Intel sponsors gamedev.net search:   
IfThen Software LLCBy VBStrider      

Thursday, November 19, 2009



News

No news to report this week.


From the Programmer
Written by Invisible

The file I/O system will provide classes for I/O operations on various file formats. For example, there will be a class that handles reading/writing from/to an INI file. This class will make use of a basic file I/O object that handles the details of reading and writing bytes from/to the file. The INI handler doesn't care where the data is, so it is possible for data to be in memory, on disk, or even on another computer.

The system will also support archive formats, allowing multiple files to be stored in the same file. This will also allow a more advanced archive system, similar to a file system, which has directories and file names. The entire archive could be encrypted, as well as individual files within it.

If all game-data is stored in an archive, a game could (in theory) consist of only an executable and the data file. However, there is a disadvantage to doing this. As an example, if a particular API to decode an audio file permits no way to give it the data directly rather than a filename, the audio file must reside in the normal file system. You could get around this by unpacking the audio files into the file system when the game starts, and then deleting those files when the game ends, but then you run the risk of cluttering these files on the user's hard drive in the event of a crash, not to mention longer load/shutdown times.


Artist's Easel
Written by GreyKnight

iScribble Sketches #11

(Click to enlarge)



Community Spotlight
Written by Jay, Dead9000, and Invisible

This passed week, InvisibleMan made some improvements to the SAO server, and Acaceol has fixed various things in HAL (the SAO chat/moderator bot). The change to the server got rid of a bug known to the community as the "pit glitch" (RIP). A couple problems with the banning system were fixed, and various small things were done to the moderator commands. The swearing filter has also been upgraded, and will now block the message and issue a private warning. Hopefully this encourages players to not swear. As far as HAL is concerned, some changed were made to moderator commands, moderator-only messages are no longer sent to the non-mod channel, and message colors now reflect the ones in-game.

It has only been about 6 months since he started, and yet he rose to heights most reach in a year if not more. He surpassed players in the Top 10 weekly, sometimes even daily, without breaking a sweat. I speak of Toraneko of course, and this week he achieved level 52 making him rank 2nd on the Unofficial Top 10 list.

An SAO mod archive has been made recently by a player named Zecronious. This site features news about up-and-coming mods, a list of mods, the option of uploading your mod to the website, as well as Ace's "Automatic Mod Installer".

Comments: 0 - Leave a Comment

Link



Saturday, November 14, 2009



News

The winners have been selected for the IfThen Software Pumpkin Carving Contest 2009! Thanks to everyone who entered, and congratulations to the winners!

First Place - Giygas


Second Place - SadisticusMaxim


Other Entries







From the Programmer
Written by Invisible

I am currently working on the font and text systems for the engine.

The font system will support both raster and vector fonts. They both use a generic interface so that a font can be used in the same way no matter what its data format is. Due to limitations with the rendering system, vector fonts won't be immediately available. However, once the rendering system has been upgraded, vector fonts will be possible.

The text system will have two classes; plain text and rich text. The rich text class will support word-wrap, margins, text color/size/style changes, the ability for a section of text to respond to mouse events, embedded images, and other features. When only simple text display is required, an instance of the plain text class is used.


Artist's Easel
Written by GreyKnight

iScribble Sketches #10

(Click to enlarge)


(Click to enlarge)



Community Spotlight
Written by Jay

Zecronious, a new member to the SAO community, has been busy creating a World War II mod and a mod archive. He has a Sci-fi mod currently in progress. The community expects a lot from Zecronious as he becomes even more active.

Comments: 0 - Leave a Comment

Link



Thursday, November 5, 2009



News

We have released a small Halloween-themed game called "Charlie's Spooky Adventure"! Collect as much candy as you can while traveling through a haunted forest. Watch your step though! You might come to an untimely end...

(Click to enlarge)

Download

For more details, including support, please see the following thread: http://www.ifthensoftware.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1689


From the Programmer
Written by Invisible

First off, sorry about missing a couple weeks. We were deep in development of Charlie's Spooky Adventure, and didn't have any spare time.

I have added a new feature to the rendering system: A camera. Instead of moving renderables in screen space, they can now be moved in world space. Render sets that are in the world are registered with the camera. When the camera is moved, it creates a new matrix for all of the renderables that it controls. This matrix translates the renderable to the correct location in screen space. I plan to look into using Direct3D to perform this transformation for me, but the current setup works well enough for now.


Artist's Easel
Written by GreyKnight

iScribble Sketches #9

(Click to enlarge)


(Click to enlarge)



Community Spotlight
Written by Acaceol, Jay, and Invisible

On Monday the 2nd, ITS unveiled its secret Halloween game, Charlie's Spooky Adventure. This game was in development for about a month. This is the fourth game by ITS deemed worthy to be on the new homepage. The game's a nice 2D sidescroller game (the style of SAO), in which the object is to collect all the candy strewn about the map, without dying in the process.

There's more good news: The graphics in CSA are moddable, which probably means CSA mods for SAO, and vice-versa, and there's also a chance the map files can be edited as well. ITS has no plans to release a/the map editor, but there might be an unofficial one made soon.

The Crumpet Club, a new version of an older clan, began recruiting members recently. The creator, Lee, intends for the Crumpet Club to have high leveled players. Another clan-like group, known as the Anti Noob Squadron, has been active lately and has been... Well, killing low leveled players. Lastly, a new clan calling itself The Elites was created recently by a relatively low leveled player with the hopes of creating a friendly bunch of people.

A player known as both Raghu and SilverDragon has dedicated a blog to SAO. Though the blog is small and unofficial, Raghu hopes to reel in a lot of views, and if it's active enough, purchase a domain for it.

Comments: 0 - Leave a Comment

Link



Thursday, October 15, 2009



News

No news to report this week.


From the Programmer
Written by Invisible

I ran into a rather odd problem this week. I was creating the workbench for the rendering system, which seemed to be working fine... Until I ran it in debug mode and it crashed.

After poking around in the code for a bit, I found out that the crash was being caused by attempting to iterate through an std::list. However, I was unable to recreate the bug in a testbed project. Out of ideas, I was about to quit for the day when I had a sudden inspiration: The rendering system's workbench was being ran in debug mode, but the static libraries that it used were compiled in release mode. Sure enough, after using debug versions of the static libraries, the program ran perfectly fine.

Curious to know exactly what was causing the problem, I made a copy of the workbench and the libraries that it used and slowly stripped away code that wasn't affecting the crash. Here is the code that I was left with:

http://codepad.org/ibTVTcOv
/*****
test.h
*****/
	#ifndef HEADER_TEST
	#define HEADER_TEST

	#include <list>
	using namespace std;

	void FunctionA(list<int> *src_lstList);

	#endif


/*****
test.lib
Runtime: Multi-threaded DLL
*****/
	/*****
	test.cpp
	*****/
		#include "test.h"
		
		void FunctionA(list<int> *src_lstList)
		{
			list<int>	*lstList = src_lstList;
			
			// If this line is removed, the error does not happen.
			if (1 == 0) lstList->begin();
		}


/*****
test.exe
Runtime: Multi-threaded Debug DLL
Links with test.lib
*****/
	/*****
	main.cpp
	*****/
		#include "test.h"
		
		int main(int argc, char *argv[])
		{
			list<int>	*lstList = new list<int>;
			
			FunctionA(lstList);
			
			list<int> *lstList2 = new list<int>;
			
			// This is the line that errors.  The error is:
			// First-chance exception at 0x00401023 in test.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0xcdcdcdcd.
			list<int>::iterator i = lstList2->begin();
			
			return (0);
		}






Line #29 interests me in particular. Since that if statement should never be entered, you would think that lstList->begin(); would have no affect on anything. However, if that is changed to lstList->size(); or simply removed, the problem does not occur. The only explanation I can think of is that std::list::begin() is inline, which must somehow escape the if statement or cause corruption of the code. A debug version of std::list is being placed into a release version on line #26, but since only a pointer is assigned, std::list should be none the wiser.


Artist's Easel
Written by GreyKnight

iScribble Sketches #8

(Click to enlarge)


(Click to enlarge)



Community Spotlight
Written by Invisible

Jaythemage has released another community spotlight video. Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gniKypFQLUA

Comments: 1 - Leave a Comment

Link



Thursday, October 8, 2009



News



We are hosting a pumpkin carving contest on the forums. One of the prizes is a beta invitation to the "Loradon 3.0" Preview, so be sure to check it out! For details, please read the forum thread here:
http://www.ifthensoftware.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1646


From the Programmer
Written by Invisible

For the past week I have been cleaning up the rendering system. Because of this, I have needed to brush up on my Direct3D skills. If you are working with Direct3D9, I highly recommend this poster of the Direct3D9 graphics pipeline: http://www.geeks3d.com/20090714/direct3d-9-programming-graphics-pipeline-poster-and-free-pdf-book/ It also comes with a book, which may be of use to you. After painstakingly piecing together the many sheets of 8.5"x11" paper that the poster was printed across, it is now hanging on my wall in an easy to view location. It has really helped clear up some confusion with the order in which things are processed.

Renderables will be split into two categories: 2D and 3D. 2D renderables will be further categorized into graphic, line, rectangle, point, circle, curve, triangle, square and ellipse. It is the renderable's job to ensure that what it represents is rendered correctly. If the renderer is 3D based, and the renderable needs to render a circle, it will be rendered from many line segments. The rendering system may or may not support all of these features depending on the platform and available resources. If the platform is not well known before hand, the user should check the capabilities of the renderer before attempting to use it.


Artist's Easel
Written by GreyKnight

iScribble Sketches #7

(Click to enlarge)


(Click to enlarge)



Community Spotlight
Written by pifreak and Invisible

Jaythemage created a cool Community Spotlight Video.

This week in the Stick Adventures Online community, a player-held event has been announced by Miotatsu. The First Annual Crumpet Cup is going to be a PvP tournament, and the prize is a level 50 account!

Under the Mods section, we have a new one created by miotatsu titled "Remix Mod" and one by Jay titled "Invisibleman Mod". The remix mod is a combination of past mods of the game, and the Invisibleman mod features a floating hat and outlines for creatures. Jay made some other interesting mods, including the Zelda themed "A Stick to the Past" and the Final Fantasy themed "Final Fantasy VI Mod". SadisticusMaxim created a mod as well, titled "Pokemon Mod".

Over at the Loradon Online community, it appears Giygas is still working on the Loradon fangame "Loradon Legends". He has released a gameplay video to show what is done so far.

Comments: 0 - Leave a Comment

Link



Thursday, October 1, 2009



News

No news to report this week.


From the Programmer
Written by Invisible

There isn't much to report this week.


Artist's Easel
Written by GreyKnight

iScribble Sketches #6

(Click to enlarge)


(Click to enlarge)



Community Spotlight
Written by miotatsu and Invisible

This week we have some very exciting news from the community; InvaderKED has become a Half-Moderator and can help keep the chat clean in Stick Adventures Online by muting and un-muting players.

Miotatsu has made a Community Spotlight Video, and an XP-Tracking Tutorial.

And finally, InvaderKED and Jay have been advancing ranks in the Unoffical Top 10.

Comments: 0 - Leave a Comment

Link



Thursday, September 17, 2009



News

No news to report this week.


From the Programmer
Written by Invisible

The reference counting system works, and supports strong as well as weak references. Because of this, I was finally able to get the problems with the drag and drop system fixed. The GUI system keeps a strong reference to the GUI elements, and the GUI system's user keeps weak references to the GUI elements so that it can talk to them. This way the GUI system "owns" all GUI elements, and you never have a GUI element existing outside of the GUI system.

I am planning on cleaning up various parts of the GUI and other systems before moving on to the next GUI element type. One of the changes will be containing registering user input handlers inside of the GUI system. If the user interface needs to detect a keypress (for example, to move the character or exit the game) or other user input, it will register a user input handler with the root GUI element instead of directly to the user input system.


Artist's Easel
Written by GreyKnight

iScribble Sketches #5

(Click to enlarge)


(Click to enlarge)



Community Spotlight
Written by Invisible

Sorry, there isn't a community spotlight article this week.

Comments: 0 - Leave a Comment

Link



Friday, September 11, 2009



News

IfThen Software LLC now has a Facebook page! Be sure to check it out.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/IfThen-Software-LLC/127059951447


From the Programmer
Written by Invisible

A warning to anyone who wants to try Microsoft Visual Studio 2010: Please remember that it is a beta, so don't install it on a computer that you depend on using. Unfortunately, I installed it on my main computer a few months ago. It didn't seem to do any harm, although I only used it once and promptly forgot I had it.

I ran into an issue a couple Saturdays ago that involved runtimes and very little space on C:. To fix the issue, I uninstalled programs that I hadn't used for a while. One of these programs was Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. The issue was eventually resolved, and I started work again on Monday... Or at least I tried to. Apparently MSVS2010 got tendrils around MSVS2005 and wouldn't let me start it. When I tried, it reported that it could not find MSVCR100.dll. A little annoyed but not too worried, I started the MSVS2010 installer. I didn't have enough room on C: to install MSVS2010 completely, so I only installed enough features to get the MSVS2010 runtime installed as well. The install was very slow, but it eventually finished and I could once again start MSVS2005.

Everything seemed to be working... At least until I tried to compile. Apparently some of MSVS2005's internals got removed, damaged, and twisted. Obviously not a good sign. I started the MSVS2005 installer so that I could repair it, or worst-case reinstall it, and was greeted with an error message. Fortunately, the installer made it past the error and allowed me to attempt a repair, but the repair itself generated various errors. After trying this a few times, I decided to uninstall MSVS2005 and install it fresh from the CD. The uninstall seemed to work, but when I put in the CD to install it again, the same error from earlier poped up. I was able to start the install process, but it kept crashing.

The problem was eventually fixed by uninstalling every version of Microsoft Visual Studio that I had installed, along with everything that was installed with them or possibly related to them. After that, the installer worked perfectly fine. Luckily, custom options somehow survived the big uninstall, so I didn't have to setup header and library paths all over again.

After that mess was taken care of, I managed to get the basic GUI image element about 90% complete. I decided to work on the GUI image element instead of the GUI window element because it is simpler, and thus easier to test the GUI system's features. The image element can be created, attached to any other GUI element that can support children, and be picked up and dropped. That last feature doesn't work quite right yet, due to problems with reference counting, but hopefully the problem will be fixed by next week's newsletter.


Artist's Easel
Written by GreyKnight

iScribble Sketches #4

(Click to enlarge)


(Click to enlarge)



Community Spotlight
Written by miotatsu, pifreak, and Invisible

A funny parody of a scene from the movie "300" was created by players in SAO last week. The video is available here.

An SAO clan has changed their name to "The Crumpet Club". The Crumpet Club is proud to announce that their leader, miotatsu, has reached level 51 in Stick Adventures Online and is now ranked #2 in the Unofficial Top 10.

IfThen Software now has a Facebook page as described above. This will be a good way for fans to join the group, and for friends of fans to find out about the community.

Acaceol has made a new collective, titled "We". Since it is not a clan, players already in a clan are allowed to join. Acaceol is not giving away the point of this collective until the signing up is done; very interesting and mysterious.

There are a few new mods posted on the Stick Adventures Online forums. One that looks nice is titled "Mr_yoshi's First Mod". The mod has a city theme with the text, monsters, and scenery changed.

Another notable mod, which is rather humorous, is titled Shoop Da Whoop Mod, by Baco~.

Comments: 0 - Leave a Comment

Link



Thursday, August 27, 2009



News

Sorry, there isn't any news this week.


From the Programmer
Written by Invisible

I made a couple of systems (focus and foremost) simpler. This was possible because of the new mouse hover system I described in the previous issue. Instead of having "system focus" and "system foremost", each element keeps track of whether or not it has focus from its parent, and if it is its parent's foremost child. If an element wants to be brought forward when it is clicked on, it requests that it becomes its parent's foremost child when it detects that the mouse has clicked on it directly, or one of it's children. Focus will also be set. An element far down in the tree can be brought to the foreground in this way by its parents detecting the click and bringing themselves (and thus all lower elements) closer to the foreground.

I have finally finished the general GUI system designs, and I was actually able to work on code again. The root GUI element is finished, and I plan on getting most of the window GUI element finished tomorrow. Unfortunately, all these elements also require their own designs. Hopefully I will be able to spend more time coding and less time designing this time around though.


Artist's Easel
Written by GreyKnight

iScribble Sketches #3

(Click to enlarge)


(Click to enlarge)



Community Spotlight
Written by Invisible

Congratulations to Dead8000 for reaching level 52 in Stick Adventures Online! He is currently the highest level player in the Unofficial Top 10.

Noxxet has released a mod for SAO titled "Magic Punch".

Comments: 0 - Leave a Comment

Link


All times are ET (US)

 
S
M
T
W
T
F
S
1
2
3
4
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
15
16
17
18
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30

OPTIONS
Track this Journal

 RSS 

ARCHIVES
November, 2009
October, 2009
September, 2009
August, 2009
July, 2009
June, 2009
May, 2009
April, 2009
March, 2009
February, 2009
January, 2009
December, 2008
November, 2008
October, 2008
September, 2008
August, 2008
July, 2008
June, 2008