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...

Little By Little...

It's been a while since my last post. I'm trying to prevent these from getting so spread out but it's really hard to embellish on things when so little happens.

It turns out that I'm pretty terrible at scheduling my job work time and my free time. Many late nights programming at work followed by attempts at coding on CGF afterwards has been nigh impossible. To remedy this, I'm current trying to code in the morning before work. I've been able to look at things for at least a half hour in the morning so that's some small daily progress there.

 If you are wondering what I'm still working on, it is those dratted scrollable dialog modals I've been playing with for the past forever. I've been spinning my wheels for a while on implementing a design pattern I've used in XCode iOS for selecting table rows. I'm under the impression that it is not working out very well. so I'll use another method and hopefully get pass that soon enough.

This week is going to be another slow work week however, since an awesome game I'm waiting on called "Castle Story" should have its prototype released Wednesday-ish. Ahh, distractions abound and motivation lacking; these are the cruxes of indie development.

More Nada

It's tough coming around with excuses all the time, but the fact of the matter is that I've been way busy with work. It's the good sort of busy, taking bigger projects, more responsibility, along with a good sense of accomplishment. I know you guys aren't so interested in my non-cgf activities, but right now it just can't be avoided.

At the very least I can assure you that I'm not in a "burned out state" or "fed up with things". In fact I have a pretty positive outlook right now and don't have anywhere near the same issue as when I last disappeared. Little by little progress is made, whether thoughts on my mind, or a function or two here and there; stuff is being done.

Take a short vacation and when you come back you might see things change. I'll still be here.

A Non-Update, Update

I let this past update come by way too late. I hope no one was ready to toss in some eulogies like last time. I've been super busy these last few days. Apparently, working in a start-up means you are at work all the time. So I've been pretty pressed for any sort of time whether for this game or anything else for that matter. This constant work load will lighten at some point once a certain work project is finished and we move offices.

So the quick answer is that no progress has been made in the past week. My plans and goals have not changed so I'm still shooting for getting a new version out in the near future. It just seems that the "near-ness" keeps getting pushed back.

I simply wanted to say to not lose faith, and that I am still trying my best here. Hopefully, the next news is a bit more productive.

Still Working on those Scrollables

Just to give you guys an small update, I've done some work on the scrollable stuff I mentioned in the previous post. It got a little hairy writing the code so I didn't finish it yet. I'll keep messing with it for a bit longer, but once it is working, it will mean that at least 3 or 4 major screens will have their primary features in. Next few days are going to be pretty busy for me so I'll shoot for the weekend to knock this one out.

Scroll-able Selection Menus

The past Labor Day weekend served as a nice bit of vacation time for me. I had some fun playing Natural Selection 2 since they released a pretty good update recently. Its a hybrid First Person Shooter  Real Time Strategy game that I'd recommend checking out (Google it). Unfortunately this means that I didn't devote much time to the project.

However, I did manage to designed out the new scroll-able selection menus that will aid in making selections and filtering large lists of items. This will take advantage of the new scroll bar system I've made and allow for special dialogs that will be populated by "button bars" containing a wealth on of information that should allow at-a-glance stat checking and comparisons. I was originally intending to put this off until after the next release, but I realized this would prove useful for the new stable screen in choosing selections such as cow girl jobs and diet. It will be much better than what is currently seen in the old build and it could potentially have features such as sorting by name or type or quantity.

With the plan made it will be merely an effort of coding it in with the some of the existing architecture, and with that the stable screen will be mostly functional. I'm still working out the design for the growth system but that should be finished soon as well.

Thanks again for sticking around guys and I'll keep you posted!