Epok Engine Update 2

Hello again. I've been steadily working on the engine and managed to get that minimal test state that I was aiming for. While I didn't go the whole way, I've implemented the first "conversation" of the Chat Mapper example project into a playable game. You can mess with it right here. It is very short, but it helped me straighten out the last few functionality bugs on dialog. If you manage to crash it or break something, please let me know.

These are the controls so far.
Mouse click - advance text, activate button
Ctrl Key - Speed up/skip text.
1 key - Quick save
2 key - Quick load

The other major feature that's in is the load/save feature, which I cannot recall if I ever got working before. It works in this simple version but should also function once I implement more complex objects. In the future I expect to build a complete interface to access saves.

With this big hurtle done, most of the key functionality is implemented. The remaining work is pretty much all UI for basic screens and various modals. These need to be designed out first and will most likely depend on what sort of project I plan to use the engine for. While it may seem obvious what I'm planning on doing with the engine, I wont make any official announcements until I've created enough plans and designs before hand. 

For the technically inclined, I've included a pastebin of my XML file used for this example here and the resulting library class here. I'm interested in making the tools and the engine I've developed opensource but for the time being I've attached some licensed software into the mix. If anyone has any experience dealing with opensource work, please contact me as I'm pretty clueless on how this works. Thanks.

Epok Engine Update 1

It's been quite a while, but I can assure you that the time has been spent inefficiently and on completely unrelated things. As usual, I can't give specifics on timelines, but I can at least say I'm making progress on the Epok Engine I mentioned a long time ago.

So a long while ago I thought up making the engine to support future development I quickly ran into a seemingly impossible to break wall when trying to merge a development pipeline between Chat Mapper and it's Lua scripts into flash. It was crazy talk, and was pretty discouraging when I found out this couldn't be done. Many months passed before I looked at this again after doing more professional level action-script work.

Still, I wanted to use Chat Mapper for its nice organization, so I chose to use it simply as dialog flow designer (which is what it should only ever be), and developed an entirely new system that uses an XML file filled with "Dialog Nodes". I built a python tool that is able to read in the XML and compile entire Class files containing all these nodes into native Action Script. Therefore I can run all sorts of events and triggers throughout the dialog navigation.


In terms of the Epok Engine's progress, it's now using a better UI backend that isn't horribly broken and has a fully functional and dynamic dialog and choice system. While it may not sound like much, this is pretty much all you need for the most basic of games. I plan on testing my text replacement system next, as well as getting the save/load system in early enough. I have some neat ideas to allow old saves to work well.

The immediate project goal is to be able to simulate the Chat Mapper Example project, which will prove the systems works and allow for additional fixes. What happens afterwards is pretty open on what I can do with the engine. I wont make any announcements yet as I don't want to get peoples hopes up too early.

I'll post again once I have something interesting to say.

Happy Apocalypse Day

Happy Apocalypse day everyone!

This is the first post on the progress for project Epok. So far there’s been great progress on getting the interpretation of Chat Mapper data into flash. The XML parser and data serializer is already complete. I can generally read in most of the useful data such as dialog nodes and keep their hierarchical organization. The obstacle I’m facing currently is dealing with Chat Mapper’s use of Lua for conditional logic. I spent last evening looking around for any readymade Lua to flash interpreters. I was looking at a project called Lufacode but for it not being supported since 2009 I ran into some issues trying to implement it with Epok. I’ll be looking around through other open source projects but if worse comes to worse, I can make a simple script interpreter that will achieve some very basic functionality for the time being.

My hope is to finish up the Lua interpretation and work on the dialog tree navigation this weekend. If I get that all working I’m on the fast track to merging it with my scene manager and dialog box code to create a chat mapper project visualizer. Things seem to be moving a bit faster than I thought so I’ll keep you guys posted.

Announcing Epok

It’s been a while and I’m certain that I've gone and made people worry again. There hasn't been any updates and my posts from before were getting more and more vague. The one promise I did make that I intend to keep was that if I were to ever halt a project, I’d have the decency to tell you guys. I can’t go on misleading you guys any longer and I’m announcing that I have shelved Cow Girl Farmer for the present time.

Yes, yes, I know that it’s a damn shame. I’m pretty upset about it too. Setting a goal and not making it is always a shit deal, but it’s better to bite the bullet and kill it, oppose to allow it to cling on the back of the mind and on others hopes.

So what now?

I've been busy learning plenty of new things at work and playing some interesting games out in the community.  With new ideas and a stronger technical toolbox I am prepared to march into a new project I’m calling “Epok”.

Read the rest after the break...