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dalio
Lowly Slime
Joined: 06 Jun 2003
Posts: 2
Location: Bournemouth/Preston UK
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 Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2003 2:10 pm Post subject: Nice stuff! |
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Nice to see someone tackling Director tile games too!!
I'm just about to start work on my 3rd year uni project (way in advance of the deadline!), and have decided to do a tile based game along the action/rpg style.
Can you give me any tips about coding or graphics before I start? I'm starting work on the design document this weekend, and any tips would be really appreciated!!
Cheers
D
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Nephilim
Mage
Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 414
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| Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2003 3:19 am Post subject: Re: Nice stuff! |
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| dalio wrote: | | Can you give me any tips about coding or graphics before I start? I'm starting work on the design document this weekend, and any tips would be really appreciated!! |
Coitanly! I don't know what your current skill level is with Lingo, so I'll just make this generic. Apologies if any of this falls under the "well, duh!" category.
My main tip would be this: LEARN IMAGING LINGO. If you try to do a tile-based game using only sprites, you will end up painting yourself into a corner. I won't say it can't be done, but an imaging Lingo based tile game engine will ultimately be more flexible. (A corollary to this would be to learn parent scripting, but that's not strictly necessary.)
Imaging Lingo is easy to pick up if you haven't already, and provides you with lots of flexibility and speed. For the most flexibility, be sure to learn about the alpha channel stuff by doing experiments to see how copyPixels() and fill() affect alpha channels.
For the best speed, draw directly to (the stage).image, which dumps your graphics right into the screen buffer. You can't use the built-in sprites over that area, but it gives you the best performance. Alternatively, you can create an offscreen buffer and draw into it each frame, and when you're done drawing into the buffer, set the image of a member to that image. That will allow you to have a tile-based game displaying nicely with all the other sprites. You take a speed hit from the overhead of placing the new data into the imaging database, and then having the system pull that and place it inline with all the sprites, but it's not too bad if you're not trying to do something crazy.
Another good imaging tip is to cache the images in memory before copying out of them. For instance, instead of drawing out of member("player").image every frame, set a property to member("player").image.duplicate() once at the beginning of the game, and then draw out of that property every frame. This way, you skip the overhead involved in fetching the image out of the media asset database.
Regarding other implementation stuff, remember that you can execute uncompiled Lingo on the fly. You don't need to create a scripting system, say, for an RPG, because you can use built-in Lingo as your scripting system.
Finally, subscribe to DirGames-L at http://nuttybar.drama.uga.edu/mailman/listinfo/dirgames-l/. There are lots of other Director game developers on that list, and if you get stuck, it's a great resource for getting help.
Hope this helps, and be sure to post the results of your work here!
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dalio
Lowly Slime
Joined: 06 Jun 2003
Posts: 2
Location: Bournemouth/Preston UK
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| Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2003 2:54 pm Post subject: Wow! |
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Cheers mate - a lot of what you said makes sense, but I'm gonna have to seriously put my head down and learn imaging lingo :-)
Our uni lecturers stay away from any serious coding - they're all arty types - and we've only touched on imaging lingo for about 30 mins!! Plus they like flash far too much for any normal person ;-)
I'm glad you posted that link to the list - there's some amazing work on there - I'm excited about really raising the standard for my game now - did you get a chance to look at http://www.entermation.com/games/minido.html? It's a fantastic idea....
I've got most of the friends of ed books on director - but are there any specific resources or books you know about to learn imaging lingo?
Thanks again
D
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Nephilim
Mage
Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 414
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| Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2003 2:30 am Post subject: Re: Wow! |
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| dalio wrote: | | Our uni lecturers stay away from any serious coding - they're all arty types - and we've only touched on imaging lingo for about 30 mins!! Plus they like flash far too much for any normal person ;-) |
That's unfortunate. That will probably make it difficult to learn the stuff that really makes Director sing. It's probably just as well, though, since you learn more experimenting anyway.
| dalio wrote: | | I'm glad you posted that link to the list - there's some amazing work on there - I'm excited about really raising the standard for my game now - did you get a chance to look at http://www.entermation.com/games/minido.html? It's a fantastic idea.... |
Yeah, that's a nice technology demo, but it doesn't feel like a game yet. If you're interested in tilebased games done in director, check out the screenshots at www.tildruin.com. It's an isometric MMORPG being done with Director. I don't believe it's open beta yet, but the guys doing it have contributed some good A* pathfinding code that would likely be useful to your tilebased game.
| dalio wrote: | | I've got most of the friends of ed books on director - but are there any specific resources or books you know about to learn imaging lingo? |
I learned it from the manual and experimentation, so I don't have any books to tell you about. However, I notice that Director Online (at http://www.director-online.com) has as its top story the Matrix text effect done with imaging lingo as the top article. I didn't read it, but usually, that site has fairly good Director articles. Also, do a search for "Maricopa Director Web". That site has searchable archives of the "Direct-L" mailing list, which is the main mailing list for Director developers. Not as focused on game development as DirGames-L, but it's a great resource for finding out about the engine itself. (Be sure to search the archives before posting a question.)
Good luck with your game, and post news about it here!
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