Kurosuke (working title)

[tentus]

Version 110114 has a number of rather low-level changes, so please tell me if you see bugs, I won't be surprised if there are a bunch of them.

The big changes are simple sounding but required a lot of effort to accomplish:
1: Manual draw clipping. I dunno if Love does this automatically (I'm pretty sure it doesn't), but now I almost never draw something unless it is onscreen. This gives a slight framerate boost for obvious reasons.
2: Refactored menu system. The main menu and pause menu are now inside a new object, all but rendering the menu scene obsolete. This new system uses a description-commands pair syntax, which is easier to maintain and read. This let me do number 3, which is...
3: Rebindable keys. If you swear by ESDF then you can have it. Button layouts are not user-proof though, so if you do something whacky you'll have to open up the settings.lua file in your save folder.

I've also added in a boomerang, and done some other misc improvements to the game. I'm gearing up for a hard push towards a real story with proper characters and gameplay.

[bmelts]

As far as clipping goes, there is love.graphics.setScissor, which foists the work of not drawing things outside the screen onto OpenGL's shoulders.

[Robin]

As far as clipping goes, there is love.graphics.setScissor, which foists the work of not drawing things outside the screen onto OpenGL's shoulders.

The downside of that is that you still have function call overhead (especially the Lua/C bridge is expensive, IIRC), so if there are a lot of things outside the screen, not trying to draw them at all is more efficient.

Also: doesn't setting a nil scissor just clip to the screen? (Which is the default, thereby making the use of setScissor not necessary in this situation.)

[bartbes]

No, that just disables scissoring.

[Robin]

No, that just disables scissoring.

Oh. So you'd need to do setScissor(0, 0, screenwidth, screenheight) or something?

Also: yay, 2222 posts for bartbes!

[tentus]

Version 110117 adds in a new move (a forward lunge) to act as a fallback if you don't have a real move available. Wall/Floor/Ceiling Spikes have also been added to the game, to allow for more risk during gameplay. I have added a "How To Play" scene, though it's pretty primitive. There is now very limited joystick support in the key rebinding. Dropped items now bounce once, to make them more obvious. Players opt in during the character select screen, rather than having to select a number beforehand in the menu. I have added functions to prettify the key strings, so that players have an easier time reading instructions (Press Space to Play is easier to read than Press to Play).

Please give the game a shot, and let me know if something doesn't work!

[tentus]

Version 110118 adds in one feature: zooming out camera, allowing multiplayer avatars to stray far from each other. I was able to run the game at 200+ FPS while having two avatars at opposite ends of the first level.

This version also introduces a new song (creepy!) and multiple new little images that I truthfully should have drawn a while ago. The How To Play scene has also been expanded a little.

Quick question to the community: what is most important, buffing up the AI, creating a skeletal animation system, or adding in new levels? Or adding in new game modes, I'm considering capture the flag.

[tentus]

Version 110122 starts including mouse clicks in the editor, making it much easier to put something together rapidly. I'm still adding mouse functionality, but it seems to hold promise. This version also adds IDs to all of the geometry and sensors, to be available for future features, and little current ones like only showing object details when that object is selected.

I have begun work on a new gamemode, simply called "Team" at the moment, which will be a four-player capture-the-flag type of dealio. There's a lot of code to write before it works, but my initial tests have been fun, so its definitely something I'm going to put some work into.

Dialog is now much expanded, letting players make simple choices. I plan for this to be the basis of future shopkeeper systems, where players buy upgrades and such. Letting the player pay NPCs to build bridges and roads is also something I plan to do.

[tentus]

Massive under-the-hood updates. I finished coding the capture-the-flag type gamemode, but it brought some bugs to my attention, so the past week has been nothing but intense debugging. This has of course led to various improvements and all, but the biggest thing you'll see is the wall of debugging information popping up in the console.

Please please please, if you manage to crash Love in my game, please tell me so I can try to replicate and fix it. I've started to run in to OS-dependent bugs, and they elude me to my eternal torment. Any help fixing bugs would be enormously helpful.

Also, have fun! This version actually has something you can compete in! The testing map is terrible, but it illustrates the idea.

[tentus]

Version 110201 introduces a new character image, a wolf. I've also redone how the weapon stats are stored, which means I had to redo how parts of saving are done, and that led me to rewrite parts of how menus are done... it's been a long day.

I've changed up some of the collision code for players and enemies, hopefully this will be more reliable, even though in some ways its hackier. It's definitely less cycle-intensive. A bug in lightning output is fixed, you won't shoot it from your ankles now. Music wont overlap when changing levels anymore. Player deaths wont trigger infinite body repositioning anymore. The level editor now supports WASD as well as the keypad binds, so it'l be more comfortable to use. I've implemented slime's superior keyWord function. Some minor functions have been rearranged/created. The camera works better in the Y-axis.

Like I said, long day. Tomorrow I will try to design a fourth character model, and get it implemented.