Beta 3 – New Unit Creator Design

Thanks Shoop >.<

 

Unit Creator

For those of you who have been around since the alpha, you may remember this image that I posted a while back.

What a sexy thing. Anyway, I had a go at creating it.

Ok, it’s not quite the same, but that is pretty close. Also, while I was at it I streamlined this unit creator so that the overall page now loads a lot faster. In fact, the only part that initially loads is the list. All the art and unit data is loaded in by a server request when you click a component*. The load is a tiny bit slow, but nothing too much and it is only slow the first time you click each component.

* Yes, I have been sharpening my skills a bit so I can do some cool things. Also, I fixed the bug with Boost and Boost+ not being next to each other (you can see this bug in the alpha version of the unit creator).

P.S. you can try this yourself by navigating to /secret/unitSelector.php

This new unit creator is not yet linked up to the rest of the game, so trying to buy or customise a component will throw a 404. The buttons along the top also don’t work yet.

Oh and thanks Shoop for the cool colour scheme. Thanks to her notes and my amazing programming skills and top-notch decision making and leadership, we have made it look pretty awesome. If you don’t like the colours then go moan at Shoop. 😉

Next stop will be linking this up and offering a search feature so users can find the component that suit their needs.

 

Art

Dueler, Boomer, and Bomb+

 

WAIT, WHAT? Bomb+?!

Isn’t that … Laura’s?

Yes, that’s right! 😀 Now Laura has finished all her exams I’ve jumped on her back and dragged her back to the drawing boards of CCSO.

It is great having you back!!!

Also thanks ElD for the other two pieces 😛 Sorry you’ve been a bit overshadowed this time, but you understand? ^^ I’ll get Shoop to bake you a cake or something. But really, Boomer looks really sinister and strong, just like a bomber unit should. Dueler appears fast and nimble, suiting its fighting style. They are both great pieces! 😀

 

Map Editor

As I understand it, the map editor doesn’t work as expected on all browsers.

(image courtesy of Melarec)

It works best on Chrome. However, a friend pointed out that my method for creating the map editor was outdated and I should be using the new HTML5 Canvas.

I had a look into this and it offers a blank canvas where you essentially code the art on it. It looks extremely flexible. For example. the well-known game of Entanglement (http://entanglement.gopherwoodstudios.com/) is created on a canvas. This really demonstrates the power of the tool and I have spent a lot of time this week reading into it.

Unfortunately I have nothing new to show you yet. But soon perhaps I will have the Map Editor moved into a canvas so it is more compatible with everything and offers more features. Canvases may well come in handy for other parts of the site too, such as the core game itself. But that is a maybe. We’ll see how it goes. 🙂

 

Graduation

BOW BEFORE ME. I AM NOW A MASTER!

…of Physics.

…which I guess is even cooler than being a regular old Master?

Yeah, I passed all my modules. I understand the universe now. Seriously. After four years of physics I can now never watch a single action film again because all I see are the mistakes in its physics.

Sigh.

But even so, I do not regret this degree path in the slightest. It has been an amazing and highly rewarding journey and I have developed so many skills along the way. And well, I guess it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows the entire way. We’ve lost a lot of good people along the way. In first year we started with over 70 people. I went through the graduation list and only counted half that number. I remember in first year how we used to fill huge rooms. It hit me hard when I was in the graduation ceremony and saw that my class took up only four rows.

We lost about a third of the class by the end of first year alone. People switching to different courses or vanishing completely. Second year hit us hard too. I guess I witnessed first hand how friendship groups can fall apart completely if a few key people are removed. By the final year the rooms looked so bare. In some there would be more fingers on your hands than students in the classroom. But I guess this brought us all closer together. By the end of it we weren’t a class of friend groups. We were a class of friends. We would all look out for one another and work together just so we could pass.

Less than half of us made it, but only 19 of us achieved the rank of Master, which is the highest qualification. 19 people out of 70+. How I made it just seems impossible. I was never that smart. I just. I don’t know. I just knew how to knuckle down and work through anything.

To anyone out there thinking about studying physics. DO. There is a shortage of physicists in the world. With such a degree you will never be unemployed, you will never be poor, and you will get to see the world. But all of that is insignificant to the major problems that humanity will face in our lifetimes. Global warming, terrorism, overpopulation. It’s not that we lack the potential to fix all these problems. It’s that we just don’t have enough people. There is a skills void.

Still. Do not worry. The future of your world is in good hands for now. We are highly trained and we will work for the best of all of us.

But. If you want to study physics for the sake of prestige or money (physics opens doors to banking), then don’t study it. You will fail. Only follow physics if you have a true passion for it, if you are by your very nature a problem solver, if you are a mathematician. Anything else and you are lining yourself up for disappointment. Physics is not easy and I cannot stress this enough. You have to be strong. I remember in first year there being a girl who was in tears because she couldn’t handle the workload. She didn’t make it beyond the year. But then there was another girl, in second year she came out of an exam in tears. It was a challenging paper – they all are. But she recovered from it and went on to be one of the 19 graduating Masters. We all have our own stories to tell, but stories can only have happy endings if the protagonist is able to overcome every obstacle.

 

It is the combination of the canvas learning and this graduation that has left me short on time since the last update. I’m still happy with what I’ve achieved but I know it’s not a whole lot. I hope from here on things develop a lot quicker.

Beta is coming.

Beta 2 – Map Editor (Demo)

Oh my god I have just figured out how to make graphics come out full sized in the text…

 

Map Editor

I had some strange urges this week regarding Shoop. I felt really motivated to create that map editor we’ve been talking about for a while and use those tiles of hers.

Then I thought for a while and was like Pfft… nah! That would require an insane amount of JavaScript! I’m going to look at cat pics instead.

But for some reason though I found myself in my code editor writing this script. I forgot how fun JavaScript actually is. I’ve remembered a lot and for some reason my skill seems ten levels higher than it did in the alpha. I wrote some pretty complex code without too much hassle. And the next thing you know…

And while this editor is only a simple demo at the moment, I have decided to open it up to all of you. You can find it by looking around the Alpha site 😉

It’s pretty cool to be fair, and that is a really bad thing because it means I’ve spent so much time playing with it – as you could probably tell by the face pictures – so here’s a little note to self: Do fun things last!
I’m learning one step at a time.

Anyway. Enjoy the editor! Do screenshot and post your best pieces 😛 I am aware of a few problems with the tiles such as tiles with water on being largely incompatible with each other, and there being some colouring/texture problems. Oh and larger structures like dunes and bushes being made piece by piece And the lack of T-junctions and crossroads.

If you think anything else is missing, let us know! I’ll get Shoop working on it straight away.

(P.S. the map editor is bootstrapped so resize the page, refresh it, and the map and tile selection will resize to fit the new size. Note that refreshing will reset the map.)

 

Art

  

Trident and Capsule at the top and two familiar looking chassis at the bottom; a new Juggernaut with an improved flame on the left, and on the right is CMFR with a golden disc on the top. Little things that make quite an impact.

Cheers ElD and Shoop for such great pieces! ^^

 

What next?

Lots of small fixes and additions to the map editor and lots of code translating from the alpha site into bootstrap.

See you soon!