runhello.com

Mac build (r113)
Windows build (r113)

Status: Working physics! Chipmunk is now completely handling not just collision detection but all movement. This means not only that you can move up and against walls correctly (and there’s a fun little bounce when you hit a wall that I think I’m going to try to keep in) but that players can push and shove each other around. (At one point I even had a little kickback when you got hit by a bullet, but I took it out for now because it wouldn’t be able to work when you shot a “past self” player).

Downsides: There’s now a little bit inertia of when you start or stop moving; the characters move like they have heft, sort of. I tried to minimize this but there’s still a little bit. I’m not sure if this is actually something to fix or not. Also, if you just sit perfectly still for 10 seconds until your copy spawns on top of you, your copy actually spawns literally on top of you and it’s just sort of weird.

Anyway the physics is a big deal because what I now have is basically a system where “new” objects (i.e. objects being controlled by a player) are totally driven by the physics engine, “old”/”past self” objects are driven by the recorded movements and velocities from when they were “new”, and interactions between the two are natural and physics-y (“old” objects can’t deviate from their paths, but they can knock “new” objects out of the way). You could at this point fit in any kind of physics Chipmunk supports (like I at this point technically could, and as an experiment at some point might, turn on gravity), or I think without much difficulty drop in a 3D physics library like Bullet, and the time engine would just handle it.

I think I’m considering this the first “playable” demo; there’s nothing left at this point to “apologize” for, so to speak. You should be able to play a multiplayer game at this point and it should be fun (assuming the game is fun at all). Everything from here on out is polish, adding maps, and “additional features” like health/ammo canisters. If anyone’s able to give this version a play, I’d be really curious how it works out for you (and I need to find someone to play against…). I’d be especially curious, if you tried any of the previous builds, what you think about the new “hefty” movement.

Mac build (r110)
Windows build (r110)

Status: Added level maps and free-moving cameras.

Mac build (r105)
Windows build (r105)

Status: Fixed some bugs. Explosions no longer sometimes draw “behind” other objects for example.

Mac build (r97)
Windows build (r97)

Status: Did a big under the hood overhaul of the way I lay out HUD elements on the screen. Before, the way I positioned interface elements during the game was done by a bunch of spaghetti code doing ugly math, which resulted in a bunch of little bugs of varying levels of obviousness. Now I have some nice clean code for describing rectangles in relation to one another which I can easily use to actually place elements where they are supposed to go. Although I haven’t bothered actually placing said elements where they are supposed to go yet…

Mac build (r92)
Windows build (r92)

Status: Things actually work!

1. You can get shot and take damage.
2. You can go into the past and block a shot destined to hit another player, and you take damage and they heal.
3. You can run out of health and die.
4. Walls are now impassable (though this doesn’t exactly work great yet).

Thing #3 means that this is now, technically, a “game”! It is possible to win and possible to lose. You may feel free to start holding 32-person double elimination tournaments now.

Mac build (r91)
Windows build (r91)

Status: Rolled back yesterdays graphics experiments, implemented health bars. They don’t do anything interesting yet. P1’s health is fixed at 100% and P2’s health is fixed at 50%.

Mac build (r90M)
Windows build (r90M)

Status: Broke everything.

Mac build (r90)
Windows build (r90)

Status: Implemented a pretty neat motion-blur-y effect that fires when you snap. I have a couple ideas for making it look “cooler” later.

By the way, if it’s not obvious, the changes I’ve done this weekend have all been tiny fiddly things, because the next thing I really need to implement is health, and that is going to be incredibly obnoxious to implement… 😐

Postscript: WTF, since when does WordPress do graphical smileys in blog posts?

Mac build (r89)
Windows build (r89)

Status: A small update, when you perform a snap the appropriate visuals and sounds now occur in the other player’s half of the screen immediately.

Mac build (r87)
Windows build (r87)

Status: Added a little “time map” at the top of the screen showing where the players are in relation to each other in time. Fixed the aspect ratio in splitscreen mode.

Unfortunately “fixing the aspect ratio”, since I don’t have camera pan and scan yet, entailed making the map really thin. I need to make actual maps for this thing at some point. I am realizing I’m not especially looking forward to this.

By the way, if you try out these builds: The red areas are supposed to be walls! Pretend you cannot walk through them.