El Hobito's Ds Projects

Progress

2006-10-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

In the time i last post here i got a new job! wooo! starting next week which most likely means i'll be away for a little while while i settle in.

On more related news, I've rewritten the base engine behind tyrian:the return and its now looking much slicker with much better structuring and the code is all separated out into different file which makes the code so much easier to read. Also code redundancy should be massively reduced allowing new objects to be created much easier, for example the same enemy could use many different weapons and fly very differently. The big change though (and the whole reason i had to rewrite it in the first place) was now its possibly to totally customise the player and should allow me to implement ship upgrades and the whole shop mechanic! Its not done yet but when it is i may do a new release with some more levels.

On the PALIB side of things, i'm rewriting the FAT interface inorder to make use of the new driver. What i'd like to do is use this for custom levels and also to load the assets at runtime(maybe).

The Future

2006-09-26T03:05:00.000-07:00

I have loads of ideas of what needs doing next for tyrian.

Whats missing:
Shop mechanic and weapon/ship upgrading : the first level is meant to be hard because you would be expected to start off with a better weapon.

Power Generator function for regulating the amount of weapons you can fire.

Bosses! - This should be a nice challenge as it will require interobject communication. I think this will be achieved by creating a master object that controls all the smaller objects so that, for example, parts of the boss can be destroyed without killing the whole beast but at the same time reducing the boss's overall health.

Dual screen? should be pretty simple but i'm not sure i wanna do it as it will then force me into using 2d grahics (i ain't gonna bother with dual screen 3d).

3d? I might at some point do this as it'll make it easier for me to create assets (new enemies for example)

Wifi? In addition to ressurecting my old wifi setup app i have some big plans for wifi which aren't neccessarily tied to this game but more in areas such as lobbying and game hosting standard for any homebrew games. As you can probably tell thats a project in itself so it will come after i'm done with tyrian.

MORE ART/LEVELS/ENEMIES! This is the hard part as i am not an artist ( though i'm pretty chuffed with what i've made already) The next release will have at least one new level with hopefully some new ai/enemies. If anyone out there considers themselves a competent artist who can make new sprites/tilesets your welcome to contribute. You'll see later how easy making levels is.

Filesystem Support! The final release may well support file systems, so you can make and import your own levels with ease in addition to giving me more memory to play with and making the assets mroe manageble.

Thats all for now, i can't promise everything written here will get done its just a few ideas that have come into my head and i'd like to tackle.

ELH out!

Return to Tyrian - First Release!

2006-09-21T14:07:00.000-07:00

Its done, the first rendition of my game engine and make pseudo tyrian sequel demo!

I'll let the images speak for themselves, now what are you waiting for get downloading!

ds.gba HERE
.NDS HERE

p.s. my top score so far is 2660 see if you can beat it!

btw it doesn't have an ending enemies just stop comming after a while...

He's Back and this time....its war

2006-09-10T07:05:00.001-07:00

Okay so i didn't keep this blog up for long, but now i'm back and am in the process of coding a new game which is so far going quite well.

It currently lacks content, but the framework is now there and it would now be possible to create an entire game with whats current done. What is lacking most of all is art and tilesets for the background which is not something i can make. In order to get round some of the difficulties in making art i intend to migrate this engine into 3d.

I intend to make some documentation on how to build levels, its pretty simple to do.

What it consists of so far,

1 v short level
1 weapon type
1 enemy types
2 ai methods
1 player type
2 sounds

no interface of any kind, its very much a test version i consider it alpha. There is no end (it just stops).

Stay tuned for more info later

Exciting News!

2006-04-29T11:02:00.000-07:00

I've been invited to become and official developer on the pa_lib team!

So what does this mean for my future endevours? The next release (which will also be posted on my blog) will be as part of a new version of Pa_lib. I already have a mountain of ideas and designs of suitable functions and methods for all sorts of things that would benefit developers.

As for the wifi part i'm pretty much ready but as this new version requires modification to Pa_lib itself it wont come separately anymore. This does now mean that installation will be v easy (it should just work without any external configuration).

There is one thing i would like to know...Do people really want the ability to change their firmware settings for wifi? Once WEP is supported there should be little reason to want to change it especially with DHCP support we now have.

Whats in the works:

sorting out WEP
Wrting a lobby system with some basic chat functionality
Writing a tutorial with a simple example of a wifi game
Rewriting the console display(top screen msgs) and making it viewable only when in debug mode
some other stuff

Hail to the king baby!

2006-04-25T16:03:00.000-07:00

As some of you know the new version of the wifi library by Stephen Stair is out! wooo which means soon we will have
DHCP(auto ip config)
WEP(wired equivalent protection, ie encryption)
DNS (i.e. domain name service, e.g. www.google.com rather than an ip address)
TCP (the most frequently used communation protocol on the internet)

I've worked on it tonight and my app is now working pretty well! DHCP is now used when using the "search for ap" function and appears to work fine. I'll have to do some tests but so far so good!

just some othe pics i forgot to include

2006-04-23T15:00:00.000-07:00

Next version, i'll work on enabling the settings editor and possibly firmware saving then it'll be almost done! By then i would hope Stephen stair will have done the new version of the wifi lib so we can finnally have some TCP/DHCP/WEP love....

New Version 0.2 released!

2006-04-23T14:08:00.000-07:00

Woo i've worked through my hangover to get this done for you all.

binary
source

Whats new?

Access point searching! (currently stylus driven, button control will come later)
Crash fixed when connection to an access point fails
a load of fixes here and there
PA_enableWifi() and its opposite are no longer required

Notes/known issues

Access point searching currently takes ip settings from the first profile.
The example App is rubbish!
There is currently no way to edit settings.
Doesn't support DHCP,TCP,WEP,WPA or firmware saving.
You still need to manually change the destip on the example in main.c in order for udp_test to receive messages.
type exit to exit the test app (the keyboard that launches after connecting).
Main.c is where your code should go (i will integrate it all and separate the example later).
you must use static ip, no WEP and have firmware settings.

New Cf Card on its way!

2006-04-20T15:01:00.000-07:00

As some of you know my cf card broke a while back and my replacement card was also faulty. Having sent it back to dabs.com they giving me a refund the same day they recieved it! now thats a good returns policy! New ones on there way this time i've bought a smaller one purely for messing around on and a larger one for mp3's,vids etc

3rd time lucky eh?

The projects

2006-04-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

I'd like to start by writing a little desciption of whats currently in the works,

The Primary Project, The PA_Lib based Wifi setup app get it here (v0.1)

Summary
A series of methods which allow the simple implementation and initialisation of wifi on the nintendo ds platform. The goal is to help developers by negating the need to write tedious code to connect and setup wifi therefore allowing them to concentrate on the game/application they are building.

current features as of (0.1)
Connecting via firmware settings
Viewing firmware settings
Testing firmware profiles

Planned for next release (0.2)
Access point finding - a certainty
improved makefiles - hope so
bug fixes - of course
better test app/example - lets see shall we

Status inital release(0.1)/active development

Credits
SgtStair - for making wifi possible! link
Bafio - For helping with firmware reading and general help link
Mollusk, kleevah et al - for making the awesome PA_lib
And obviously myself! (El_hobito)

Note: the search for AP is a WIP (not in current build, soon i hope!)

The ultimately primary but currently secondary Project
As yet unannounced secret wifi project, which may make you wanna start shouting....

more to come later....once the team is assembled... and i get my cf card back!
Some screenys will come later i hope.

Hello World!

2006-04-19T10:55:00.000-07:00

Greetings, As you've probably figured out already i've decided to make a blog containing all my thoughts, ideas and progress on my various projects mainly focusing on the nintendo's DS platform. Gonna get some pics etc and explain whats in progress a bit later but for now enjoy!