New GUI/UI, physics and weapons testing.
Hi,
As I have mentioned in my previous news post I am porting all my code for Phoenix USC to the Monkey X programming language. As I do I am taking what I have developed in Phoenix USC and orginizing it into an independent gaming framework that will have everything you would need to make a game like Phoenix USC including UI, GUI, physics, mapping, collision, networking and more. So as I develop Phoenix USC I am at the same time developing a 2D gaming framework to support it. This is possible because all of the work I done thus far on Phoenix USC (now porting it from BlitzMax to Monkey X) making it much easier to modify and organize code as I port it. So instead of having to reinvent things I can instead organize it into a seamless gaming framework.
All of this affords me the opportunity to redesign the games user interface as well as the GUI system. Allowing me to provide awesome support for Android and other mobile platforms and still fully support a PC interface wise. For example the video above was made on a Windows version of the build. I have also tested this PC interface configuration on an Android tablet (Phoenix USC will run on mobile platforms). I must say it is sweet to use and has that 'CSI' future touch interface feel. Where you can slide/move/cast , resize, expand, restore and minimize windows all with a touch. Pretty neat and I will post a video of Phoenix USC on my 11.6 tablet here soon. Ultimately I can provide whatever interface that is required through the gaming frameworks user interface framework which is currently using scripting to load user interface configurations. this makes it a lot easier to support mobile and PC's by just loading a user interface script made for each platform.
In the above video you can get a good sense of how this new gaming framework will preform and how it will work. Although an early test I have made good progress and the GUI's window system is preforming awesomely. In the video I show 3 separate window game views with 3 independent ship with their own weapon and controls. This gives a good sense of how multiple game views will function in a multiplayer setting. The windows also auto scale the game world view keeping a true scale on the map. This makes for some neat completely interactive separate views of the game world. You should also get a sense of how well the gaming framework performs and how well it does handling and managing all the GUI/UI overhead. For example each window continues to play/run even when another window is selected. I have custom written a very efficient window system and it provides a near zero lag on image draw to display times. Meaning it provides very fast access when drawing images to windows. The video is a good view of where I am heading and what you can expect in future development and design.
Since I am retooling Phoenix USC I have decided to explore adding a class of simulation play into the game. So I would keep the base and player vs. player idea but also add a simulation component to the game giving the game a larger and more purposeful direction. Something like an engineering or other class of 'sim' players. I have always wanted to mix the idea of a concept like SubSpace and say Total Annihilation into one universe. Where you can 'sim' or battle in single ship (player v. player arena) all in the same space. So I am exploring the feasibility of this concept and if you have any suggestions please let me know.
So I will be busy porting over code and reshaping it into Phoenix USC and a new 2D gaming framework. Porting is going just great and I love having the chance to shape things into hopefully something special. :)
- Rich -
