World of Ideas : Irrlicht-powered fighting game [BETA 2]

shurijo · Post by **shurijo** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 4:49 pm

Agar wrote:
shurijo wrote: I'd recommend moving to the App.config (XML) format instead of .ini. Its more standard now with .NET apps and much, much easier to read. You can define sections within them, etc. If you want to see some examples, just let me know.
The reason why I used INI files is because I'm used to their format and I never worked with XML before. Plus INI files can do anything I need for this project. Anyway if you've got some examples, sure, send them to me. I could always use some XML courses, it's gonna be useful some day, no matter if it's for this project or another one.

The easiest way to jump into XML is to just create an XML file that looks like a normal database table with the tag names that would be your table names and the attributes would be your fields. THen you can use DataSet.ReadXml(filename). That loads everything into a dataset, then you can query the dataset and tables for specific entries. If you wanted to move a bit further, then you can use XPath, but just loading the XML file into a DataSet is like having your own database. You can also use Merge to merge multiple XML files into the same DataSet.

shurijo · Post by **shurijo** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 6:08 pm

Agar wrote:
shurijo wrote: Why did you go with each letter as a 3d object rather than use the Irrlicht font loading?
I didn't know Irrlicht had a "font loader" for 3D fonts. How does it work? Anyway, I gave up using 3D fonts in beta 2. The new menu is 2D only. By the way, Irrlicht's 2D fonts are messy. Most of the time, the fonts' border are not sharp (they're blurry, with strange artefacts). That's why I used my own font loader in beta 2 (which you can see on beta 2's screenshots on my website. Just look at the character's names.)

I don't think Irrlicht has a 3D font loader. I was just talking about the 2D fonts (like the blurry ones, you mentioned). They are blurry in my app, too. But I went in that direction (using normal Irrlicht 2D GUI text/fonts) with the hope of True Type Font support in Irrlicht in a future release

I used to make images for my text and use an image gui element or draw2d image function in previous games to keep it from being all blurry.

Agar · Post by **Agar** » Sat Jul 29, 2006 12:30 am

I'm not too fond of TrueType fonts. If you're not using one of the Windows default fonts (and why would you? Default fonts are dull-looking...), it's pretty complicated to distribute your own fonts with your package : to make sure they're detected by Windows, you just can't copy them into the WINDOWS/FONTS directory, you have to write some stuff into the registry (at least that what I had to do when I tried) and most fonts you can find on the Internet can't be freely distributed with software for copyright reasons. I still think bitmap fonts are the way to go.

Now about XML. Maybe I'm wrong (I've not tested it yet), but from what I've understood of your posts, XML data seems to be embedded in the executable. I just don't want this : in future versions of the game, people will be able to add new skins to the game (and maybe even new fighters... I'll add a "mod" folder for people to make their own total conversions if they want to). Doing this requires reading from external files. Although I'm sure there's a way to read external XML files.

shurijo · Post by **shurijo** » Sat Jul 29, 2006 3:22 pm

I've made a few TTFs and like using some of the built in ones for basic menu stuff. If the bitmaps weren't so blurry, then I'd probably enjoy using them more

I'm just hoping that the TTF support will make my game look more sharp.

Nope, the XML isn't embedded in the executable. You could do that, if you wanted to and then read from the embedded resource. But I haven't ever seen anyone do that. Its easier to just read from the file.

I won't worry too much about trying to change your game to XML instead of ini. The ini code/strategy works fine and your time would be better spent working on verion 2

Maybe on your next app, you might look into it.

Good luck with the next release.

Agar · Post by **Agar** » Sat Aug 12, 2006 11:13 am

shurijo wrote:I won't worry too much about trying to change your game to XML instead of ini. The ini code/strategy works fine and your time would be better spent working on verion 2

You're right. Anyway, thanks for the tips on XML. I had never took the time to look into this format in depth, but from what I know it is really powerful.

shurijo wrote:Maybe on your next app, you might look into it.

In fact, I have another Irrlicht project for which XML would be particularly suited. But as I don't want to start working on too many things at a time, I think I'll stick on World of Ideas for the moment.

shurijo wrote:Good luck with the next release.

Thanks. If you're interested in World of Ideas, don't forget to subscribe to the rss feed (you can find it on the website), so you'll know about the latest news and updates. Yeah, I know that sounds like self-advertising.

Pr3t3nd3r · Post by **Pr3t3nd3r** » Sun Aug 13, 2006 12:19 am

Your game sound very interesting. I'm downloading it now to check it.
I was thinking at making something similar ... but ... there is a lot of modeling, graphics involved .. too scary

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Sun Aug 13, 2006 7:25 am

trust me; a royal lot. I know too well that. But fghting games art is fun to do.

Agar · Post by **Agar** » Mon Sep 11, 2006 8:55 pm

Beta 2 is complete and available for download !

You can get it here : http://cafedefaune.com/projects/worldofideas/files/

JP · Post by JP » Mon Sep 11, 2006 10:54 pm

Looks even better than before! I especially like the menu, looks fantastic!

I couldn't remember the controls and it seemed to run a little slow on my pc, but then i did have it set to highest detail, so that's probably why.

Also when i exited the program crashed and XP tried to send an error report.

Agar · Post by **Agar** » Mon Sep 11, 2006 11:48 pm

JP wrote:Looks even better than before! I especially like the menu, looks fantastic!

I couldn't remember the controls and it seemed to run a little slow on my pc, but then i did have it set to highest detail, so that's probably why.

Also when i exited the program crashed and XP tried to send an error report.

Thank you for your comments.

If the game is a bit slow, just disable the volumetric shadows : you won't lose much in term of visual quality and might get 20-30 extra fps.

About the crashes, I don't have any on my computer, but there are still a lot of things to fix. Even if it looks quite good, beta 2 is still a very primitive version of the game. Gameplay/moves/controls need a lot of tweaking, for instance. And some functions in the source code need optimizations or even complete rewriting.

RapchikProgrammer · Post by **RapchikProgrammer** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 3:08 pm

Hey, how do you do that multi texturish effect in the menu! You know like there is the new game text and a fast moving texture in the background! I want something similar for my game but dont know how to do it!