Tuesday Got Physical

Box, Meet Sphere

I have a sphere which falls to a static box and slowly rolls away. I know it was not the most ground breaking start to my physics system masterpiece but it's a start :)  Most of the day in fact was spent re factoring the terrain prototype so it would integrate much more easily with the engine, which in real terms means an almost complete rewrite.

The data structures and subroutines had to be separated out, cleaned up and commented, the resources such as objects, images, shaders and cameras had to be accounted for and externally controllable (as it would integrate with an engine which already uses many DBP resource indices) and finally I had to move the files around and remove old ones, and place new ones in clever places for future proofing.  Test the whole thing to make sure nothing got broke in the conversion too!

Finally, I moved the media files and the newly created source files to the main engine, in such a way that I can still load and compile the terrain prototype as a standalone, but the types and main module can now be used in the main engine compile as well.

I stopped short of integrating the IDE (that is, seeing the terrain in the map editor window and linking in the controls) as I had an appointment with physics I did not want to delay.

Integration Delay

It might be a mistake postponing integration in favor of starting the physics module but there are many more integration modules to come and it might make sense to do them all at once.  The task is also quite involved and I should really treat it as a project in itself and give it the proper amount of time, not squeeze it in between modules. 

I have done my re-factoring correctly, which is the main thing, and I can still compile and run the terrain module proto as a standalone which means the new art which Mark is burning overtime on can be tested and dropped in when they are ready.

Signing Off

As you may have read from yesterday's blog comments, it appears Rick discovered a secret version of the terrain module on dropbox I was using to work with Mark on the final terrain texture sets.  Seems he liked it.  You might think that means you get a screen shot but I rather like the idea of a big reveal through the newsletter and the Friday blog. Something to start your weekend with a little bang.

Who knows, maybe it will get better in the next few days and you do want some WOW factor out of this project right?  I just hope I've not built the suspense too much, worst thing you can do that!

Wednesday's plan is a bit scatter gun, with some art integration's, more physics module work, new FPSC animated sprite pack to create an installer around, get rid of some office clutter so I can see the chairs again, create some GITHUB repositories and see if they all compile for me, prepare presentation notes for Thursday AM and who knows what else.  All in all, pretty happy with today's run of work.