Minor Update

Tried to stream for an hour but had to end early due to some unplanned business. Some minor reworkings done but will most likely finish those portions later in the evening. Will try to better plan an interrupt free stream for next time.

Working on Engine Revamping

I did a stream for the 2 - 3 hours I was working. Next time I'm working I'll plop another posting with a notice and link. Later I'll update with the work/change logs.

This time around I got to reworking the engine shortfalls I had. I was mostly rewriting some of my screen management code to make better use of the shared objects that will span the various game screens such as the primary dialog box, alert notifications, and help text boxes.

The next primary goal would be to create the interactive features such as buttons and drag and drop interfaces, that have all the bells and whistles that the default flash code just doesn't provide.

It may sound like I'm doing a lot of stuff all over again, but I have the benefit of the previous code to compare and improve. So hopefully things go through fairly smoothly. I may try to get another stream in Sunday evening, or at least Monday afternoon.

I did it again, didn't I? Let's try this once more

It's been a while and I've fallen off the radar like I seem to do every so often. It's not the best trait to have, but it's something I'm actively working on fixing. So while I doubt more words will do anything to assuage any hurt feelings or neglect, I feel it's best to give a summary of the current situation.

I'm done with University. I'm free to go and walk the land without homework looming in the background. This also means I'm actively job hunting and will eventually (God willing) get a job. In the mean time that gives me extra time to focus on this project.

I've gain plenty of flash experience working on a game project I did using Scaleform and have some fresh new ideas on implementing the game. This however requires me to take a few steps back and rework lots of engine things that are now cringe-worthy to me.

I have a pretty good action plan on what I want to develop for this game in terms of the scope and the stages of development but will still be willing to discuss potential features and ideas for the game. I'll try to resurrect my forum postings once things get moving again.

As for streams, I'll probably try using them again as they work as a good motivator and prevents me from doing other things like playing Skyrim. I'll give a heads up when I will try and get another steam schedule going.

Here's to the nth go at making Cow Girl Farmer!

Working on activity selection and other interfaces

My Livestream is now Over.

I've managed to figure out the bug as to why my activity buttons were not accessible. It had to do with a layer issue with an invisible object covering the buttons. Go figure. I'm going to have to reorganize how I'm passing arguments between my click events as its getting to be a pain to manage. I'll most likely figure this out outside of a stream as I imagine it's boring as hell to watch me figure out.

In other news, I've speced out my cow girl weight and figure system that will use a slight modification of my old weight system from my previous game. It will deal with a calorie system that calculates how many calories a character consumes/burns in a day and would modify them at the start of the following day. So that will be interesting to see in action.

I will most likely not be streaming until next week Thursday or Friday but I'll keep updates coming if I find time on the side.

Dusting off the Blog Back to Work!

Its been nearly a month so I figured I better get back in the spot light before the usual questions prop up. Yes, I'm still working on the project. No, I haven't made a ton of progress of late. And yes, I'm committed to seeing this thing through.

I think I've found sound weekly time to get to work on this, namely on Thursdays and Fridays, unless I'm cramming for my classes. So in order to put some further emphasis on keep active on my work, I'm going to be playing a little with Livestream. All the cool kids seem to be doing it. I'm in fact going to see if I can run it right now and do a bit of live streaming right now. Check the link below once I figure out what it is.

My Livestream

If you decide to jump on and watch, go ahead and ask me any questions and I may answer. I can't say I'm as interesting or charismatic as say Fenoxo, but we'll see.

EDIT: Stream is over. Seemed like a good test I'm going to aim to stream again Thursday 9/29 at around 1PM Central time.

(Non)Progress Report and School

It's been a while since I last posted so I felt it was necessary to get some sort of report out to you guys. Life has been pretty busy and hectic the last few days; with money problems and school starting back up. So I've been a bit busy taking care of a few things. Because of these things, getting work done on the game this week has been very difficult so I have little to say on progress.

But fear not! I'm still fully committed on going through with this project and getting towards that alpha and beta and stable end product whatever that may become.

Sorry I couldn't say the wait was for an awesome preview but I felt that it was better to say something than keep you guys in the dark. Once I get back into the groove of my classes I'll be able to find and schedule the time I can work on the project (and maybe regulate my postings times). At the very least I should be able to get some work done either tonight or tomorrow evening.


Pic by Woot

Building Interfaces 2

I've been working intensely on figuring out the interfaces for the game. I've gotten to the point where I can go from the main menu through to the character creation, the cow selection, and prologue info all the way to the farm screen. Mind you that most of those are place holders at the moment, but they are all set to go with the addition of some actual content.
The majority of the time I've spent on getting the farm screen and interface going. I've gotten the basic layout set up, but need to get the functionality in. So far drag and drop icons are all working and fitting into the correct slots. The current issue is building the back end that reads and writes information based on those icons positions. Almost done with that but its still a bit of a head ache.
After this is working I'll add a few activities and see if I can get cows to actually perform them using the drag and drop interface. After that is items and stores and maybe alpha testing. Maybe.

In-case you haven't tired of my code talk, I've also hacked together a quick c++ console program that stitches multiple xml files into a single xml. This way I can create folder hierarchies with grouped sets of events so I don't waste time searching one giant list of events for any particular thing. This should help a ton as I'm expecting to write hundreds of independent xml objects. This should also help when people are creating their own events as they can work in files separate from the core xml.

Things are looking good, but another weekend of full time work is going to drain me, so hopefully I'll find the time (and energy) to get some more coding in.

Also check out the other people's games I've listed on the side here, as many of them are updating like mad.