Beta 6 – Challenge me!

Amazing Advancements!

Welcome to the final true CCSO update for this period of work. I mentioned last week that I wanted to work on the game a bit more, a task that originally defeated me cruelly back last autumn. If you remember I had a lot of trouble adding abilities in particular, with each one contributing a hell of a lot of complexity to the code and being full of bugs. It was a complete disaster!

My fix for it involved redesigning the entire code around a database table with some 2765 columns and a modular design. It was completely unmanageable, although I do have to admit that if I had infinite time to program, bugfix, and fine-tune all these columns then the game may well have worked. I was along the right lines, but just applying my knowledge in the wrong way.

Since then I have had plenty of time to reflect upon my nightmare experience and figure out exactly how to go about combating this problem. I had to figure out a way to get the database size down to a reasonable number.

Guess what? I did just that! 😀 Ditching the modular and expanded design in favour of a new system, called Tokens, I have managed to shrink the table down to a mere 38 columns! Although this sounds like a lot, it really isn’t when you’re dealing with a game like CCS, and it is about 1% of its former size anyway!

Tokens are a surprisingly obvious and simple mechanic I’ve implemented. It involves creating a standardised system to convert every ability into a “Token” where a Token is simply a string of text and numbers detailing the ability and its upgrade level. These tokens are then stored side-by-side in a single database column.

The backend code reads these tokens and processes them to figure out what they do. It then collects all this information together and applies it to the target of the abilities. Every token has an expiry time on it, dependant on the duration of the ability when it is used. At the very end of the round all expired tokens are removed from the game – aka the effects are no longer active.

It’s a much simpler method than how I am explaining it (:

Now, I have been extremely pushed for time this week. Those of you who stalk me know I’ve recently moved to Scotland – St Andrews to be precise – to study at one of the most prestigious universities in the UK for one semester. This place is right up there with Cambridge and Oxford and absolutely reeks of prestige.

Anyway, due to this I have been lacking on time for the programming, but I have the entire base system completed and I have started adding abilities. I’ve chosen a large mix of abilities, including several of the more complex ones, to test out how well the Token system is working. Thus far it all seems good!

There’s a playable demo featuring Molotov, Stun Bolt, Missile, Toxin, and Glue Bomb available to try out. The link is on the homepage of the old alpha site. Instructions on how to use the demo can be found on the page itself.

You may also notice a few cool new features not previously seen in CCSO such as loading bars and tabs for the round data. My abilities are more diverse than ever and it’s beginning to show in my work.

Now

I present to you an offer. I am confident that my Token system can handle any ability or effect that can be thrown at it. I challenge you to pick out the most complex and horrible abilities or chassis/weapon effects in CCS and ask me to program them ^^

I have already taken on many of the hard ones :p

Now, you perhaps believe that I have no spare time now and will not be able to work on this anymore. Not true! I have some spare time this coming week and so will continue with CCSO over the coming days. There will be a final update next weekend at this time, and there may be a mid-week update too.

However after that it is likely that CCSO will hibernate for one final time until summer again…

But wait…

You may be wondering why weapon damage, weapon/chassis upgrades, custom units, and so on aren’t included in this play testing area. It’s simply because they already work elsewhere and I wanted a clean environment for testing abilities in. This ability system is 100% compatible with everything already seen in the alpha release last Christmas, so once all abilities are added I can just link up the two systems to create a full game.

Good luck everyone and have fun! I look forward to hearing ideas and feedback from you! ^_^

Beta 4 – I spy a Forum!

Creating a forum is harder than I first anticipated…

 

Forum

Long, long ago, before this blog went public in week 24 of development, CCSO had a fascinating forum. Those of you who have been around since the beginning may well remember my adventures… my discovery, my journey, and my fights with phpBB.

Essentially a forum in a box, phpBB is a godsend to any novice web developer. You set it up and you’re all ready to go. Hundreds of cool features, amazing styles, and everything else you could ever really want.

Anyone remember that image? 26th July 2014. From one of the private weekly updates before CCSO went public.

Anyway, long story short… I lost two months on phpBB. It was amazing. I could have worshipped it. But, it was inflexible. You got what you got, and nothing more. I wanted something that I had more control over. I spent so long reading through the documentation, testing so many things, and yes I could edit it to an extent, but it just wasn’t enough in the end.

I waved goodbye to phpBB 😦

I knew creating a forum was way above my skill level at that time so I left it and moved on to greener pastures…

But now the forum situation changes!

Gah! Not quite as handsome as phpBB, but it is a starting point!

I thought this would be a fairly straightforward task, yet I grossly underestimated the confusingality* of it all. Forums are pretty complex systems, if I’m honest. There are so many variables you have to keep track of and juggle as you traverse or make changes to the forum.
*Now a word.

It was a difficult task (as you can probably tell by the intro comic). Despite this, I succeeded! I am proud of the achievement. The forum is solid and provides a good base to build upon.

I know you are eagerly scanning ahead in this text searching for how to access it. Stop right here! Here you go: Visit the index page of the alpha site. The link is there. You’ll be prompted to log in if you aren’t already as this is required to use the forum.

I greatly look forward to seeing the twisted and warped mess you make of it ^^ Just judging from past experience when I let loose testers on a new feature. Once one of you finds a bug it spreads like wildfire!

Updates to this forum are likely going to be frequent throughout the coming fortnight. I found it quite an enjoyable object to work with – at least once the functionality started to all click together – so I’m motivated to continue to work on it and add even more features.

 

Art

And where would we be without an art section? This time only one piece but there is something bigger we’re working on at the moment! I’m sure you’ll see the secret soon.

For now though… have a Drill!

Great work, Shoopiewoopie! (she hates me calling her that hehe)

 

That’s all for this week!

The beta site is coming together nicely. I know a lot of these projects aren’t 100% complete, but they are getting there. My skills are improving all the time, allowing me to attempt larger and more complex tasks and functionality. You all have a lot to look forward to! See you soon!

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!