Gnomistry

I thought I could keep up with this during midterms, but I can’t.  Updates will be much more infrequent until it’s over.

I coded a class to parse an XML file containing the information for a level.  This includes what waves of enemies will spawn, and what paths they will come down the level from, as well as how many of a particular enemy will come in each wave.  I’m not quite finished the class that handles the events yet so there will be no screenshot today.  I did finish the enemy class, however.  Given a set of points that form a path, the enemy will follow them untill it reaches the last point or is destroyed.  I hope to have a screenshot or animation up for viewing tommorow.

I’ve started working on tower defense game as my first project.  It’s a simplified game, where the enemies will run down fixed paths with towers placed on the side.  This should cut down time writing the AI, as I won’t have to implement pathfinding.

With the work I’ve done today, the program loads the map scenery from a text file, and draws it on the screen.  I’m not writing a full blown map editor, as I’m not making very many maps for this project.

Here’s an example of what the map and file look like:

I’ve been thinking about what to use this site for for a long time.  It’s been reincarnated and then scrapped several time due to my lack of diligence with regards to regular updates.  Currently, I’ll be writing a development blog here, as I’ve begun another programming project.  I’m looking to increase my ability as I’ve gotten quite rusty inbetween semesters at college.

This time I set a few conditions for myself in the form of daily goals and updates.  This means a new post detailing what’s going on every day, related to whatever project I’m working on.  Rapid development is the goal here, so there should be new and different content on a regular basis.