Its finally here.
Build 1.9 is a huge step sideways in development. We are back to where we were about a month ago, however everything is now different. Without the crutch of the Flash Display list we have been forced to come to terms with the actual huge number of sprites in the game. The cell animations in particular are pretty huge, spanning 3 full 2048x2048 sheets. To compensate we have had to optimize in every conceivable way. Starling has given us the tools to do some pretty fancy things like creating dynamic scaling textures (as used in the vast majority of our UI as backgrounds).
The learning process was pretty swift thanks to the fact that the parent/child/syntax from Flash professional has been maintained in Starling. And as a result I would probably never really go back, though Flash Builder has its own set of quirks. (Autocomplete?!)
And now its mostly there, at a full 60 fps. Menu systems have been completely scrapped and rebuilt in a number of instances from how you interact with the later campaign levels, to saving/loading in the map editor, to how you manage adding/removing players in a local game. The number of changes is so vast that I don't even know exactly how much we have changed over for the better.
Tomorrow we are headed out to Burlington High School to talk about the development of Pathogen & design in general. Friday we are moving into our new space located in downtown Burlington near Perkins Pier. We will be in the shared space that JDK owns which is pretty exciting to be around more creative people.
Pictures will be up soon as we step into our second year as Birnam Wood Games
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Almost back to where we started
Whew, almost there.
Over the past few week we have learned a ton about Starling and how to get it function. Today is another milestone in terms of efficiency and development as we are compressing our sprites sheets down to the smallest possible configuration. We have been tackling the issue of loading assets and yesterday Matt seemed to crack it.
We are building a preloader which displays a loading bar at the beginning while we background load all of our assets from our condensed sprite sheets to their targeted texture atlases. Which is just a complicated way to say we load everything up front so that the experience is smooth without any additional loading times.
The Campaign structure has been rebuilt better than ever thanks to the Scrolling properties in Feathers (a UI extension of Starling). All of the modes have been added as well except for the Invasion Game mode. Today is going to be another gloss over on the map Editor, putting the save/load functionality back in and Matt is going to be tackling the undo/replay functionality again.
We were using a flashbased library to render the Pie Chart originally, however it was not compatible with Starling so we ended up converting it over which is pretty awesome since no one else has done graphing in Starling apparently, so we should be posting that pretty soon on their forums.
In about two weeks we are headed to Burlington High School to give a talk about development/show off the game and right now the goal is to do that with the Starling build and we seem to be on track.
Over the past few week we have learned a ton about Starling and how to get it function. Today is another milestone in terms of efficiency and development as we are compressing our sprites sheets down to the smallest possible configuration. We have been tackling the issue of loading assets and yesterday Matt seemed to crack it.
We are building a preloader which displays a loading bar at the beginning while we background load all of our assets from our condensed sprite sheets to their targeted texture atlases. Which is just a complicated way to say we load everything up front so that the experience is smooth without any additional loading times.
The Campaign structure has been rebuilt better than ever thanks to the Scrolling properties in Feathers (a UI extension of Starling). All of the modes have been added as well except for the Invasion Game mode. Today is going to be another gloss over on the map Editor, putting the save/load functionality back in and Matt is going to be tackling the undo/replay functionality again.
We were using a flashbased library to render the Pie Chart originally, however it was not compatible with Starling so we ended up converting it over which is pretty awesome since no one else has done graphing in Starling apparently, so we should be posting that pretty soon on their forums.
In about two weeks we are headed to Burlington High School to give a talk about development/show off the game and right now the goal is to do that with the Starling build and we seem to be on track.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Been Quiet
Last couple of weeks have been pretty quiet from us. Rewriting the entire game has been kind all consuming, but we are getting closer now. Pathogen is playable again with the Starling Framework, which is exciting. The code is looking a lot better now, way more structured and hopefully more efficient. Slowly putting functionality back in, Matt is tackling undo/replay and I'm setting the campaign structure up again.
Overall its coming together, we have about another full week of this before we will be back to where we left off. Then from there it will be learning the in's and outs of Game Center.
Overall its coming together, we have about another full week of this before we will be back to where we left off. Then from there it will be learning the in's and outs of Game Center.
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