Elysian Shadows

got new map art for Undead Empire. Threw together a quick map just to see how some of the tiles look. Currently I am working on online multiplayer functionality through xbox live, might take a while.

Looks well man, i've seen that menu system before :p lol. Keep up the good work, looking forward to seeing the multiplyer.

MrDeathNote wrote:Looks well man, i've seen that menu system before :p lol. Keep up the good work, looking forward to seeing the multiplyer.

Yeah, that menu is pretty sweet. The new tiles look real nice too.

Like I said, just ask if you want to test out the networking and we'll find a time. It's the least I could do after you helped me test mine out (beside, I'm genuinely interested in checking it out).

I finish up my last exam on the 10th so things it'd definitely be easiest for me sometime after that.

video update!

meant to run in 1080p but screen capture wouldn't get enough fps so turned it down to 720p. Also changing the resolution messed w the map scroll a bit.

changed a lot since last time, also got new character portrait art done!

4 player code is done and works too.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiZLlf7qNdY

Minus the HUD you could almost call that a finished product.

dandymcgee wrote:Minus the HUD you could almost call that a finished product.

Haha yeah I wish, not quite . Yeah about the menu and HUD waiting on artist to get them done, and all the enemy/sprites are being updated. Actually this is just a screen capture from my pc, on xbox 1080p tv it shows about twice as much map and the hud is pretty small on it, just screws up a bit when condensing the resolution to show on pc

Not too much gameplay coding left to do, need to implement weapon upgrades, difficulty level, a few more weapons, the end boss attack strategy and pathfinding, and then it should be good. What I am worried about is how long online multiplayer coding will take, im thinking ill get done with single/co op before xmas then over xmas/new years and january hopefully i can knock out the multiplayer functionality ( but im really worried about this because i dont have much experience with network coding .. )

I really liked the newest video... looks amazing!

Totally badass! Good job.

Very nice updates!

Btw, I assure you that networking will take longer to implement and it will cause severe mental damage to you

K-Bal wrote:Very nice updates!

Btw, I assure you that networking will take longer to implement and it will cause severe mental damage to you

Amen to that brother it caused me no end of headaches last time i made a networked game, it was worth it in the end though

Regarding networking, I'd suggest building a messaging/event system for your game (even if it's only for that sole purpose)? Going back, I wish I would have spent more time learning about that sort of design pattern and implementing it rather than jumping right into networking. Also, the NetRumble example that I followed is a decent example IF you learn to make use of the "find all references" command when you right click in Visual Studio. Networking was hard for me because it was distributed through out my code and the flow was hard to follow. It took me awhile to really appreciate how useful the "find all references" command is in VS, but once I started using it I could jump around far more easily (I've since learned that knowing how to use your IDE really does make a ton of difference).

The reason I'd recommend a messaging/event system is to simplify how the networking is structured in your code. Following the NetRumble example, you have these function calls distributed through out your code where you package data up into nice little packets (that are labeled, in the example I followed, using an enumerator that defines all packet types), and then send them off. Using a messaging/event handling system, you could handle that all in one place rather than having these calls distributed through out your code. It's slightly more costly than having it scattered, but it's not particularly significant compared to sending that stuff out as packets anyway (which I've found is one of the biggest strengths of the NetRumble example - it's pretty well designed in terms of what information it sends out - plus I think that XNA has a fairly efficient packet handling system that you work with). I spent far too much time bouncing around my code while working on networking, and it was an incredibly inefficient use of my time since I was perpetually distracting myself from whatever I was trying to focus on at the time so that I could track exactly where and what was sent out/received in several different locations.

Maybe it would be simpler for you to just integrate it tightly with everything else since, as you said, most of the main game logic is already there. You might not be switching up little details of what is sent out and what's received the way I was constantly doing. However, it would make the networking easier to follow and probably less of a headache.

thanks for the networking tips, guess who I'm coming to with questions when they come up

heres a short vid with shotgun, flamethrower and lightning gun before and after upgrading them.

The art is coming along nicely, recently received all the gui art, heres a few of them:

1st thing, that flamethrower is SICK. second, art's looking awesome, can't wait to try this out for myself!