But now, I'm working (again) on a game engine. Woo.
But this time it's different for the following reasons:
- I am not planning this at all, I will just refactor as necessary.
- I am making content as I need it, not all at once (big sticking point).
- I am using C# and XNA.
- I am better at programming.
So I'm going to have fun doing this without too much forward planning, and seeing how playable it is.
Anyway, the first thing I started on were the gameplay classes, because they're more fun to make than graphical classes.
So the most important game play class is the entity (I started spelling game play as two words because Firefox's spell check is yelling at me) because it represents something that can be interacted with.
Every entity has two parts: its sprite, and its other stuff. I couldn't figure out a name for the other stuff so I called it "EntityReference".
Here's what I'm talking about:
using System;using System.Collections.Generic;using System.Text;using System.IO;using FromNothing.Utility;namespace FromNothing.Gameplay{ class EffectValue { string idName; //must be unique string visibleName; //what the player sees double Magnitude; //how strong it is long Duration; //how long (in milliseconds) it will last } //this class specifies all the information about an entity that I might want to save. //Any thing in the game world that can be interacted with is an entity. class EntityReference { //This MUST be unique, it is used to identify an object string idName; //This does not have to be unique, it is what the player sees. string visibleName; //This refers to the type of object that this actor represents. EntityTypes might //be "door", "tank", whatever string entityType; //Every actor has various attributes and statistics associated with it. //This dictionary maps an attribute name with its value. Examples of attributes //would be "strength", "dexterity", and "hitpoints", or in the case of a door, //"thickness", and "picklock difficulty". public SortedDictionary<string, Variable> attributes; //Attributes are variables that are always present and relate directly to gameplay. //They never go away. LocalVars, on the other hand, have distinct lifespans. These //might be used to track plot points involving an actor. public SortedDictionary<string, Variable> localVars; //Effects are temporary ailments that are capable of effecting all entities, not //just ones with specific storyline purposes. They are usually very temporary. //Examples of effects include "poison", "lung shot", or "on fire". public SortedDictionary<string, EffectValue> effects; //Actions Performable are luachunks that spell out what happens when a character //performs a certain action on this entity. public SortedDictionary<string, string> actionsPerformable; //if the variable does not exist, it is created. public void SetAttribute(string name, Variable value); public void SetLocalVar(string name, Variable value); public void SetEffect(string name, EffectValue value); public void SetActionPerformable(string name, string luaChunk); //there is no kill attribute because attributes live until the character is removed public void KillLocalVar(string name); public void KillEffect(string name); public void KillActionPerformable(string name); ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// public Variable GetAttributeValue(string name) { return state.attributes[name]; } public Variable GetLocalVarValue(string name) { return state.localVars[name]; } public EffectValue GetEffectValue(string name) { return state.effects[name]; } ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// public void Serialize(Serializer serializer); ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// } class Entity { public EntityReference reference; public Sprite sprite; Entity() { reference = new EntityReference(); sprite = new Sprite(); } }}