Job Searching and Project Red Rex Progress Update 0101

Well... as I've already mentioned in a previous post, I'm not much of a blogger or writer for that matter which is why there haven't been any posts for a couple weeks. So lately I've been a little busy doing some job searching, looking for some kind of programming position, and have received a few offers here and there, one of which seemed fairly promising but I was turned down, unfortunately. Whether I get a job or not anytime soon won't affect my progress on this project of mine, which is as of right now called Project Red Rex, named after a little red T-Rex character I created when I was messing around with changing application icons, the ones that sit at the top left corner of application windows.

Red Rex Logo

Anyway... here's a little screenshot of what the "game" looks like right now.

Screen Shot Update 0101

As you can tell, there isn't much to it right now, most of what's in it is not exactly too visual. Right now it can load a weapon data file which includes all sorts of data including weapon name, projectile image, projectile speed, base damage, damage type, reload time, fire sound effect, etc. Overall there's some 20+ pieces of data that describes each weapon. So what this game can do in it's current state is read from a weapon's data file and explain to the game how it works. Like right now you can fire a clip or more of ammo, reload at a rate based off of what the data file says it should, fire at the rate the data file says, with a little bit of bullet spread, and play a sound effect for when the weapon fires, also mentioned in the data file.

In this game's current state, there's nothing network related, that's something I'll work on at a later point once I get more of the basic game in there. You've probably noticed from that screen shot above that there's some text in the upper left hand corner, that's just a temporary HUD (Heads-Up Display) that I'm only using for debug related stuff. Also it says in big letters in the middle of the screen, "SCREEN 1". I have that there to differentiate between multiple game screens which a "Screen Manager" manages to make sure the game only updates, draws, etc. a select few, or just one, screen(s) at a time without having to recreate each screen every time you want to access the menu, for example. As for that little red circle entity, that is my place holder player sprite.

All of the things I've mentioned thus far about this project, Project Red Rex, I have been working on for the past month or so, usually a few hours for one or two night(s) each week, which is at a pretty slow rate. But tonight I've actually been working on something new, along with fixing a few bugs, as I've been writing this post, which has been for about 2 and half hours or so now... I've been working on a basic editor application tool that I can use to create damage systems, which is really just a table of the different armor and damage types that will be in the base game. I guess the purpose of this tool is so people, including myself, can creating custom damage systems which will affect weapons, and whatnot. Also I wanted to get a bit of a head start for when I start creating some of the more complex editing tools.

Well that's it for now. I'll continue to post more updates as I go along, hopefully more frequently than I have with the past few posts.

~ RogueTemplar (a.k.a Icedmetal57)