This is the second post in my game design series. Last time I gave an overview of the game and its goals. Making the framework and playing with the AI were the main objectives, but first we’ll take a quick detour into the map generation system.
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Extraction: Map generation
Making a game for fun and… that’s it
About a year ago I found myself with a couple of weeks worth of evenings free, so I decided to sit down and have a crack at making a game. Not because I had an amazing idea for a story or some mechanics, just to see if I could. A few hours a night for two weeks was enough to make some decent progress on the skeleton of the game, and one day I hope to go back and finish it off, at least to the point where my initial plans are all implemented.
This is the first in a series of posts describing the game (working-and-definitely-not-final title: Extraction), what I’ve done so far, and where I plan to go next, with a focus on the parts I personally found most interesting.
Detecting if another instance of an application is already running
Back in Alpha 1.3 of Picsie, one of the features I added was to have the windows position differently depending on if there were already Picise instances loading. This isn’t as simple as it sounds, and I ended up prostrating myself at the feet of Stack Overflow, begging for wisdom.
Here’s what I learned.
Perforce Woes
Quick tip from a Perforce newbie…
Sometimes, for whatever reason, Perforce might miss updates – additions, deletions or edits – and they simply won’t appear in any change-lists. The changes show up in a diff, but good luck trying to commit the changes.
The solution: right click on the file/folder in the workspace browser and select Reconcile Offline Work. A warning though – this diffs every single file in your selection, so an entire project or workspace may take several coffees.
Inevitable Picsie
Alpha 1.9: Since it’s been a while, have a quick Picsie update – images now show tooltips when you hover over them.
Available, as always, from the main Picsie page
Picsie bug fix
I just noticed that animated GIFs aren’t being released when you move on to another image. Fixed now.
Alpha 1.8 (30 November 2010)
- Installer (~75KB). This will set up your file associations for you.
- Standalone .exe (~200KB). Use this if you already have Picsie installed and you just want the latest version. Just drop it over the existing one.
Changelog
- Now properly releases animated GIFs when you switch to a different image.
For a full changelog, see the main Picsie page.
Quick Picsie update
Picsie how has a taskbar icon in Windows 7, to take advantage of the shiny new taskbar system.
Alpha 1.7 (18 November 2010)
- Installer (~75KB). This will set up your file associations for you.
- Standalone .exe (~200KB). Use this if you already have Picsie installed and you just want the latest version. Just drop it over the existing one.
Changelog
- Has a taskbar icon in Windows 7
For a full changelog, see the main Picsie page.
Picsie: Now with less broken zooming
Well, that was a bit embarrassing… All that effort to pre-compute a decent zoom level for images when you load them, and then completely ignoring it. Oops, fixed now.
Alpha 1.6 (13 October 2010)
- Installer (~75KB). This will set up your file associations for you.
- Standalone .exe (~200KB). Use this if you already have Picsie installed and you just want the latest version. Just drop it over the existing one.
Changelog
- Fix: Sets the zoom level properly when you load an image
- Fix: Now consistently applies the minimum zoom level
For a full changelog, see the main Picsie page.
Picsie Update
Nice little update to Picsie for you.
Alpha 1.5 (26 September 2010)
- Installer (~75KB). This will set up your file associations for you.
- Standalone .exe (~200KB). Use this if you already have Picsie installed and you just want the latest version. Just drop it over the existing one.
Minor Picsie update
Just made a quick update to Picsie – larger images wouldn’t zoom to fill the screen properly, this has been fixed. At some point I’ll stop being lazy and deal with the “forms can’t be much bigger than the screen” limitation…
Alpha 1.4 (4 September 2010)
- Installer (~75KB). This will set up your file associations for you.
- Standalone .exe (~200KB). Use this if you already have Picsie installed and you just want the latest version. Just drop it over the existing one.