The "Base UI" Release

A long time passed since the last release and looking at the changes in the last few weeks I decided to pack and push out one new - though the World Generator is in a rather primitive stage of development. The release is out, world generation is done when you start jcrpg yet you will enter the old one already known and put together previously by me without the new generator. Headlights: "UI base elements were added: load icon, compass, time meter, world map, HUD panel. Internal Flora is now configurable through FloraGenerators. Example internal flora in the Cave. Initial version of the World Generator is added. The World Map UI element shows a world generated by it. Updated JME libraries from CVS." Download it here! Hope to see you around commenting here or the forum. (This time it's gzipped for easier handling.) The screen shots depict the new compass/time block and loading icon plus the map. (The small yellow dot [Sun] shows the passing of local time where you stand, it is going around the compass.)

Coding some UI base + GIMP

I'm working for a short time on the first steps into the User Interface to give some idea for you and for me what will be this all about. Integrated the map into one corner of my first attempt in GIMP to create some nice transparency boosted gfx for the main first person screen.

World in your eyes

Just wanted to show you the first ugly vision of the thing called WorldMap view. :) It just shows the big ocean block and big land mass block variety.

On the shores of an Ocean

Two levels of magnification for shore randomizations done. This means a recognizable variety that can create special parts of the Ocean shore to spot while walking in the game. A rather simple hashed algorithm is creating the world's ocean parts and the shores are also hashed out on the fly in Ocean.isWaterPoint code. (Just added a bloomed version shot on my 8800GTS.)

Fixing the World

:-) My expectation is met by the recently appearing problems. Generating the World from scratch shown that there were are and will be (hopefully less) bugs in the system. The World is a globe by default, so if the planet is a big landmass then you can walk all around. Thus I found that the player coordinates' setting lacked much in pair with displaying the World correctly.

There's now a limit introduced: the world minimum size (which is the maximum 3D view distance of the player at the same time) to avoid the possibility to see things twice from the same point of view! :-D It shouldn't be a problem in an absurd reality but it also makes displaying much harder and erroneous. I don't want to handle this silly double view problem, so I remove the possibility. The World constructor will throw an exception when going below the minimum size limit (currently the World must be at least 100 cubes in one direction).

The first tests were done with going all around the globe, returning to the start point. It seems to work correctly! Check the endless p*l*ain shot... ;-D

P.S.: The new Ocean geography is rounding up in SVN. Looks pretty weird though, but cool landmass is being born out of it. :) I should create some kind of world map view soon...uh, big work ahead again...

World Generator development started

Geographies are mostly ready for the first iteration. I think it will be good to create the random World Generator for them as a test and as a source of fun. You will be able to parameterize the world with size/landmass/random seed, and the generator should create a walkable and coherent place. Now the Generator is in the works... It will be a must for the things to come...we'll need random geographies/worlds to test the wildlife and such thoroughly, so this is the ideal time to program the generator as the geos are there ready to put them into the world. :-)

Internal Flora made possible

Caving through the multilevel Surface implementation I found that the Climate part needed urgently a separation of Internal and Outdoor Flora generation. This is now done, ClimateBelt newly defines a BaseConditionsInternal and External to add a taste of weather based on the openness of the are you are in. Also FloraGenerator has been modified to store FloraListElement[] based on a key of not just the climate belt and level but inside/outside flag of the Cube too. Screen shot tells it weirdly currently! ;-) Example code:

public BaseFloraGenerator()
{

addFlora(Continental.CONTINENTAL_ID,ClimateLevel.CLIMATELEVEL_ID,
OUTDOOR,new FloraListElement[]{new FloraListElement(new Grass()),new FloraListElement(new OakTree(),20), new FloraListElement(new CherryTree(),50),new FloraListElement(new GreenPineTree(),50),new FloraListElement(new Acacia(),100),new FloraListElement(new GreenBush(),120)});

...