Worklog for Dragon57
Worklog 1
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The converters I was writing to convert all my external media for Dark
Tower are finished. I now have no external files for the project. All
have been converted to Blitz include files. The converters will handle
any file type I through at it now. I don't have to be concerned about
pak files and such. :) I am now trying to decide whether to include muliplayer LAN code above and beyond the normal multiplayer the base game will have. Hmm, TCP versus UDP, etc. :( Coding progress includes: Added functions to handle 'include' files for the graphics, models, sounds, music, etc. Added function to handle updating the Dark Tower classic scoring board, including the Red pegs and territory keys. Converted the help subsystem to HTML files. Not sure whether to keep this as is or convert to in-game screens. There are a LOT of text and graphics and HTML makes the presentation easy. In-game would be a pain, but once beta testing begins, the feedback will be the ultimate say. Martin Parrott Desktop:2.67GHz Core i7 920 - 12GB Ram - eVga Geforce GTX 260 - Vista 64 SP1 w/Directx 10 Laptop: Sager 5660-C, 2.4GHz P4 - 512MB Ram - ATI M9 64MB - WinXP Pro w/DirectX 9.0b |
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| Well, the attempt to write supporting programs to convert DirectX objects and bitmaps to BB source has come along quite well. The bitmap converter is finished and works well. The DirectX converter is a pain. There are so many 'versions' of DirectX files I am finding that it seems impossible to cover them all. The converter works for my models, but I want to release it for others, so there is more work to do. Here are some shots of the game so far: Here are some screenshots of my progess: openingscreen towershot towershot2 pawnshot Desktop:2.67GHz Core i7 920 - 12GB Ram - eVga Geforce GTX 260 - Vista 64 SP1 w/Directx 10 Laptop: Sager 5660-C, 2.4GHz P4 - 512MB Ram - ATI M9 64MB - WinXP Pro w/DirectX 9.0b |
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The original DarkTower game was issued by Milton Bradley in 1981. It
was one of the first electronic board games of its kind. It had a large
following and the game commands a high price on eBay even today and is
very collectable. My game of the same name will be an attempt to recreate the original game as closely as possible, but in a 3D world using today's advantages in coding and visualization. My original code started in C++. This effort ground to a halt pretty quickly as I didn't have the time to code everything from the ground up. This code was converted to DarkBasic, but again ground to a halt because of bugs and limitations in DarkBasic itself. The code sat around for 9 months waiting on Blitz3D to become available. Now that I have BB3D, the porting of the DarkBasic code has commenced and is 95% complete. The existing code brings the total required code for the entire game to about 35% complete. * All the 3D modeling of the tower, pawns, buildings and playing board is complete. * Model textures are complete. * All sound digitizing is complete. * Front end GUI for game select, options, game load/save, help, credit, etc. is complete. * Skysphere and surrounding terrain is complete. Game coding is currently halted while a related piece of code is being finished. Namely the ability to convert a DirectX model to Blitz3D source code. I wanted to be able to do this so the program will have no dependency to external models. The game will allow 1-4 players, plus a tutorial mode just like the original. I am thinking about including the ability of to play against the computer, which the original did not allow. The game concept and name of DarkTower is copyright Milton Bradley. If any representative of Milton Bradley would like to contact me for any reason, please do so at parrottm@... Martin Parrott Desktop:2.67GHz Core i7 920 - 12GB Ram - eVga Geforce GTX 260 - Vista 64 SP1 w/Directx 10 Laptop: Sager 5660-C, 2.4GHz P4 - 512MB Ram - ATI M9 64MB - WinXP Pro w/DirectX 9.0b |