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[Toady One]

And I said I would start complaining around this time.  So let's see...  I guess things are going about as slowly as I thought.  I have these weird stacked pyramid things moving around.  Hopefully by the end of the night those will be blocky creatures walking.  All of the basic structures and functions are done -- I just need to make the pictures look Un-retarded.  There are still a few conceptual blocks...  it is difficult trying to take an abstract tree of body parts and arrange them properly on screen (with no visual editor).  I want a function that can take a creature's body tree and its designated stance points and create a body position for it from scratch.  This position will be altered by whatever action the creature is taking.  When I'm done, hopefully any strange stance you choose to take will be immediately accommodated by the system.  This isn't just a graphics exercise -- the position of the model determines the position of your body parts, which will make combat hit locations much more satisfying (no more leprechaun poking a titan's eye out).

I have no idea when the next version will be out.  March 27th is still the official release date

back to work...

[Demon]

What do these pyramids do to the frame rate??  Are you planning on speeding up the code in the look what I put off until now release?

Also, I was fiddling around with some OpenGL tutorials and I found that if I try to include my gl.h file its full of errors!     I had one of my friends try too and his compiler wouldnt handle it either...  Have you ever encountered this?

[Toady One]

They don't change the frame rate at all on my computer.  Each critter adds a few hundred triangles I guess...  I won't know if there is a slow down until people try it out on their computers.

I hadn't put any plans for optimization in at any specific point in the Plan, but I could try a few things for that release.

Did you put the OpenGL libraries in your project?  If you don't put the OpenGL libraries in, none of the functions in the header are defined and you'll get a bunch of link errors.  For Windows, the libraries are opengl32.lib, glu32.lib, and glaux.lib.

What type of errors are you getting?  I must have had about every error you can get while I was trying to put OpenGL in my project, so I can probably help

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My little pyramid people can now hold any stance I choose to give them.  There's one stance (on both upper legs and both upper arms) where the lower body gets reflected (so the tail is coming out of the belly and the right and left legs exchange position), but that's a minor error I should be able to catch.  The function I've written should be general enough to handle any stance for any creature body -- no function can do this perfectly (some stances and bodies are very weird), but I think it is currently a good approximation.

My next goal is to get them walking around and slapping each other.  Then I'll improve on the pyramid look a bit.  After that it's liquid display and the other changes I'm going to make for this version.

[Toady One]

I have my critters walking around now.  They hold their arms up high and there's an occasional reflection problem, but it should be straightforward to fix all of that.  I think I'm going to start making them look (a little) nicer now.  Each part is currently a pyramid disconnected from the rest of the body...  I think for this version I'll have to settle for cubes that are connected to each other.  Something like that...  I think I'll probably be done with creature models tomorrow.  Maybe I'll put up a screenshot then.

The March 27th Specious Release Date is now officially impossible  I'll have a better estimate after I try to tackle a few more of my goals for this version.  Hopefully I can get it out by the end of Spring Break (April 1st), because the beginning of this quarter is going to be Very hectic.

[Demon]

Indeed you are wise!  I dont even have opengl32.h on my computer!  I'm gonna go get that then try and compile this...

[Toady One]

It's annoying, but eventually you'll get it to compile.  That's the hardest part with Open GL.  I found it a lot easier to use than Direct X once I got it running.

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I fixed the reflection errors and made the textures on the critters match their fur in color and pattern.  I have a few things left to do with the creature models:

1) Unpyramidify them
2) Make arms/legs move when crawling
3) Make arms swing when walking
4) Make arms hang low instead of being held up when standing still
5) Make the animations for attacking

That should be sufficient for now I think, and I'll be with it by tonight if things go smoothly.  Then I get to do items (a LOT easier than creatures) and liquids, and any minor changes.

[Harlander]

Have you got an idea for liquids? I've heard they're quite hard to do.

[Toady One]

Yeah, I have a pretty good idea about how I'm going to do it, at least at this stage.  Like my idea for models, it will probably undergo a bit of revision when I actually do it  I'm also only dealing with blood splatters right now -- the oceans don't exist yet.  That doesn't mean I don't have to deal with filled squares...  a bleeding titan can fill up a square rather quickly.  There aren't any liquid flows right now, so a filled square will just look like a solid block of blood.  Later it will empty out into the surrounding squares, at least as well as I can code that without a massive slow-down.