I had an idea..

I was thinking yesterday while watching my first game map cycle through the days and nights..  Why can't we also cycle through the seasons..  If I have asset's that have fall, winter, and summer versions, then can we load and change those in real time?  I know this is not the first time anyone has done/though of this, but it was a pretty good thought for me.  All to often game levels (in the online versions) are just static maps with sometimes breakable objects, and yes even most have day/night cycles.  Not everything has to be so static all the time..

So, i am sure this will be done in Lua..  (I think)  Using SQLite, we can store the number of days in a year, at which days the new cycle starts, and which day it is.  Each time the day night cycle completes it adds 1 to the current day..  Simple enough right?  So then its just a matter of changing the models, so how do we access the models?  How do we tell the engine to load the new ones, and should they all change at the same time, or should it be random?

I think we need a single controller.  This controller will determine each of the sub components and tell them when to change.  It must communicate with the SQLite AND the model controllers.  It must also communicate with post processing (after all we want it to rain, snow, hail, etc....).  If we are going to have seasons, then we need seasons.

So off to learn/research, and test..  wish me luck

wow been awhile......

I had no idea how long it had been since my posting.  I guess this is part of running a web hosting and design company, as well as having a regular full time job.  My company needed me to jump in and get some things rolling.

I hope to get back into my game and soon.  I think I may just use BM for my first completion.  I might be focused on the "next great mmorpg" and not enough on "just get one done"  I have enough knowledge and assets to complete a simple project, so I need to do that.  I have been very impressed with a few of the people in the community actually going to release a game.  Its very exciting, and I am looking forward to see what they have done...


Well, look for more posts from me soon.

If your wondering about the hosting, my company site is http://dfghosting.com and the design/development team is located at http://darkforgegfx.com  stop by if you want to.

Leadwerks/Blogspot integrator

This is my first blog creating the integration of leadwerks, and blogspot.

I have been having a little fun with BlitzMax. I am starting to get into how much easier it is to code with. I love how many modules there are for it, but its still lacks quite a bit in the 3D and Physics world. I only mention this as leadwerks is a commercial product, and I and talking of freely available Modules... There is a irrlicht module for BM(BlitzMax), but it looks to limiting, and a lot of custom rendering needs to be added to make it even close to LE... (Why not just use LE?)I am just not in its current state.  I am focused on MORPG style, and LE, just can NOT live up to the task. The lack of dedicated server capability means, that a custom processing/physics system would have to be made to give me the netwerking capability that I need... This is the reason, I am playing with BM.

To create a custom dedicated server, this is what I am looking at... The server needs to be able to process the positional data of the terrain, the water, and the physics bodies of everything. I don't feel there is a need to process the models, as a server doesn't care. We are only looking at the physics of those models. To do this with LE, we must know how to process the SBX files, and only pull data we need, and as well as the .phy data... I am not strong enough in BM or in coding to do this, and to find out how LE does it would require source access, which I mailed Josh for, but he seemed to ignore me, and never responded..

I wonder if Josh if going down the same path MOST engine's end up going down. " FPS is where the money is so that's where I focus". I wonder if developers think, that because some AAA titles are going to non-dedicated hosting, that's where they should go... I hate to tell them, the reason so many "indie" teams are pooping up, is because the AAA stopped listening to the customers. "With enough ad money, we can still sell a product at a huge profit, and it can still FAIL as a game" Look at MW2; $500+million and still going, but the PC community is outraged at what they did... 6 hours to beat the SP, and no choice/anti-hack of MP. It really is a stupid game. Yeah I listened to the hype and payed my $60, and played maybe 10 hours of it, and haven't been back since.

Kind of went off on a tangent there, but for a good reason. Multiplayer capabilities. This is lacking big time in LE, and I wonder if Josh is going down that route.

Back to my topic; Creating a dedicated server. There a plenty of source holders, and I wonder why no one has done this yet? Its possible.  Esp. since most network games use messaging.  The D.S. doesn't even need to be LE, it just need's to know how to process the incoming messages, and send out the right messages back to the client... With RakNet one could even use RPC to send commands directly to the client; calling spawn commands, render commands, etc.. while the client just sends back messages..

So step one. Process the SBX and .PHY files.

Step two.  Process incoming messages.

Step three. Send back RPC's.

all-the-while communicating with the database to send info about the client.

Ok, well I am off to research some more, and hopefully find a few people interested in creating a "real" dedicated server for LE.....

wish me luck!