TBTK First Update Released, Mobile support Included!

So it's happening earlier than I expected. TBTK v1.0.1 is now live on AssetStore. If you havent know already, mobile support is now included.

Rather than describe what I did in a lengthy and whinny sentences, I'll just put down the change log. They are as follow:

Version Change – v1.0.1
addition/change

• optimization for mobile device
• added touch input support for mobile device.
• added support for camera control via touch
• more comment and clean up has been added to the code
• change the way attack animation delay works, delay duration can now be specified manually
• point reward will no longer shown up when game end in non-persistant data mode
• added optional minimum attack range for range unit

bug fixes

• fix UI bug where ability tooltip not display correctly
• fix bug where AI unit wont pick up collectible
• fix bug where miss chance is mis-calculated and limited at 5%
• fix bug where AP bonus on tile doesnt apply to unit

Status Update (Pacific Rim is still awesome!!)

Forgive me, I still cant get over the fact of how awesome PacificRim really is. Some one needs to make a game about conducting the Jaeger program against kaiju, XCom style! Feel free to steal my idea.  :)

Mean while, back in my life, it's work, work... never ending work and never ending of ideas to try. The good news is, the research project which I worked part time for has now ended. Of course that doesn't mean that I can spend more time playing games now, it just means  that I can now concentrate full time on my own work. Got to say that feels... liberating. 

Anyway, I've been working hard through the weekend on TBTK. The plan is to try to fixed all the bugs reported to me (or encounter by myself) so far, add more polish to the code (by which I mean comment and clean up) then update the package by the end of coming week. If possible, I would very much like to squeeze in mobile support to TBTK before the release of next update. 

It goes without saying, of all these things I'm trying to do, the trickiest one being mobile support. There's plenty to consider of course. First the optimisation, by my standard, at the minimum, it needs to run for at least 20fps for all the demo scenes. When I first try it, it register something like 15fps or lower for even the smallest and simplest of the demo scene. After some tinkering which took almost all of my weekend, now at least even the space theme scene, the one that contains most lot of rendered object can easily push pass 20, sometime reaching 30. So it's not bad.

Then there's the Input scheme. Obviously on touch device you cant just hover over a tile with the cursor or right click, and there's no shortcut key as well for that matter. So an entirely different input scheme has to be used. The alternative input would involve a lot of second tap to confirm a selection. That is now half done, but there's still plenty of testing to do.

I have also tried my hand at cover system and fog of war. It's just too interesting to think about the possibility but not doing something about it. It's rather complicated compared to other mechanic of the toolkit, more so than I first anticipated. So they definitely wont make it into the next update. In fact, I'm not going to promise anything. Just hopefully it's going to make it to the toolkit at some point.

Apart from TBTK, I also have plans to do some update to TDTK. It's time to break out TDTK's 'to-do-list' and get something to do.

Now back to work...

TurnBased-ToolKit (TBTK) v1.0 now released

Finally, after much delay, TurnBased-ToolKit is now released. Yea, I know, not exactly a creative name but it's in tune with TowerDefense-ToolKit. Still, I'm excited to make this announcement. I'm not going to repeat posting things that I have posted, so please just check out the main page for the various link, demo, feature list, screen shots, etc.

I would consider this as an early release. It's no where near where I vision it when I first started. I still have tons of idea to try and develop. And that is exactly what I plan to do in coming weeks. Speaking of adding features, perk system, better AI, cover system immediately springs to mind. Cover system is definitely gonna be an interesting things to try. Cant wait...

Too bad I still have a week worth of part time job to go through. It has been especially bad during this last, final 3 weeks. Such is the nature of research project or indeed game project. I wish I could just screw it, just work for the hour which I have been paid. Well, remind me not to get into stuff like this anymore... 

Sorry for the rant. The point is, I will try to find as much time as I can to work on the next update. Hopefull I can do enough improvement/addition to make the next update by early next month. This is the is going to be the next TDTK. I'm going to keep on developing and support it as best I can. Hope this is interesting enough for certain people... who will then buy it so I have money to pay for the food! Please forgive my honesty there but it's kind of the truth. Many thanks in advance!  :D

Status Update (Pacific Rim is beyond awesome!)

Status update again. I generally don't like to post a generic "Status Update" post. It just mean I didn't quite do enough in any specific project to warrant a single meaningful post.

It hasn't really been a good week. The project which I work part time on is at it's finishing phase. So in an effort to make the most of it, the team has been asked to put in extra hour. As a result, the so called 'part-time job' has taken up most of my time. At least it's all going to end in 2 weeks time and then I can focus on my own project full time again.

Anyhow, all this has set my plan back. I was planning to wrap up and submit the TurnBased-Tactic framework this week. Because of the set back, I'm currently still working on the documentation and packaging. It's partly my fault to be honest, I've been constantly reworking and polishing certain aspect of the framework that I'm not very happy with. But I suppose that is a good thing, the framework now feel much more better designed and organized than before. It's my principal anyway to make things as best as I can. It's worth the wait I think.

Finally, I got to say I watched Pacific Rim (two weeks ago), it's frinkin' AWESOME!! Although I have to temporarily forget about how physics work while watching it, I still can't get over how awesome it's after two weeks. A single fight scene in Pacific Rim is better than all the transformer film combined, period! If only I can make something that awesome.