Dev Blog - Trilarion

[Trilarion]

As it goes with these projects, there isn't a new release everyday, so it might seem as there is little activity. This might be a wrong impression. People just might be busy coding, drawing, composing, translating and therefore not posting.

There are ways to see the activity, for example the logs of the source code repository: remake source changes and also tools library changes but not everybody is checking there.

To fill the gap I open this dev blog and let the world know (around once per month probably) what I am up to.

Comments very welcome.

[Trilarion]

I decided to finish the game design later and start coding since this is much more fun and we have to start somewhere. I started with the user interface according to the design I put together last week. It's not looking beautyful and it will not for some time but the start screen and some connections already work. Also there are many things hardcoded, but we want to be kind of fast. The images are just placeholders. So that's how it looks for now:

Start screen as it looks now

StartScreen.jpg (16.59 KiB) Viewed 57598 times

[Trilarion]

Time for an update. For about two weeks I am now coding at the remake and quite intensively. That means in the evenings, after work when concentrations is already low and with severe time limitations but I managed on average more than one code change per day.

I made many simple dialog templates full of placeholders and wired them together. Now I am going for the map and now it starts getting complex. Not that it is impossible (repeated application of the Observer pattern) but this is like the real meat, where you actually need to put some work in and this also means some time. My goal is still make the map editable until the end of the month.

Two details:

1. As I do not know beforehand how the interactions of the various game objects are implemented best I need to experiment constantly. This costs time but my brain is not large enough to solve all the problems beforehand. Fortunately refactoring in a modern IDE is not a topic. But the code is outright ugly at places for now. Luckily not many will see it.

2. There are many interactions possible. Just a quick list what I have so far:

• The mini map changed focus, need to tell the main map.
• The main map has another tile in focus, need to tell various other objects.
• Minimap or mainmap resized, need to adjust. (This can be avoided if we wait for the initial layout).
• The map changed (a single tile or completely), need to tell mini map and main map.

Editor Dialog as it looks now

EditorScreen.jpg (29 KiB) Viewed 57552 times

Don't complain about the low resolution of the screenshot, you see everything there is currently to see.

[Veneteaou]

AWESOME!

Just so you know, I follow the source code logs daily, and it's great to see you doing something everyday. By the time you hand us an editor, I'm hoping to have the 12 basic tiles done so we can kick around building maps and get some alpha mockups going.


Exciting stuff.

[Trilarion]

As you can see in the attached image there is some progress in the last couple of days. You can change the terrain at a tile (although only from sea to plains currently), you see the changes drawn in the mini map, you can zoom around in the large map by clicking on the mini map and you can save the map (into xml) however not yet load. The drawing of the tiles in staggered layout is not yet optimized there are missing half tiles which will be corrected before the first release.

Editor dialog as it looks now

EditorScreen.jpg (13.39 KiB) Viewed 57518 times

So I am proud to announce a first deadine. in 1.5 weeks (with a normal life this is ambitious), aka 4th of November will be release day of version 0.1.0. It will basically just be a simple map editor featuring art from Ven and I will copy the original Imp1 map (at least the terrain as far as we have it).

[Veneteaou]

There is nothing that inspires me to work on artwork more than seeing your progress here and on the Google Code repository. Hopefully I will have the other 6-7 tiles finished by the 4th as well.



AWESOME.

[Trilarion]

I am hunting bugs and making small addings while increasing the under the hood capabilities. And I started implement the map from the original Imperialism but this is tedious work manually. Does anyone know how to extract the original map terrain tile information, even better can send me a file with this information?

If not, filling the map will become a community effort.

Editor Screen as it looks now

EditorScreen.jpg (19.54 KiB) Viewed 57489 times

[Veneteaou]

Hmm... You should ask on the Imp_List, I think there have been several people over the years who have attempted to break into those and edit stuff.

[Trilarion]

So the answer is that it can be done. Each map file is 6480 (108x60) tiles with 36 bytes description each and additionally 384 entries with 198 bytes each, probably for provinces. One of the 36 bytes depicts the terrain. So it will be doable to import a map from Imp1 to our programm. Thanks goes to this thread and specially to someone called Tygger Meltdown, who however seems to be inactive since many years (the posts are from 2005). Also the downloads of the programms to convert the map aren't there anymore, but they might be on the Imp_List download section. Filed a request to join the list.

[Veneteaou]

Dminoz is the person who has to approve those, so don't hold your breath. The list currently doesn't have any fixed download links, but I will see if I can find something somewhere.


Edit: ExeScope