Scrolling Game Development Kit Forum

Some art?

I realize that I'll divide things into multiple game modes.

Adventure mode will prove to be the most taxing on the server because that's the mode that handles multiple maps simultanously.

For most of the other game modes, I'll try and contain things on the same map.

So Adventure Mode will be the last mode I'll work on.

For now I'll start on a Lobby Mode. One map that displays all of the users waiting in a Purgatory-Like Map.

With the exception of Adventure Mode, I've decided to make most online game modes constrain all users to the same map.


Thanks for reading!

If a folder is created with the same name of an existing graphics sheet the graphics sheet becomes a subdirectory of the graphic sheet and the graphic sheet itself becomes a directory.

Not a serious issue (Not even an issue at all) It actually allows for the creation of subdirectories within directories.

The first option only being a minor setback as I'd have to include the directory name in all custom implementations of GetTextureRef()

That's the only bad thing I can honestly think of.

Keep them globally unique. *This is only my opinion*

Because it would keep things incredibly simple.

For my needs I only need a structure of organization that's mainly just visual; the ability to condense and expand subdirectories of game objects is all I really need.

(Plus it would be less work for you and I because you'd have to change all of the base objects and I would have to change all of the plans XD)

In Order (This is the final list I've settled on):

Graphic Sheets

FrameSets

Custom Code Objects

Sprite Definitions

Counters

Maps (Optional, I already categorize maps by adding an A and B to the beginning of their name, because I have 2 kinds of maps)

Thanks!

But it is possible to create an organized structure for objects such as Sprites, Graphic Sheets, and Frame Sets, right?

Video Memory shouldn't be much of an issue for me. I don't load many images and I explicitly manage the unloading of textures on Map Changes.

But when I expand the graphics sheets directory, all of the sheets would expand, regardless of how I named them.

I need a solution that would allow me to create folders under the GraphicsSheet and Frameset or Sprite folders.

This is more of an issue within the IDE. I need things to be organized within the IDE.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you.

Would it be a burden to ask:

If SGDK2 could feature sublists for managing Graphics and Framesets? Instead of all Graphics and Framesets falling under "Graphic Sheets" and "Framesets"?

That way I could create a category under Graphics Sheets called "Car Graphics"

Create all Graphic sheets of a certain type inside of it

And collapse/expand it whenever necessary without having to collapse the Graphics Sheets listing?

It helps things become organized when you have a a large amount of graphics.

I guess I worded that wrong. I plan on having more than 250 sprites on a server, not all on the screen at once. These sprites aren't going to be users. Some will be user sprites, but others will be other significant sprites such as NPC's enemies, etc. (This is actually one of the things I hated about most 2D ORPG's. They had so many players on the screen that it was impossible to distinguish your own sprite, or even read any chat messages)

I'm starting out with a 32 player connection limit per server. That's the default connection limit for the Skulltag game engine, even Doom. I highly doubt servers are going to reach 32 players before someone attempts to host their own, because even Doom and Skulltag engines begin to lag at around 20 players (Which usually happens in games that allow you to host your own server)

But that's the beauty in allowing users to host their own servers. Instead of having a string of dedicated servers, from the start of developing this game, I knew that this would be impossible for me. I'm hoping that a large group of smaller servers could work much better. Most servers will probably start lagging at around 16-20 players. So having more servers by allowing any player with a port forwarded connection to host and allowing the hosts of those servers to moderate through kicks and bans is probably best. (The only real centralized server I plan on having is a simple MasterServer that shows all other servers that are online)

The clients only receive updates about other clients on the map. If things get worse, I'll look into limiting it to only sprites within certain pixels of other sprites.

Also, it's highly unlikely that you will be able to have hundreds or even dozens of real-time, persistent connections into one server at a time.  Even large scale MMOs try to keep the load on any one server down, and unless you have your own rack of dedicated servers with a high-density connection to the Internet backbone, the server would probably lag immensely or perhaps just melt into a sad puddle of silicon and wires on the floor.

Can you go further with this?

EDIT: I'm not quite understanding how the InputBits works. Can I only get it? Or can I also set it? I want to serialize an integer casted InputBits and then set it on the client's sprite by having the client cast it back to InputBits.

Then again I can't just explicitly cast an integer to InputBits. Agh please, don't let this be an impasse...

EDIT: I asked the previous question wrong. How exactly does the enumeration handle multiple key-presses?
I see that inputs (the enumeration) has a value for each keypress, but what if I'm pressing 2 or more inputs at once? Will explicitly integer casted data for that frame hold both keypresses? If I cast it back with (InputBits)castedData; will it hold both keypresses? And can I set inputs on a SpriteBase instance? Or is the input enum only used for retrieval?

EDIT: I see how it works, I think. SetInputState and IsInputPressed demonstrate it. It looks like my extremely and unnecessarily complicated way of doing it before can be scrapped now.

I'm anxious to see how far I can get with this.

Oh and hey look what I found: *cough*

http://gamedev.enigmadream.com/index.php?topic=1568.0

Guess I should ask questions about things that I won't decide to finish later.