This video essentially covers the process of creating a sprite for an entity.  This includes creating a sprite sheet (which in most cases will contain the animations and frames more more than one entity), defining vector boundaries (for collision detection) for each frame, as well as any animations the sprite may have.  In the next video, I will demonstrate how sprites can be associated with entity combos and other actions alike.

Unfortunately the video is not of the greatest quality, but I will work on that this weekend to see if I can make it a little better.

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Currently the only entity that is covered is the main player, but over time we will provide means to create any entity type within the game.  Much like the sprite portion of the editor, the UI still needs refinement and more intuitive design, but the core functionality exists.  One key factor that remains is the ability to save and load created entities.  We have made the decision to use Karvonite to do our saving and loading and while it seems to have a lot of potential, it currently does not support Dictionary objects.  We hope to have this support in the September release. 

Moving forward, we need to create support for more entity types as well as a sort of sandbox to test entity abilities, animations, and collision response.

Currently however, only the primary pieces are in place.  When creating an entity, you first define the sprite associated with that entity.  This involves creating the sprite sheet, defining vector bounds around the image (used for collision – more on that another time), and defining animations.  In the future, we will likely specify any effects that can be performed on an entity (blurring, refraction, etc), but that is in the future.  

The UI will almost certainly be adjusted and polished over time, but this is what I am working with for now.  The work flow for creating vector bounds and animations will also be refined to be slightly more intuitive.  Later this week I will touch on the entities themselves and how they leverage the sprites created with the methods mentioned above.  Thanks for reading!

It has been quite some time since my last post and while there have been a number of things keeping me busy, I have finally managed to get a few things accomplished in my game.  First and foremost, I received the final art renderings from Jeff and am extremely pleased with the final result.  Currently I have most of the art in the game and am working on getting all of the animations to look correct while playing the game.  To that accord, I adjusted the animation system to be handled by one method rather than many small methods.  There are now several loop types that each animation may specify: LoopOnce, LoopOnceAndReturn, and LoopContinuously.  These are fairly specific to several game scenarios, but will hopefully prove to be useful in future projects as well.  I still need to include the bullets for the enemies as well as their movement animations. 

Also, the next release of the Farseer Physics Engine should be available in the first week of October, which should really help me in making strides toward completion.  For the time being, I have attached a debug screen shot to give you an idea of how the game is progressing.  Thanks for reading and leave any comments regarding the game, the way I am coding, or anything you can think of

Also recently added is a Camera class that essentially tracks the position of a virtual camera.  Since this is strictly a 2D game, it may seem odd to have a camera.  While this may be true, it definitely helps to determine when enemies should become active while providing for zooming and rotation functionality.  In this game the camera is always moving forward, regardless of the players movement.  In order for the position of any entity on screen to be in sync with the position of the camera, the entity (once active) must be progressed each frame at the same speed of the camera.  For future games, such as a platformer, the camera will only move when the player is moving and will be more dynamic. 

Lastly I should say that the artist, Jeff Jenney, has produced some excellent background layers that really bring the game to life.  I am working on a video that demonstrates these layers in motion and hope to have it posted in the near future.  Right now I am still working on the secondary fire for the flame thrower and cleaning up as much code as possible as some of it has become rather messy.  Further down the road, once the latest version of Farseer is released, I plan to flesh out the physics system and begin coding the results of different entity collisions.

bullet.TargetEntity = GameplayScreen.OnScreenShips[currentTargetNum % GameplayScreen.OnScreenShips.Count];                                                                currentTargetNum += 1;

Ships are removed from the list if they travel off-screen or are destroyed while on screen.  This may not be the most elegant solution, but for the time being it will suffice.  Enemy bullets always have their target set to the ship of the player.  I plan to add a time of decay so the missiles will not seek indefinitey, but rather explode after a specified amount of time.  I suppose that is all for now.  Hopefully I will have time to flesh this out even further in order to make it as robust as possible.  Next I may try to tackle the flame thrower as I have been putting it off for a while now.  The primary challenge with this weapon is the secondary fire; it disperses moderate amounts of nitrous oxide into the air that is then capable of being ignited by the primary fire.  I am still working on a way to accomplish this and will hopefully have something worthwhile in the near future.

Essentially the game is created using the following classes:

IntangibleEntity: Defines any object that can exist within the game.  Each contains a TangibleEntity and an ActionSet that further define its characteristics.  IntangibleEntity objects get updated.

TangibleEntity: The texture for the IntangibleEntity.  These objects get drawn.

Action: Anything the entity can do (move, shoot, etc.)

ActionSet: A collection of actions.

Area: A collection of entities.

Level: Contains one Area for all Intangible entities and another for all Tangible entities as well as the methods with which to build a level from an XML document.

 The XML schema still needs some work in terms of organization and structure, but that will likely happen with my next project.  Currently the critical functionality is present; the player can move, shoot both primary and secondary bullets, and change weapons.  Backgrounds can be created and scrolled at different speeds to create a parallax effect for depth and realism.  There is a basic tile engine that is also functional, but I have yet to develop a level editor to make full use of the engine.  This is something I most certainly want to complete before I begin my next project.   

I recently hired an artist to create several ship, weapon, and background representations for the game that will hopefully bring everything to life.  I am very impressed with  his work thus far and hopefully I will have some samples to display in the near future. 

There are a number of things on my “To do” list, most of which will hopefully be resolved in the next few months.  I am currently making use of the Farseer Physics Engine developed by Jeff Weber and am extremely grateful for his efforts.  At this time he is working on a new version that will add more functionality and efficiency; once that is released, I will integrate it into my game and confirm that I am able to make use of the updates without breaking my existing code.  I also wish to further develop several of the weapons in the game, namely the flame thrower and homing missiles.  One of the last primary tasks is to begin writing AI for the enemy ships.   This is something that I am still learning and will likely take some time, but I am very excited to embrace the challenge.

There is much more that I have to say, but that is a brief and somewhat disjointed compendium of my progress to this point.  I am also working on a design document that details the game play and the characters within.  Once it is complete, I will post it for anyone wishing to read and or critique what I have written.  Thanks for reading!

 -Josh