Interpolation Success!

I’m VERY HAPPY to say, especially after this weekend’s problems that I seem to be getting the hang of this basic Interpolator class stuff.

It’s working like a charm for the logo and splash pages and really makes a big difference in the presentation. I never did have the intro screens working quite right and now things are looking pretty sharp.

It’s too late here to keep moving forward tonight so I’m off to bed, but hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to finish up the screen interpolations and hopefully start diving into the timer upgrade throughout the rest of the game.

On a minor note, I’ve also been chipping away at the new game art and UI.

Much Calmer Now

Ok, after saying “To heck with it!”, and '”it” being Visual Studio 2008, 2010, and any kind of converter, and any way to create a new project…I gave creating a new project one last shot which resulted in the same apparent lock up as all the other attempts before. The difference is, this time I was so frustrated I left it ‘locked up’ and walked away to do something else on another computer.

Wouldn’t you know 3 minutes later Visual Studio 2008 decided it had thought long enough about creating a new project and…did. So I saved out that new project as a timer and interpolator test project to play around with and got back to important stuff…like playing Starcraft II.

So I had plenty of time to cool down after the 2 hours or so of completely wasted time earlier today, and I was able to go through Nick G’s tutorial in a breeze.

I’m pretty sure that system is the better way to go so the next step is to go back and try implementing it again in “Deep Blue”.

The bad news is the real possibility that I could be in serious trouble if I HAVE to upgrade “Deep Blue” to a Visual Studio 2010 project…since still, only one file successfully converted.

Hopefully I can finish it before the Visual Studio 2010 project becomes a requirement.

Full Circle

Super. The good news I guess is that I didn’t lose any code for Deep Blue in all that conversion/backup nonsense. The bad news is that I’ve now come full circle and am now where I was a few hours ago. VS 2008 opens and runs Deep Blue, and I’m unable to create a new project.

Awesome. 

I think I’m done for a while. Enough wasted time.

Upgrade Fail

After installing Visual Studio Express 2010 I tried to open “Deep Blue’s” project which instantly starts the “project update” import function.

I’m annoyed to report that apparently only one file in the entire project successfully converted.

The good news: I found an installer still on my hard drive for Visual Studio 2008 and I’m reinstalling that again to see if I can open the project and hopefully create a new project after that test.

It couldn’t be easy could it.

Studio Express Update Day

Well, a little unexpected, but it looks like today is Visual Studio Express Upgrade day. In attempting to follow Nick G’s tutorial on using the timer and interpolator class I’ve suddenly come to discover that my version of Visual Studio Express (2008 version for the record), has rebeled and refuses to create a new project.

Cute.

I tried the ‘repair’ feature in Windows…and that hasn’t helped. Sooooo, I’m currently downloading and installing Visual Studio 2010 and crossing my fingers that there aren’t major upgrade difficulties with existing projects.

Don’t let the fact that I started “Deep Blue” with Visual Studio 2005 give the illusion that the dev time has taken longer than it actually has. Granted….it’s take much longer than I’d originally thought…but not 5 years.

Timer Trouble

Ugh, this new timer and interpolation thing is giving me troubles. Initially I wasn’t even interested in a new timer class. My timer class was working just fine. The problem is Nick’s new and improved interpolation class comes with requires a new and improved timer class.

Of course getting the new timer to not shatter the code that the rest of the game was using for a timer has been, problematic at best. And I haven’t even actually begun to start messing with the interpolation class yet.

Since I don’t see it as good practice to have two timer classes in a program I’m faced with one of two choices. Either rewrite the rest of the game elements that currently access my timer class to use the new timer class. Or, rewrite parts of the new timer class to accept the calls that are currently in the existing game.

The one good thing coming out of all of this is the educational value of it since I’m starting to get into delegates and lambda expressions which is new stuff to me.

Tweening...stuff

I'm happy to report the further animation and collision tests have turned out positive, so with the new classes in place it's time to move on to the next thing. And after throwing a dart at the wall...it appears working in an interpolation class (or tweening class) is the next thing to tackle.

This interpolation class will be a utility class that will handle things like fading the screens up and down, moving menu items across the screen and who knows what else. So it will be a very handy thing to have around both now and in the future...so, let's get it right.

To start off I've been reading a lot from Nick Gravelyn's blog. And lucky for me he has an interpolation class that will serve as my base point of learning. You think that would be easy then huh? Well it appears I've got some reading up to do before I get rolling with it since Nick's using delgates and lambda expressions to implement his classes.

So for now I've got to get a handle on these two new elements...so, back to reading.