Scrolling Game Development Kit Forum
SGDK Version 2 => News and Announcements => Topic started by: bluemonkmn on 2007-01-20, 01:32:17 PM
-
The first alpha release of Scrolling Game Development Kit 2 has been posted. Alpha means it's still not fully tested and some minor features and tuning remain, but all the main features are in and usable. The main missing feature right now is documentation and more templates/samples. Head over to the SGDK2 homepage (http://sgdk2.sf.net/) for more. There's a link to the install package in the most recent new item.
Kudos to durnurd for helping make the sample project really cool :) you just gotta see it.
-
Alpha release 2 is now available. See the homepage for details:http://sgdk2.sf.net/ (http://sgdk2.sf.net/)
The frameset editor has been redesigned, and there's are new functions to display and hide messages. The sample project demonstrates messages. Numerous bug fixes are included. I will update the "To-Do" list thread shortly to reflect changes that went into alpha 2. Oh yea, and the project.cs file has been pulled out into a customizable file, which means it's now theoretically possible to create a project that will compile into an control that will run in IE... I think. Perhaps durnurd will provide a template project for us for the next alpha release? :)
-
I'm working on that. Some bumps along the way. I'm trying to make it so it can be runnable as either an exe or embedded within the page, but this requires a bit of redesign. I'll keep the forum updated on my progress as I move along.
-
I have started a tutorial for SGDK2. If anyone would like to try it, go to http://sgdk2.sf.net/Documentation/Tutorial1.htm (http://sgdk2.sf.net/Documentation/Tutorial1.htm). It's almost done, but I stopped before finishing because I ran out of time at the moment. I'll finish it soon. I haven't proofread/double-checked it yet. Let me know if you find errors.
-
Confused about the rotation sprite wizard text. It says that a state count of 36 would yield 72 states?
Should
Check the "End If/End While" checkbox to the "If the player is pressing right" condition.
be
Check the "End If/End While" checkbox to END the "If the player is pressing right" condition.
?
to be consistent, should you remove the article "the" in "If the player is pressing up"?
To be consistent, add a "Close the tileset editor" after creating the tile mapping.
"from teh file menu" is wrong. I'm almost positive. It will also ask for a filename to save as when you press F5 for the first time, which is not in the tutorial.
When I follow the tutorial, it doesn't seem like the sprite is always 32x32 pixels. If I move to the bottom of the map, and rotate, part of the player sprite overlaps the green ground.
With the current version of the program, spaces in map names still don't work, but presumably that will be fixed in the next release.
Otherwise, it all looks good so far. It brings up a few suggestions, though:
When dragging a frame in the frameset editor, and the mouse is at the bottom, automatically scroll the window (this came up when I was adding the transparent tile to the frameset).
When using the Shift key to draw straight lines in the graphic sheet editor, maybe display the coordinates of the end of the line instead of the location of the mouse pointer (which it then follows to do this for everything else, such as custom shapes, as well). This way, it would be easier to keep track of where the graphic is actually getting drawn. Maybe, have some way or other to draw a shape at specified coordinates without having to use the mouse. Like double-clicking on the custom shape would bring up a dialog that would allow you to enter the two coordinates and it would show a preview of the result in the main window. Much more accurate results this way. I don't know if this could be applied to other tools or not.
-
The sprite overlapping the ground is by design. The solidity is always 32x32 pixels, but your graphic is no longer confined to be within that rectangle. When the wizard is talking about keeping the 32x32-pixel size, it's talking about the states' solidities. I think this overlapping behavior is common in games like Mario -- a bit of his feet will overlap the hill when going uphill. And I think it's nice that you don't need to leave a big margin between the graphic in the sprite and the tiles (it always made sprites look like they were floating), and that you can sometimes allow them to overlap. BTW, if you choose to change the solidity size as the sprite rotates, that works, and it will expand the solidity rectangle of the sprite to completely contain the graphic then, but you won't be able to turn if you're right up against a wall then in cases where turning would cause your new solidity to overlap the layer's solidity.
Spaces in map names work fine for me. Are you sure you were running alpha 2? I thought that was fixed long before alpha 2 was released.
-
IIRC, the problem with spaces in map names arose when you put project.cs into the editable code. Somebody else had this problem maybe a week ago, and you told them to simply add a .replace(" ","_") when initializing the Game Display. I definitely have the latest version, since project.cs is editable.
http://gamedev.comdel.net/index.php?topic=965.msg4829#msg4829
-
Oh that problem. How quickly I forget. That only affects the startup map, but of course there's only one map in the tutorial, and it's the startup map. I suppose I'll have to release another alpha soon.
-
I forgot to mention, as I was writing the tutorial, I too noticed the strange difference between 36 and 72 in the wizard and fixed it.
-
Tutorial 1 is now completed (available at the same location as before). If you want to try it with alpha 2, see durnurd's comments above -- you'll need to update project.cs or use map names without spaces for the startup map and overlay map (the only two maps created in the tutorial project). Let me hear about your successes and troubles. Tell me, is this as complicated as it looks, or does it just look like a lot of complication, when actually it's just a long, detailed process to learn something that's simple or necessary in the end?
Fortunately, I expect many users will take advantage of templates instead of manually going through all these steps. I'm also thinking of providing an online template library so people could relatively easily add new templates that others might find interesting, and other users will very easily be able to immediately access new templates shared by everyone. I'm not sure yet if this will be in the initial release or a later release. It will probably take a while for people to become familiar enough and have some time to create templates, so maybe a later release.
Also fortunately, this tutorial covers some "hard parts" which (as of SGDK2) don't have to be repeated as often as similar tasks in version 1 had to be repeated. So after you have a project up and working, my hope is that editing and adding to it is easier than initially creating it.
-
I released a new alpha release, which is now listed on the SGDK2 homepage for download.
Some changes of interest in the new release:
- When using a rule that accepts a specific type of sprite as a parameter, the rule editor will list instances of that specific sprite type in the drop-down list.
- Added an incomplete help file to the project. Help exists for the Graphics editor and Frameset editor, and the tutorial and introduction pages are also available.
- Allow layers to scroll and wrap in a virtual space larger than the tiles stored for the layer.
- Improve the handling of d3dx9_30.dll so projects will compile and run even if the system has the wrong version of DirectX 9 installed.
- Show loaded files in about dialog.
- Fix an error in the code editor's undo feature.
- When using a tool in "locked" mode, show the coordinates a the locked endpoint instead of the actual mouse cursor position.
- Auto-scroll the frame browser controls when dragging a frame near the top or bottom edge.
- Fix Project.cs to handle map names with embedded spaces.
-
A new alpha release (number 4) is available that has some more help hooked up (lots more, but not quite done yet).
http://sgdk2.sourceforge.net/ (http://sgdk2.sourceforge.net/)
1000th Post! :)
-
1000th Post! :)
Nice work! Here's a reward! ;D http://www.pivothost.org/upload/v2/Jam0864/bluemonkmn5sf.gif
(It's an animated signature)
-
Alpha 5 has been released. It contains a detailed coding reference, which is useful for understanding how the rule functions work (used when defining plans and sprite definitions) and for understanding the internal structure of an SGDK2 project so you can write custom code objects in the Source Code folder of a project. Press F1 to bring up the help file -- I didn't add it to the Help menu yet.
Check out the homepage for more details and download link: http://sgdk2.sf.net/ (http://sgdk2.sf.net/)
-
Alpha 6 has been released. See the homepage for details:
http://sgdk2.sf.net/ (http://sgdk2.sf.net/)
-
How would you make it function for the DS?
-
Not easily, I'd imagine. The code is currently written for Microsoft.NET and DirectX 9, neither of which have ports to the DS, so somebody would have to either rewrite SGDK2 or Microsoft.NET, the first being a daunting task, the second, near impossible. And even if one did, they would also have to rewrite SGDK2 to use the built-in graphics mode for the DS instead of DirectX.
-
That's alright. The game developers would probally have to go through some thing with Nintendo just to get their games out. 8)
-
WOW! I started a new page! :D ;D ;) :) :P 8)