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Peter Bhat Harkins
Now Featuring Monsters
The So Play We All theme this week was “core game objects” and the time budget was 3 hours. I did did well for myself, time to review the others’ work — both of which included monsters.
Luke did well this week as he started to build out his combat system, including party members who (unless he’s hacked it in, but it doesn’t look that way) respond to locations and enemies. It’s a start at gameplay, though your choices are pretty limited so far. I like the idea in the blog post about having party members you can configure but not directly control, it reminds me of Ogre Battle.
Also, he’s started the storyline, including “the fact that the bear can’t seem to find you is important”. When you play, the bear enemy appears to be completely incapable of attacking you. Just for wild-ass guessing’s sake, I’m going to guess the player starts as some kind of ghost. We’ll see how I did when the storyline takes shape.
Jim... continued to work on the controllers for his web framework, as he did last week. I felt like this:
> Application creates CommandRouter and TemplateDisplay instances
I’m very happy for it.
> Application retrieves Events from the CommandRouter for the current Post data (usually none)
So, it’s like how PHP populates $_GET and $_POST for you before invoking a script, but redundant.
> Application retrieves Events from the CommandRouter for the current URI
Events are sounding awfully general purpose. Wasn’t this a game? I feel faint.
> Application loops through the current events (events can be added while processing other events) and calls the CommandRouter->ProcessEvent() method for each one
It’s a generic message queueing system. The world is going dim...
> CommandRouter creates any necessary controller and sub-display instance for the event and passes all data to any module event handlers registered for the current event
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
> Created controllers determine models to use which add their data to the relevant Display objects (which are further applied to the TemplateDisplay instance)
No, really, a grue. It eats developers who don’t finish games.
> Application renders the TemplateDisplay
The grue dies of boredom.
Jim mentioned he liked the Mortal Kombat drawing last week. I guess he didn’t click on it. It’s a link to a great article, which includes:
3. DON’T ROLL YOUR OWN TECH IF YOU DON’T HAVE TO
There are pros and cons to writing your own engine. But ask yourself, do you really have to? Is what you want to do impossible to do with what’s already out there or would you be reinventing the wheel? Of course, if you write your own engine you can make it just perfect the way you like it. But be honest, how often do you ever get past the engine to the game itself? Do you find yourself making game engines more often than you do games?
Bring the thunder, Jim.