put a link to it on the NZ page once I’m done. The script is being worked on. It’s a lot easier to write than the intro story; simply b/c I’ve found that dialog is easier to write than narrative. I should have a lot of it done by the end of the week.

I’m on spring break right now, but I have midterms coming up (starting with a killer one for Algorithm Analysis class next week Wed.), so I’m trying to get as much done as possible this week.

NZ GUI Buttons

I’ve been doing a major overhaul of the NZ GUI. I’m not too excited about doing this but it’s necessary in order to easily get story screens, intermission screens, and new menus into the game. With the improved system almost everything can now be defined externally through XML files. It’s great being able to design and play around with stuff w/o having to recompile code. The only thing that would be better is having a graphical GUI designer, but unfortunately I don’t have to time to make one.

Much of this redesign is internal work, but I also made some slight graphical improvements to the buttons. Check it out, they look a bit more metallic now (hmm, well not really, but they do look prettier).


Testing… 1… 2… 3…

Hey guys, I’ve started a blog 🙂

Aside from acquiring the title of “blogger” and fitting it with all the cool kids, the main reason for me doing this is b/c I felt that doing plan updates on the digital radiation forums were a bit limited. Readers (or reader, I have no clue how many people actually read those posts) couldn’t comment on what I posted and it also never really felt right doing updates within a message board post where your latest entry was pushed to the end of the thread.

Anyway, I’ll be posting more stuff very soon.