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Multi line text

BenHumberston 1176953065|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Programming » Multi line text

Hey guys,

I made a multi line writer for outputting stuff to the screen. I tried to copy off God's code, but it unfortunately was pretty rough. God thinks readability is overrated. Anyways, it doesn't actually seem like that hard of a thing, and it isn't, except for one thing..

The friggin newline character! aka: \n

I can't figure out why, but it won't register these buggers. When it parses in the xml files, though, it seems to add in a bunch of \r and \n tags at every carriage return, which is weird that it'd do both… anyways, it sees the \r tags and does a carriage return, but it simply doesn't seem to see the \n character anywhere. I actually added a case statement to alert me if it saw them, but I've gotten nothing.

And yet, because the \n chars are there, they're mucking up the output from the writer. There may be another error (some off by 1 thing) that I can fix, but until I can get rid of these phantom \n chars, it's too hard to figure out. Any ideas?

Re: XML !

manojalpa 1176171404|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Programming » XML !

Instead of having it maxed out, I would put it at level 4 (Since that will appear like it's maxed out but they will still get the joy of discovering that you can make your Zyk that extra level better and get the gold bar). That'll still give them plenty of exploration time and what not.

And hey, can we make the Beta Zyk grey? Because White is kinda cool :-D

It sounds like you've got a good plan pretty much figured out, so just trust your gut on that. I know we disagree on things but I think you've got a really good handle on how this should work ;).

Re: XML !

BenHumberston 1176141942|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Programming » XML !

Well I'm still figuring out how exactly it will be formatted… I guess I can just not worry about schemas, as I'd have to bother Kevin to make one for everything, which would take away from his time on other things.

On the other hand, do you want me to write the tutorials? Not saying that you can't do it, but did you have in mind what you're doing? The code for it kinda evolves with what you actually need to do in the tutorial, so I'll have to know what you want.

For example, the idea for tutorial levels is that the player will have to max out an attribute (to demonstrate that trait specifically) before going onto the level. The other stuff will be hidden away. This is sorta your "beta Zyk" idea resurrected (actually, it IS your beta Zyk idea, period). There'll be a white Zyk that grows way faster than normal ones, but only in the given feature. Then the player enters a very short level with a single goal that is able to be reached by having that single maxed out trait. Thus we are showing both the way to increase a trait, as well as showing its in game effect.

The tutorial text pages (I guess you've seen them at this point) will pop up on entering the tutorial level, and the user should be able to bring them back up if they want (via a new button that I'll add). The final page for each tutorial will likely be something like "I've added notes on this subject to your memo file!" or suchlike. They then can access the similar info to what's given in the tutorial in their memos, which, as we've figured, will be stuff on how to raise attributes in the lab, what each attribute means, etc.

As far as triggering memos in the game game, I"ll leave that up to the guys who are working on that half of the game.

XML !

manojalpa 1176132572|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Programming » XML !

If you give me an XML layout for anything I can start filling it in (For instance all the tutorial stuff, memo stuff, things the head is going to say when you mouse over locations….)

Zyk transformation bug

BenHumberston 1176095828|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Programming » Zyk transformation bug

Hello hello,

If you've been in the music lab or the zykatorium (that's my spelling and I'm sticking to it!), you may have noticed that the zyk doesn't really transform correctly. Mostly, it's because the UpdateTransforms method seems to like working with the incremental changes that are handed each game cycle in the lab or zykatorium. However, I'm not sure how to modify the Zyk model from the original attribute input. So, for example, even though I hand a totally maxed out Zyk in, it looks like a pip-squeak in the lab because it doesn't update the model. It does once you enter the level, but I can't seem to figure out how to achieve this transform for the TestZyk. Gordon, can you help me out here? Thanks!

Re: NoSuitableGraphicsDeviceException

BenHumberston 1175959075|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Bugs!!! » NoSuitableGraphicsDeviceException

ok I've installed the february directx… that might help.

I've noticed that shifting screen resolution usually clears up this problem, so whenever I get it now I just flick down my resolution, then shift it back up, and it's been fine then every time so far. The PreferMultiSampling property has to be true, apparently, since our game gives a bunch of errors that I have no intention of working through right now if it's false :).

Thanks for the tip, though! My searches for answers online must have been oddly misplaced (wrong forum, I guess….).

Re: Preference for folders?

BenHumberston 1175958469|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Design Issues » Preference for folders?

hmm… then again, just lemme figure it out when I import sounds. Maybe it'll be better to order it by game part instead (main menu, lab, level, etc).

Re: Preference for folders?

manojalpa 1175953860|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Design Issues » Preference for folders?

So have each animal/creature/items with its own subfolder?

Re: NoSuitableGraphicsDeviceException

Kevinoid 1175952724|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Bugs!!! » NoSuitableGraphicsDeviceException

There is a thread about this on the MSDN forums with a few suggestions for how to work around it. Looks like the easiest thing to try would be to set graphics.PreferMultiSampling to false (the version they are referring to in the posts allows you to explicitly disable multi-sampling, but it looks like they took that feature out…). Also, do you have a recent version of DirectX installed?

Re: Preference for folders?

BenHumberston 1175922377|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Design Issues » Preference for folders?

seeing as you already did, I don't see why not… though it'd help if they're organized hierarchically (then again, as I unfortunately just revealed to you, it'd also be better if they were WAV format………………..)

Blah.

Re: svn weirdness

BenHumberston 1175921714|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Programming » svn weirdness

Yeah sorry about that… funny though that it notes the difference… windows itself is usually pretty lax about capital vs lowercase.

Preference for folders?

manojalpa 1175911803|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Design Issues » Preference for folders?

Is it cool if I just put the sounds in the content folder?

Re: svn weirdness

manojalpa 1175865365|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Programming » svn weirdness

Haha this totally killed my SVN for like hours :-(

It was because you had a .png and a .PNG

I love the filler art by the way >:O Haha.

Thumbs.db

BenHumberston 1175823978|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Programming » Thumbs.db

Blah… I'm a perpetrator of thumbs.db on svn… but thing is, I don't actutally see the thumbs.db file in my explorer windows… isn't it a hidden file that should be shown if you have hidden files viewable? I'm a bit puzzled by this, since I would like to find it and remove from svn… any suggestions?

svn weirdness

BenHumberston 1175809357|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Programming » svn weirdness

hey, just wanted to alert you guys that I think I've confused svn a bit while trying to load in a new background file for the main menu… tell me if you experience trouble.

Required UI for music lab

BenHumberston 1175801146|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Design Issues » Required UI for music lab

Ok, Chelsea, here's what I need for the music lab. Now, if I'm forgetting something, PLEASE add it to, as it's easy to forget small things (btw… don't freak out at the size… a lot of it is notes or different states of same interface button):

• Main lab console image (for the "computer that you're working at" that everything goes on)
  • Should not take up over 1/4 to 1/3 vertically of screen… sorta like what is used now for temp console
• Keyboard
  • I envisioned a keyboard "computer screen" this fits the glowy hilights on the keys, but the one you have now is more physical. Your call as to what you want.
  • It will probably be easier to hilight in the image itself which keys are "pressable", so can you do a major/minor version, kinda like on the site, at least with two separate images?
  • Hilight "patch" that appears on a key while it is pressed. Again, you call here, but just some thing to put on top of a pressable key when it's down, so you'll have not just the regular pressable hilight, but an actual "'pressed" hilight on top. Does that make sense to you?
• Menu button: again, as you see fit to put it in, whether you want it separate from the console, or integrated somehow
• Menu interface screen/image
  • Back to lab button (Zyk loses traits from lab, so we'll have confirmation box for this too)
  • Actually, that's all I can think of for the menu right now… so maybe the back to lab will just become part of the console? Maybe, unless you can think of more needed menu items needed?
• Start playing button
  • Normal state
  • Mouse hover state
  • Pressed state
  • Disabled state (grayed out/light off/whatever)
• Stop playing button
  • Normal state
  • mouse hover state
  • pressed state
  • disabled state (grayed out/light off/whatever)
• Clear song button (if they want to retry the sequence. we're allowing that, right?). Once they clear input, the start playing button is enabled again. This prevents their accidentally pressing the (probably) larger big green start input button by accident.
  • Normal state
  • mouse hover state
  • pressed state
  • disabled state (grayed out/light off/whatever)
• Button for accepting the song and attributes and moving onto the level
  • right hand side of screen somewhere on the console?
  • i guess maybe "Accept Changes" or something, maybe blue? your call. Whatever seems to make sense to you as "I'm done playing… now let's use those changes and go onto the level"
  • Normal state
  • mouse hover state
  • pressed state
  • disabled state (same as others)
• Change theme button: Brings up a special mini console where player can put in a new theme for the Zyk. remember that playing the theme is now the new patterns, since those didn't really work out… so your Zyk will have his theme that you can change, and playing it in the actual song increases your toughness. The theme input is timed… maybe like 5 seconds long?
• Change theme console
  • Start input button (can be miniversion of main start song)
  • Playback button (to hear the theme after they play it to be sure they like it)
  • Accept new theme button
  • Cancel button (keeps old theme)
  • All buttons with normal, hover, pressed, disabled state like other buttons
• Access to memos button(maybe just like a random tablet lying on console?)
  • normal, hover, pressed, disabled states like other buttons (though maybe this won't have disabled and will be always available)
• Memos: Though I think Melissa is doing this interface…. right?
• Song progress bar: maybe just some sort of transparent glasslike reflection case for going over those green and red progress bars to make them seem less like a growing green rectangle and more like a scientific meter
• Space somewhere to indicate current tonality (major/minor) and key so they can understand why the core traits get a boost and why their zyk is a certain color (maybe this can go in the x-ray bg?).

Ok, that's all I can think of now! Remember to not hesitate to add.

Also, remember that every clickable button can have 4 states: normal for just when it's there, hover for when the mouse is over it, pressed for when the mouse is clicking it, and disabled for when it can't be clicked.

I guess my vision of the lab was not that it would be a game UI, but rather an actually physical lab console, as though you were at the controls looking at this Zyk in the lab… if that's not how you see it, well… I'm at no liberty to stop you, since you're the artist :). Do it as you see it best. Just bear in mind that that was how I see it as I'm giving you the required art pieces.

CRASHED by the Tile

BenHumberston 1175780369|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Programming » CRASHED by the Tile

Ok, so in the latest version of the Tile.cs file, looks like we're getting all manner of crazy errors, like trying to do bad implicit casts and such. Are you guys aware of those, or is it just a problem on my computer? Looks like Kevin and Gordon were working on it a lot last night, so I guess I'll find out today in class. Thing is that I can't seem to update to a previous revision just to work on the Music Lab, because it will always give me that dreaded "NoSuitableGraphicsDevice" error…. *sigh*. Ah well. Hopefully we'll work this out in class today.

Re: LoaderLock is Poo

Kevinoid 1175562082|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Bugs!!! » LoaderLock is Poo

OK, the problem with LoaderLock has now been identified. If you are being hit by this one, here is what you do:

1. Open the project in Vis. Studio
2. Click on "Exceptions…" in the Debug menu
3. Under "Managed Debugging Assistants", uncheck Throws for LoaderLock
4. Hit OK, and everything should now work (in theory)

Post replies if this fails for anyone, and we can try something else.

Re: Drawing part of a Texture2D

Kevinoid 1175255090|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Programming » Drawing part of a Texture2D

Not sure if you are talking about 2D or 3D drawing, but I will guess 2D. If it is 3D you may get more help from Gordon or Sasha. For 2D textures (drawn using a SpriteBatch), all you need to do is use one of the overloads of Draw() that takes a parameter for a source rectangle. See MSDN for a list of the overloads (or use IntelliSense in XNA studio). By the way, there is an overview of some of the 2D stuff here, but it is not really detailed…

Drawing part of a Texture2D

BenHumberston 1175227929|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
in discussion MIDI Game Forums / Programming » Drawing part of a Texture2D

Hmm… this shouldn't be so hard to figure out.

Do any of you guys know how to draw just a part of an image, like what you would do to draw an animation where you just want to draw a small part of the whole texture?