So I've begun on my remake of Simple Tank. It's kind of a little test just to see how far I've come and see if I can improve an old game that I designed.
I've decided to start of slow and one thing I usually don't do is create good GUI systems. I typically hardcode them and it's rather unpleasant. As of late I've been working with Torque and I really appreciate it's GUI editor ... although it's a bit static and utilitarian. What I really like are the GUI's created with Flash used in Doom 3 and I also am rather fond of the touch screen GUI's in Nintendo DS games. Anyway, here's a start. The GUI uses quads and has the ability to spin them, scale them, and translate them. Everything's kinda scripted right now but I plan on creating a WYSIWYG editor that allows you to create all effects on a timeline.
I knocked a lot of code out in a couple of hours today but after getting to the end I realized that what I came up with is kind of limited due to the fact that it's hard to link up the effects. For example the ninja star is translating and spinning ... and I wanted to have it change spin directions when it reaches it's origin and destination on it's translation path ... it does this. However, it's scripted as a special case. It's a bit hard to explain ... but I envision something more elegant when it all comes together.
There are also some interactive elements built in ... but they aren't present in the demo. Basically, if you've played Wario Ware on the DS ... I want to give some playful functionality to my GUI's as seen in that game.
Anyway, here's a little demo:
http://www.leadfootproductions.com/codesketches/SimpleTank2005Boxed.exe
[Edit: Just for kicks I changed it so you can click on the Ninja Star to throw it from one side of the screen to the other]
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