Once again thanks to college progress has slowed down a lot. Since this is my final year project there’s loads of work to be done that you won’t see or know about. I have to do a technical manual about my project, detailing where the idea came from, technologies used, system architecture diagrams, explanations of the main sections of code in the game and then to top it off I’ll have to present my finished project to my lecturers, then a few days later at an open day for employers. All that along with 3 other projects, class tests and actually attending lectures means that there isn’t as much time to actually make the game as I’d like. This will change soon since once my final exams are done with in just over 2 weeks I’ll have a full month to just work on the game and technical manual.

Over the last number of weeks I’ve been getting lots of little bits and pieces done. The miners will now mine out the rooms that you want mined, there’s been fixes to path finding to make the game run better and loads of other little issues that needed fixing(for example clicking through the GUI when building rooms). Next you on the list of ‘thing to do’ is making equipment degrade over time, have janitors fix the equipment and finally have scientists research new objects. Looking at what has to be done by early May it seems like loads, but there’s lots of code in place that makes most of these problems a cinch so I’m confident about getting the game to the stage I want come the deadline. Graphics not included, because they’ll never be the way I want as long as I’m doing them.

Right in mygame. Employees can now wander about when they’re bored, eat food when they’re hungry and sleep in a bed when they’re tired.

What’s that? You don’t believe me? Well then feast your eys on this:

Look at them eat and sleep!

Sort of.

It’s mostly a modification of the old theme, but the text has been made much smaller, there’s lesss images used. There’s now a side bar with a list of the games I’ve worked on, links to some other sites and a list of the post categories, so navigation is much easier now as well. I added in a search box at the top right as well, in case you were wondering what that thing was. I’ll probably put a label above it later to make it more clear.

In Research Station Mars news, I finished off refactoring the code for employees and objects so that they could be sorted together. This means that sorting the draw order of he employees is now a cinch. The employees now randomly move around when they have nothing to do(currently that’s always) and I’ve made some improvements to load times by refatoring all of the GUI code. I’m back in college now so progress has slowed down a lot for the moment, I’ve got to write a technical report about the project so that’s taking up my time. However, next week I plan on getting the bit where the employees actually use the objects done. Most of the groundwork is already there for this so it’s not going to be too difficult.

Here’s an update on what’s been going on with RSM over the last few weeks.

I’ve been working on the handling of the objects in the base. These are loaded form a file that defines their parameter, and are then linked to an image that resides in the Objects directory of the Art folder. This means that adding and adjusting existing objects is really easy so even after the game is finished other people should be able to add new objects in. This part still isnt’ really at a stage to show off any screenshots of yet as it isn’t linked to the GUI.

I’ve linked up the tile placing to the GUI, so now scroll to the correct bar, select the room type and then start placing it. The game state is changed to building and all but the Confirm/Cancel buttons on the bar are locked. Here’s what it looks like.

In Building Mode. Most buttons are disabled.

The new tiles are placed, and the Confirm/Deny buttons are disabled.

I created the icons for the Home bar. This is where you’ll save, load and exit and all that. The faded ones are disabled.

The Home Menu

Finally got an actual design created for the site, and slowly I’m going to start putting up posts about the games I’ve made, along with some posts about what I’m currently making and how it’s going. I’ll look into getting an RSS feed setup along with a spiffy button for it.