Work re-commences.

I returned to this project yesterday. I am designing the navigation system for the junk, one that uses coloured buttons and a map to lead the user round a number of locations at sea. The view outside the cabin and from the deck has to be consistent, with the appropriate angles of buoys and the island. These will have to be installed as sprites, so that we don't have to make a scene for every viewpoint.

The cabin of the junk, from which navigation takes place, looked so stark that I'm installing a carpet in it.

I still haven't figured out how to organise the puzzle. I don't want just a maze or point and click shooting gallery. There has to be some substance to the puzzle that looks soluble but isn't too easy.

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Once I get the navigation in place, I'll do another test version. Watch this space.

Odd Comments

Odd Comments
Just a little side issue here. I keep getting comments on the blog that I can't publish because the commenter's name and comment are rendered in a font that my browsers (none of them, and I have many) cannot render. If you are not having your comments published, then this is the reason.


Break in Transmission
The recent pause was due to an extended period of working abroad without access to my code and Povray sources. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Latest Junk Picture

I just finished this little beauty this morning. Note the ropes and the pylon. It took FIVE HOURS, THREE MINUTES AND TWO SECONDS to render! That was with a number of time-wasting options enabled, particularly the Rope functions.

Pylons

I'm going to have pylons in the water for the junk to use in navigation. These pylons will have a sort of road map on them, leading to the island.

Things are moving much faster for me now. There's a thrill of anticipation that I'll soon have a second working example with much more substance to it.

Strategy Again

I am finding my slow pace of development irksome. I have today been thinking of strategies to get another short example game out quite quickly.

Among these strategies are:

Complete the first section of the game quickly, without further refinement, and forgetting the next section.

So:
- Junk
- Dockside doors
- Elevator

I'll just get on with that.

Comments on POVray techniques

Following up on the comments in the previous post, I should point out that I can optionally apply a grid to any scene. The grid is a series of cylinders, set 5 units apart and centred on the origin of the scene. That gives me an accurate measure of where to put an item. I build the item and rotate it at origin, then move it to the desired location.



The animation (which I may use for a multi-render batch file), briefly, works like this:

"POV-Ray supports an automatically declared floating point variable identified as clock (all lower case). This is the key to making image files that can be automated. In command line operations, the clock variable is set using the +k switch. For example, +k3.4 from the command line would set the value of clock to 3.4. The same could be accomplished from the INI file using Clock=3.4 in an INI file.

If we do not set clock for anything, and the animation loop is not used, the clock variable is still there - it is just set for the default value of 0.0, so it is possible to set up some POV code for the purpose of animation, and still render it as a still picture during the object/world creation stage of our project.

The simplest example of using this to our advantage would be having an object which is travelling at a constant rate, say, along the x-axis. We would have the statement

translate <clock, 0, 0>"

Green Shoots of Recovery

Last night, I dusted this project off, improved the staircase algorithm, and added a staircase to the Jade island.

One of the problems is the length of time each render now takes, even for a minor adjustment. However, once some new component is settled, I think it's probably going to be possible to set up a batch rendering job to produce all the renders anew, every time a significant component is added.

I have decided to inch the project forward in its incomplete state, adding as many of the individual stages of the game as possible, even based on an incomplete background picture.

For example, if a new bridge, building or piece of furniture is added to the island, then I might have to re-render a number of backgrounds later, and I might have to modify the positions of sprites to an extent, but better incomplete scenery at this stage rather than incomplete gameplay.

Update

Like most bloggers, I sometimes take time off from blogging.

I have had a number of interruptions, including a trip to Barcelona, work on Mythaxis and (guiltily) replaying Myst III - magnificent scenery.


I haven't been totally idle, though. Since I last blogged, I have refined the Junk and modified a spiral staircase algorithm to give me swooping stairways. I'll post some examples real soon now. And Christmas hols are coming up. I should get some more design done then.

Reporting completion on the Junk

It's been a slowish business, but I'm now reasonably happy with the junk. After all, it's only a platform for transport and a piece of furniture to view from afar.

As a sprite, it'll be viewable at various sizes and seen from left or right, but not animated.

I'll do a separate animation of the waterline splashing along, so it appears to be moving, and calculate speeds / sizes for various manifestations of it.

Yet More Junk

The latest version of the junk and its dinghy (which shares the junk's hull shape) sans ropes, but ropes will appear soon, thanks to Chris Bartlett's Rope macros and "after-sales support".

Benjamin Roux has also volunteered to help with the project.

More Junk

Got the masts and sails in the junk. Had some difficulty with the decks, because patches are not 'real' shapes and differences, intersections etc don't work the way you'd expect. Solving it by fitting a deckhouse and then painstakingly filling in the areas left with boxes and polygons, which will lead to a more authentic final appearance. The picture here is hull, deckhouse, mast and sails.

Junk

Put together the hull for a Chinese Junk, using 3 bicubic patches (actually 2, because the port and starboard hull sections are mirror images of each other.) The view is of the transom (rear end) of the boat. I took the measurements for the hull profile from a design on the internet.

Next, the decks and masts.

A Few Extra Plot and Image Points

I envisage a sea cave that the boat can sail into, but only when the portcullis across its entrance has been raised. So the player is at a land entrance to the cave, and can raise the gate from there, but the dock in the cave is only reachable by the boat sailing in.

Also, I started to devise a new spiral staircase function where the steps were not connected at the centre. I realised yesterday I could use an existing spiral stair function, and cut the centre out of it by differencing with a cylinder. I'd still have to add vertical struts on the edges for realism - a staircase can't just hang in the air - but the main job will be done.

Fan animation. I observed how a fan opens. The rearmost blade of the fan stays still, and only the top blade is showing. The top blade flips out, pulling the next and the next and so on.

I suspect the best way to create the images for this in povray would be in reverse. Start with the open fan as an array of blades, coat the array with the image, then for subsequent frames, pull the top blade back over the one underneath it, then pull them both back over the third, and so on, until the fan is closed. I'm not entirely sure this is possible, though.

A Bit of a Brain Dump

I haven't posted very much lately, partly because I was getting out the next issue of Mythaxis, but I have been thinking about it a lot. I have decided to start the game on a boat - a Chinese Junk. The boat can transport the player to various locations around the island as necessary, and I would use a chart table below decks to direct the boat to the destination.

The boat will also contain a number of useful items - including a fan to transport the player back to the junk, or summon it.

I already have a boat in povray. I just have to elaborate it a bit.

In thinking about this, I realised we must have a rocking effect for the scenery when on deck. I considered using an array of g2d rotated images for this, but I think it'll be easier just to pre-rotate the images in Paint Shop Pro and load them as sprites. I can arrange that they not be the whole size of the applet window by placing static sprites of portholes, sails, deckhouses etc to frame the background which will be a lower priority sprite.

I was briefly worried about fan management, because there are several fan functions, which I solved by having a hot spot on the open fan, and by having a special room for open fans.

• pick up (closed) fan - double click when fan not carried
• drop (closed) fan - double click when fan carried
• open fan - single click when in inventory 'room' only and fan is closed
• close fan - single click (not on fan hot spot) when in inventory 'room' only and fan is open
• use fan - click on hot spot on open fan

Sounds complex, I know, but I think it'll be natural. I may remove the restriction on opening the fan only in the inventory. Fan animation is going to be fun!

I have come to the conclusion that I have to fill out the game in povray before I do any more gameplay. I just keep realising that the game isn't rich enough without a good deal more articles in it. The game's going to be small enough without looking impoverished. So the next big push is scenery.

I still haven't bitten the bullet of music in mp3, but I'm not too worried about that.

Break in Transmission

A whole month since I've had time to concentrate on The Game, but watch this space...

Version 1.1 now available

A zipped version with all the fixes to date is now available.

The original (lame) example now runs on 1.1 code.

Both of these can be accessed via:

http://amazonsystems.phpzilla.net/

What Next?

I think I have reached a suitable point at which to preserve the current state of the code. So I'll upload version 1.1 in due course.

Next stage will be new artwork, followed by a new puzzle, then the music problem must be solved.

Scale and Flip facilities

I have now added scale and flip facilities, to allow the same image to be used for a sprite at different sizes and reversed.

Different scale in x and y direction is possible, invert, mirror and all three.

In the diagram:
1. Normal sprite
2. 75% scale on both x and y axes
3. 75% scale on both x and y axes plus mirror
4. 75% scale on both x and y axes plus mirror plus invert

Priority

Having a little trouble with the priority of sprites, but nothing desperate yet. I have a feeling that monkeying with vector elements is the cause of the problem. I may have to try a different approach to sorting the sprite list.

(later) Schoolboy error. I was using insertElementAt() instead of setElementAt().

Thus - the Vector of Sprites appears in slist:

//      This is a sinking sort. On first pass, the highest
//      priority sprite arrives at the bottom. On second,
//      the next highest arrives at second bottom, etc.
//      Sprites of the same priority remain in their
//      original sequence with respect to each other.
    for (ii = 0; ii< slist.size()-1; ii++)
    {
        for (jj = 0; jj < (slist.size()-ii-1); jj++)
        {
            spare1 = (Sprite)slist.elementAt(jj);
            spare2 = (Sprite)slist.elementAt(jj+1);
            if (spare1.getPriority() > spare2.getPriority())
            {
                slist.setElementAt(spare1, jj+1);
                slist.setElementAt(spare2, jj);
            }
        }
    }

Gull motion bug fixed

I was dissatisfied with the original gull motion (see 30 December 2008 entry). Found out what it was today.

The previous table had the gull stopping for an extra beat at zero deflection. Now deflection goes from +3 to -3.