I started working on

Giuliano · Post by **Giuliano** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 6:07 am

a Simcity type game.. It won't really be a clone but it will have the same concept .. I will post some pictures when I get further with it..

so far I have completed
-Scrolling Isometric tile engine
-Some graphics (used Simcity building architect tool)
-and I have almost all the game ideas in my head (this was actually the hardest part)

I have work now so I will post some pictures in a few days when I get more done with it

It should be very fun when it's complete :)

Giuliano · Post by **Giuliano** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 12:51 pm

Here's a screen shot of it..

I got a lot of the back-end coding done.. I will start on the gameplay functions very soon.

http://www.peoplegrade.com/g/utopia-ss.png

cgruber · Post by **cgruber** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 6:44 pm

Gary13579 · Post by **Gary13579** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 12:11 am

Awesome, looks like it will be one of the better Lua games :D

LuMo · Post by **LuMo** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 1:33 am

hehe its gonna be a quite complicated backend...

Giuliano · Post by **Giuliano** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 3:27 am

LuMo wrote:hehe its gonna be a quite complicated backend...

well I'm up to about 650 lines.. not that much really .. and it's already got the whole tile engine, construction, constants (building information, sizes, etc..), key pad, bitmap font printing, etc..

I like to make everything into objects so that I can reuse it as many times as possible so the code will be clean and efficient hopefully. So far it runs with perfect frame rate :)

I hope to get a lot done this weekend. I have been busy with college classes and other things but I am progressing rather quickly. Lua hasn't been too hard to work with. Really nice:)

Mmy · Post by **Mmy** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 4:53 am

I'm really looking forward to this. A sim game sounds like a good break from all of these other lame clones(snake) people make. :X

LuMo · Post by **LuMo** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 5:24 am

@Giuliano
sim city uses a heavy side effecting engine, do not even know what effects what in that game :) => lot work coming to you *hehe*

greets
Lumo
PS: hope i can continue at bm soon (currently too much work for university)

Wraggster · Post by **Wraggster** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 11:33 am

i wonder ifa basic command and conquer type game is possible using Lua

good luck with the Sim city project

Giuliano · Post by **Giuliano** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 12:02 pm

LuMo wrote:@Giuliano
sim city uses a heavy side effecting engine, do not even know what effects what in that game :) => lot work coming to you *hehe*

greets
Lumo
PS: hope i can continue at bm soon (currently too much work for university)

I won't have as many factors as they do, of course, but remember, this is NOT a Simcity clone , I don't clone the gameplay :) I have thought up many ideas on how the gameplay can be a lot simpler than Simcity and still have a fun game.

Wraggster wrote:i wonder ifa basic command and conquer type game is possible using Lua

good luck with the Sim city project

It is possible to make a c&c game in Lua. Perhaps in the future I could try to work on one (I'd need a gfx guy though). The only problem I have come accross in Lua is Blitting. If you blit too many images, it slows the game down greatly. I believe that to make a c&c game we would have to make less characters on the screen at once or something like that. Hopefully in the near future Shine will upgrade the way Lua draws and make the engine faster.

KawaGeo · Post by **KawaGeo** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 12:48 pm

In order to maintain FPS at constant rate, first save the screen for the next frame and blit objects as needed to a small area where the scene is changed. Would it help?

Wraggster · Post by **Wraggster** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 6:59 pm

for graphics the old C&C modding scene has thousands of graphics that can be used without copyright problems plus im sure most would love to play a C&C type game on their PSP :)

Giuliano · Post by **Giuliano** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 12:49 am

KawaGeo wrote:In order to maintain FPS at constant rate, first save the screen for the next frame and blit objects as needed to a small area where the scene is changed. Would it help?

I do that right now but it's a bit trickier than that because my screen image is bigger than the allowed size. So what I have to do is make big squares of the image and then draw them accordingly on the screen. My other thread "I/O File Handling" has some info on that (it got off topic). The problem with the c&c game is that the characters on the screen might be moving at every FPS, or every few FPS, and that means you would have to redraw those images. If you were to draw the characters out one by one every FPS, even if they aren't moving, the FPS would decrease.

LuMo · Post by **LuMo** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 3:01 am

Giuliano wrote:The problem with the c&c game is that the characters on the screen might be moving at every FPS, or every few FPS, and that means you would have to redraw those images. If you were to draw the characters out one by one every FPS, even if they aren't moving, the FPS would decrease.

simple solution for you (at least i think this might be one for you)
thats the way i do it:

Code: Select all

layer = &#123;
	background = Image.load&#40;Level.background&#41;,
	map = Image.createEmpty&#40;480, 272&#41;,
	player = Image.createEmpty&#40;480, 272&#41;,
	sprites = Image.createEmpty&#40;480, 272&#41;
	&#125;

so you can draw your background, add the map (draw stuff for map)
draw the player and items to seperate images
so when the player moves you only need to blit those 4 layers again (which means you do NOT have to draw all the stuff again, cause nothing else but the player changed)

greets
Lumo

Gary13579 · Post by **Gary13579** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 3:48 am

With all this talk of Sim City, I just thought of another cool clone, The Sims.
It wouldn't have a lot of the stuff the real game has, for sure, but it would still be awesome.

I can't wait for the official The Sims PSP game :D

Giuliano · Post by **Giuliano** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 10:09 am

LuMo wrote:
Giuliano wrote:The problem with the c&c game is that the characters on the screen might be moving at every FPS, or every few FPS, and that means you would have to redraw those images. If you were to draw the characters out one by one every FPS, even if they aren't moving, the FPS would decrease.
simple solution for you (at least i think this might be one for you)
thats the way i do it:
Code: Select all
layer = &#123;
	background = Image.load&#40;Level.background&#41;,
	map = Image.createEmpty&#40;480, 272&#41;,
	player = Image.createEmpty&#40;480, 272&#41;,
	sprites = Image.createEmpty&#40;480, 272&#41;
	&#125;
so you can draw your background, add the map (draw stuff for map)
draw the player and items to seperate images
so when the player moves you only need to blit those 4 layers again (which means you do NOT have to draw all the stuff again, cause nothing else but the player changed)

greets
Lumo

lol. I was speaking in theoritical terms. I am not making a c&c game so I have not required more than one layer (the map).. but yes if there were to be a lot of sprites on the map then more layers would be better, but again, if all the sprites are moving at once you will still have to blit the new sprites (even if it is to the layer image) and that is slow if you do a bunch at once.