(NPG) Final skinned ragdoll video

After finishing the implementation of the new skinned ragdoll-feature in NewtonPlayGround I just started to create some sample scenes for the final release. Throughout the last days I finished this feature (adding shadows, possibility to attach springs and joints and matierlas) and also tested it very hard to see if there were any problems or bugs left. And since everything works the way it should, and since I also finished the improvments to the spring implementation I had planed (you can now attach any kind of object to any other kind of object, which didn’t work on the last release) I’m preparing for the final release. [Read More]

(NPG) Preparing Newtonplayground 1.53

So after playing some newer games with my new rig (which runs like a charm), I started to do some coding again. And I decided to pause developement on PjW for one or two weaks so that I can finally finish up version 1.53 of the [Newtonplayground]((/creations/newtonplayground/). This was something sitting on my neck for too long now, as I already stated in the newton forums that a new version of NPG was almost finished but somehow I always got distracted and just forgot about that. [Read More]

(OT) New System

Ordered sunday evening, the new parts for my dualcore-system arrived tuesday morning and everything went smooth. Assembling went easy as suspected and the system did it’s first boot and Windows XP installed without any problems. But what I’m most happy with is the noiselevel of my new PC. My old parts already were rather silent, but this time it’s so quiet that you almost can’t hear it, no matter if it’s just plain working or under full load when e. [Read More]

Game design again

I’ve been doing some game design on PjW the last few days and still work a bit on it. That’s why I prefer doing games over other stuff (techdemos, engines), because it includes a lot of different things to do. It’s coding, game design, creating content (3D models and such) and much more. So if you’re tired of one part you just to something different that’s still related to the project. [Read More]

Coding under the hood

And another post without screenshots. That’s because I’ve mainly done stuff under the hood, so there isn’t really much to show with a screenshot this time. First I implemented save games. You may think that it’s not the best idea to implement such a feature at this early stage, but for this type of game it’s really necessary. To make it concrete I’ll use army feature of the game as an example : If I want to test this part of the game I would have to open up the army management dialogue, create a new army, assign it to a region and thest e. [Read More]

GUI, sciences and stuff

Over the last days I have put some more work into the user interface, so in addition to the overhauled control center I showed you last time I now also have a (small) system toolbar in the top left of the screen which currently has buttons for saving, loading and quitting the game. But more important is the addition of the most important informations to the control center, so the player is always uptodate on the most important values concerning his nation. [Read More]

New control center

After thinking a bit more about the control center, I came to the conclusion that the four buttons I initially had in mind (and more or less implemented) were not enough, which in the end would mean that the player would have to press more than just one button to get to some of the important parts of the game. And since this was something I really wanted to avoid in my current game, I had to redo the buttons and now there are six buttons on the control center. [Read More]

Staff and Espionage

As opposed to what I planned in my last blog entry, I didn’t do any buildings at all cause I haven’t had much time to do work on the game over the weekend. But that doesn’t mean I did nothing! First thing I did was to flesh out the espionage (and sabotage) part of the game in my design document. At first I wanted this to be a minor part of the game with not many options, but after thinking about the whole espionage and sabotage thing, I decided to give it more importance throughout the game. [Read More]

Buildings

Yesterday I took the next step on the stairway to finishing my current game. As you could see from the last postings, I implemented the army feature first, and now I also implemented buildings. And after starting on implementing the feature yesterday night I did a “runthrough” and implemented the whole feature, not step-by-step as with the army feature. So I made my WeldEdit export buildinginformation to XML and ingame you can now build them in a region. [Read More]

Update

Sadly there are no screenshots to show off this time. But this is mainly due to the fact that I’ve spent the most time on coding the game mechanics, so on the surface nothing has changed but the game is still on it’s track (actually I’m rather surprised at how fast I advance with all the things I have planned). And besides this due to a personal loss in my family I haven’t had that much time to code since my last update. [Read More]