A few updates

So, since my friend has an xbox, I obviously had to stop working on York a bit to play some Special Ops in Modern Warfare 2 ;) Anyway, I've made a few changes now, and tried some things out that don't quite work yet.

First of all, moving platforms are now synced correctly when you enter a new room. So these platforms are really finished, as far as I can tell, unless someone discovers a bug, but I don't think that will happen anymore, since I've been testing York for a while now.

Secondly, I tried to reduce the data traffic even more by letting the clients calculate collisions for other players, and by applying gravity to them. At this moment, every player calculates gravity and collisions and then sends the position to the server, which sends it to all other players. It works fine for now, but it will eventually (when there are more players online at the same time) use up too much bandwidth for the host.

The first tests are looking good. As I've said in an earlier post, the data traffic is reduced a lot. Although everything looks smooth ('jittering' effects don't occur), there are still things that need to be adapted to make it perfectly work. But I'm getting there, eventually :)

Last, but not least, challenges and quests. Challenges now work fine, though I think I'm going to scrap them from the game since they're basically the same as quests, and it doesn't really make sense having both in the same game. At least, in my opinion. In case someone comes up with a cool idea that makes use of some sort of challenges, I can always put it back in York of course. I'm now working at quests, which shouldn't take too much time now, since I got the challenges working already.

Oh, before I forget: A public beta is planned for next year, preferably in January :)

Thats it for today, and 2009!
Lapixx

Traffic

Yay, I've managed to reduce the data traffic for the server even more! Players now send up to 12 times less the amount of bytes than before, meaning that one host can handle more players simultaneously, which obviously is a good thing.

The new system isn't implanted totally yet, I want to do some tests first to ensure that it's working fine, and there are still a few minor bugs that need to be solved.

Challenges

Okay, I'm halfway done with the challenge system of York. Challenges will reward you with extra XP, and maybe some (special) items too. When the challenge system is fully completed, extending to a quest system will be quite easy.

Speaking about XP, your current level is visible now too. Stillthough, I might have to tweak the formula to convert the XP to a level a bit.

Tutorial

Okay, because not everybody knows how to play York yet, I've added a small (offline) tutorial with the help of my friend. It shows you the basics of the game (e.g. the controls and objects like elevators). Though the tutorial is meant for new players, you can always play it when the server is offline and you really have nothing else to do :)

New domain

york.divbyzero.nl - Used for later updates etc.

Gamepad support (2)

Gamepad support is now fully integrated. It can be used in the menu and ingame (except for the chat, that I'll include later).

Better, faster, stronger

I'm very content with the progression of York so far. The menu is finished for now (a login panel needs to be added in later, though), the auto-update function works perfectly, and the game supports multiple area's very well.

That said, there are obviously many things that still need to be done. As said before, there is no login (or register) panel yet, and there have to be more levels included before I'll start a public beta. On the other hand, the most important things are done, and I don't expect to run in any big difficulties anymore. Creating extra levels and such won't take much time.

Secondly, I don't think there will be many (if any) NPC's in York. There will be some that can talk to you, but don't expect moving NPC's like enemies. Although it is not impossible, keeping moving non player characters in sync is very difficult, and I'd much rather work around it than spending that much time trying to make it work. I'm currently thinking of other ways to keep York interested, e.g. challenges/achievements and quests. Hopefully (well, probably) I'll get some useful feedback during the public beta (nothing planned yet, but I'm thinking of somewhere next month).

Thats it for now, stay tuned!

Gamepad support

Hooray! York has gamepad support! That means I can almost pretend to be playing it on my Xbox, when I connect my computer to my TV. Almost, because Windows 7 doesn't seem to recognize the build-in bluetooth receiver. Lame :(

Starting up

Okay, so It's been a while since I came up with ideas for my new project, and I've started working on it a bit. By the looks of it at the moment, project York is going to be a (sort of) SCF remake, though there will be some changes in terms of gameplay and storyline.

I currently try to focus on writing a online-engine layer. This way all code should become a bit more organised than it was in SCF. Organisation is good, especially if you're working with large ammounts of scripts and data.

Anyway, that's it for now.