Kyrodian Legends

[Kelvin]

Just letting you guys know that this project is still alive. The background there is a placeholder from Metroid ZM; I'm just using it to show I have scrolling backgrounds and animated sprites working. I also have various types of input events and collision. I still need to finish triangular hit tests before I can move on to rectangle, since my rectangles will be able to rotate, and to do that, I'm using triangles. If I were to use lines, it would only work to make a hollow rectangle, so I'm using triangles to make it solid. At the same time, sticking two triangles together also allows me to make diamonds, so they'll be added to my shape library as well.

I'm going to make the shape library open-source to anyone who wants to use them. Since they can be resized and rotated on the fly, they'll be useful for physics engines, even a Box2D clone.

Once the shape library is finished, I'll be able to implement the map format, which uses built-in geometry for level solids, rather than placing a bunch of block class instances like in Game Maker. This should speed up performance, and even allow for very large solids without the need to create new sprites/classes for them. The map will also communicate with the camera to know where the view is, and render only chunks of the map at a time instead of every single tile. This works by drawing several cells that each map is divided into, and storing them. When the view moves beyond the range of the cached cells, it recalculates the position and decides which ones to redraw and which ones to simply scoot over. This should allow for fast map rendering.

As for Midi's hit box, I'm thinking that since he's a biped, I'm going to have two circles stacked with a square in the middle, so he won't hover off edges when standing on them and can go up slopes/stairs more smoothly, though I may just make stairs behave like a slope, the way the newer Castlevania games do.

I've also enlisted the help of a friend to help out with writing contract scenarios, so that'll free up a lot of my time for programming. Next update, I should have a basic physics engine made to record. The GIF above is a recording of an actor running to the right; no physics yet involved. I'll also include a link to the shape library for anyone to use.

As always, feedback is appreciated. Or a comment. Or, well, anything, for that matter.