[Gareth]

Ah-hah! Gareth got off his lazy ass and decided to post an update this week! How splendid.

Eherm. Except it's a programming update. Oh boy, that's a guaranteed thrilling read, right there.

I read this last week on Coyote's blog and thought 'Hmmm, that sounds like a great idea! I've had a host of small, annoying issues bogging me down on the code front, what if I put all that aside and just jam at max speed all weekend, I wonder how much progress I could make?' It seemed like a great idea and I was all fired up to do it. The goal was to throw together my existing code with some hacked-in workarounds to the issues I'm currently dealing with, build some city zones using the art I've already got + some quick and dirty prototype art and get some playable if ugly zones out of it over the weekend.

And then I did the opposite. Gah. Instead of quick and hacky, I ended up rewriting and refactoring code, cleaning up OLD hacks I'd made and carefully extending functionality. SoW is a long, rambling project, and any programmer reading this will understand those moments where you just feel the urge to redo and streamline things. So I made (some of) it all pretty. But it hardly fit the Game Jam spirit. I've got to be honest, I'm probably too invested at this point, I feel a strong urge to 'do it right'. And any old code I see which looks ugly demands that I fix/clean it, upon my honor.

Oh well, I was quite productive, regardless, so I suppose the idea helped anyway.

But it sucks for you guys, because this is the only kind of screenshot I have for you :



Nick might find that interesting, but I don't think anyone else cares.

In compensation for the lack of pretty pictures, I've decided to post up some of the SoW doodles from my sketchbook.  Well, my latest sketchbook, I have reams of the things. Note, these are just doodles, stuff I do to capture an idea for myself, most are pretty crap. None of this is guaranteed to be in SoW, or look like what it would actually look like in the game. It's just me thinking with a pencil. You can treat it like a game, try to guess what the hell I was trying to represent with that weird squiggle that makes no sense to anyone but me.

I've put them into a big montage file. I'd shrink it, but the drawings are already pretty bad, lose resolution and you may as well give up trying to figure out what they are. You can download the file here, it's 8 Mb.

[Oscar]

Ah-hah! Gareth got off his lazy ass and decided to post an update this week! How splendid.

Have you stopped fucking around with Mass Effect 2? I mean it both ways

[Wrath of Dagon]

So Torque still makes you write C++ code.

[Tuomas]

That'll do just fine, Gareth. 

The sketches aren't at all so hard to understand as you like to berate yourself

[Gareth]

still makes you write C++ code.

C++ is the superior game programming language.

Generally, though other languages might offer you some nice features which take some work off the programmer, they do so at the cost of power/control. For raw power, C++ is still pretty much king, unless you want to go down to the Assembler level.

It is pretty unforgiving for Teh Noobs though.

Have you stopped fucking around with Mass Effect 2? I mean it both ways

Lol.  

[Hector]

Also, you can add assembly directly into C++ as I recall, on the off chance you need that little extra power...

[Gareth]

Yep.

[caster]

I like the imagination presented in sketches, kosian worm looks excellent and that mine golem/robot too.
Buildings and towers and freaky looking flying machines also look very good as concepts .

[Wrath of Dagon]

still makes you write C++ code.

C++ is the superior game programming language.

Generally, though other languages might offer you some nice features which take some work off the programmer, they do so at the cost of power/control. For raw power, C++ is still pretty much king, unless you want to go down to the Assembler level.

It is pretty unforgiving for Teh Noobs though.

I meant it would be nice if you just had to write scripts.

[Gareth]

Oh right.

The idea of buying a game engine where you can just make whatever game you can imagine with scripts is a pipe dream.

For reference, SoW is currently 90% script. But I've been porting some of that across into C++, mainly the database related code. Script is incredibly powerful and useful for rapid prototyping, but the C++ equivalent is a bit cleaner and tends to result in better overall 'structure'.

Pretty much all of the 'RPG logic' will be left as scripts and open for modders to play with. Combined with the in-game editors for level editing and data entry into the DB, SoW is going to be fairly open for modders. In fact it is more an RPG engine, this thing I've made. Scars of War is simply a 'campaign' package that will ship with the game. Until I choose to make upgrades to the engine, further games I ship will just be campaign packages you drop into the folder. And modder campaigns will work in the same way.

[GhanBuriGhan]

Oh right.

The idea of buying a game engine where you can just make whatever game you can imagine with scripts is a pipe dream.

For reference, SoW is currently 90% script. But I've been porting some of that across into C++, mainly the database related code. Script is incredibly powerful and useful for rapid prototyping, but the C++ equivalent is a bit cleaner and tends to result in better overall 'structure'.

Pretty much all of the 'RPG logic' will be left as scripts and open for modders to play with. Combined with the in-game editors for level editing and data entry into the DB, SoW is going to be fairly open for modders. In fact it is more an RPG engine, this thing I've made. Scars of War is simply a 'campaign' package that will ship with the game. Until I choose to make upgrades to the engine, further games I ship will just be campaign packages you drop into the folder. And modder campaigns will work in the same way.

How difficult is TorqueScript? The description says its similar to C++ and object oriented. I have learned a bit of object oriented programming but that was years ago, and since then my only experience was with TES script and a little bit of Visual Basic.

[Gareth]

It is very similar to C++.

The main differences are that it doesn't have some of the core object orientated programming features of C++ and that, like many scripting languages, variables aren't 'typed', ie you can assign a number to a variable, then a string, and then a number again, and it really doesn't matter. It interprets it on the fly.

For what you'd be doing in Scars scripting you wouldn't need to worry much about that. I will provide a library of script functions handling everything from combat to merchant interaction which you can either modify or add to, writing your own functions. Basically, all you have to know how to do is write simple functions.

Let me give you an example. In the database, NPCs have an "OnDeathScript" field. Normally this is blank. But you can add in a function name. The code will then automatically call that function, passing in a parameter representing the character who died.

Then, you go write the function. Say it is called "DoBobsDeath", the function might look something like this :

Code:

function DoBobsDeath(%NPC)
{
  echo("Bob died! Oh no!");  // writes a string to the console so you can check the script happened.
  AddJournalEntry("CompletedQuestKillBob"); // Adds a journal entry telling the player to go get his reward for killing bob.
  SendQuestEvent("StartBobsCousinSeeksRevenge");
}

A simple example, but you can do a vast array of things from script. And you can attach those scripts to a range of events, NPC interaction, item interaction, etc.

[GhanBuriGhan]

I could deal with that, provided there is at least rudimentary documentation of what does what.

[Gareth]

Indeed there will be.

And anyone who has a valid license key will have direct access to me for help. 'Support' of that type is only for non-pirates, one of the value-adds for legit customers.

[Wrath of Dagon]

So are you planning to license your engine for other commercial games?

[Gareth]

I haven't really thought about it. Too far in the future to worry about right now.