Devlog Weekly Log - TR Dev, KAG Editor and Fixes

Original: http://www.thd.vg/post/129827137195/weekly-log-tr-dev-kag-editor-and-fixes

This week’s news sounds like last week’s, but we’ve got more hard content this time around!

Trench Run News:

The “New Art” implementation is under way! Currently we’re just focussing on getting the terrain art in, because it requires the smallest number of assets. This will let us assess any changes that need to be made as early as possible. New map loading code and a simpler map format are being developed to accomodate the new tiles.

The graphics in game are currently at this point - lots of issues but coming along.​

Because there’s a lot to do to get everything converted, Michal is working on a Separate Expo Version for Pixel Heaven. The most exciting expo feature likely to be carried over to the normal version is per-player stat tracking. We track many stats, such as accuracy, weapon use, time spent in the air, and time spent dead. There is also a framework for tracking more information should the need arise. These stats may end up being globally tracked for ranked matches - depending on how hard the infrastructure is to set up.

King Arthur’s Gold News:

Skinney has been working on the look and implementation of the map editor, “Cartographer”. He’s toying with a simple “paint program” aesthetic. Skinney plans powerful quick-search functionality, to prevent sifting through lists of tiles by hand.

The map editor will look and function like a straightforward painting program.​

Verra has been working on a few features that are likely more relevant to server owners than players. A few game-side memory leaks are being investigated. Chat and console logs are now flushed from memory beyond a certain length. There is also a decrease in the verbosity of logging of some things, such as entity creation. All in all he reduced the memory footprint of the server, which is a great result!

That’s it for this week,

Have Fun!
Max

 

I like where our development is heading now.

 

Please tweak the breathing system for KAG, it works in an opposite way as it would be logical. It takes more time to breath 100& than to go 0% air underwater.

 

Indeed, though there may be secondary formats that are less easy to edit externally added that can save more data - eg a cfg based approach might happen down the line.
We're not going to be removing image loading, but there are some things that the image format makes... difficult.

However, I'd suggest not using mspaint for anything, ever. Last "ok" version was in XP before they removed indexed editing support and even that was super awful. In the context of KAG maps, you literally cannot use some of the more "modern" features (alpha-encoded information for mechanisms) in paint because of the lack of transparency support.