The Dragon Blog

I have been quite busy lately, and almost forgot about this blog. I’m not dead if anyone wondered.
Recently a friend asked me about a good 3D graphics API for beginners. I have tried lots of them before, and gave him some info. I like making them myself, but my friend sent me something he made in short time with Irrlicht. I was impressed, cause when I tried Irrlicht some time ago, it was not that great. So I immediatly got interested in it again. So I downloaded the newest version, and were amazed at how good it had become. So now I’m currently in progress of setting up a basic framework, which I will use for some of my future & current projects. I will be utilizing Irrlicht for graphics & input(might use another input API later), FMOD for sound & RakNet for networking. I might even use this for the OgtraX Game Engine. But that would require a huge rewrite, but the benefits are great. Since OGE at the moment is DirectX9 only I’m limited to Windows. With Irrlicht I can use DX9,DX8 & OpenGL, and Irrlicht is linux ready, meaning OGE will reach out to a larger userbase.

Haven’t updated in a while but I have been very busy. I’m putting the GBA devkit review on hold for a while since I can’t get a hold of documentation for SV4.

I have also started working on a game called Snowman Legacy, which is just something I do for fun. It’s based on SDL. It’s just a spoof. A parody based on movies & games. It will contain many movie & game cliché’s. It might take a while until I finish it, since I make it just for fun and it’s not a top priority.

Also next week me and the band are going to the studio to record some songs. This will mostly be old Sonic songs and a couple of our own. They will be metal interpretations. They will be used in some of the games in making

I think that’s it for this update. Not much too update since I have been quite busy

After seeing a post on SFGHQ about a new Sonic fangame for GBA I wanted to know more about developing for GBA. I know from before of the Sonic fangame for GBA called Sonic Epoch which uses the SV4 engine made by Rob Showalter who also is making Sonic Epoch. I didn’t realise until earlier today that the engine was released to the public.

So I received a copy from USC from the SFGHQ forum since the official site is down. Apparently it is a set of tools and a pre-compiled runtime. So it will let you make the game much easier than programming it all. From what I know it makes all the project files into a object which is then combined with the pre-compiled runtime. This seams like a good and easy way to make a game for GBA.

But I also want to try a C / C++ devkit first for comparison. So I found a lib called HAMlib. I downloaded it and installed it.

So I will know create a small game and see whether HAMlib or SV4 is the better. It’s pretty obvious that HAMlib is the more powerful , but if SV4 can speed up development time and also have the necessery features to make a great game I don’t see why not to use it over HAMlib.
As it is stupid to use a lib just because of its features if you dont use it.

And I thought about creating a review of them. I will update this entry with my experiences along the way. Also I will start with HAMlib since I haven’t got a hold of some documentation for SV4 .

These are the criteria’s I will look at : Features , development time , memory handling , speed , sprite and general graphics handling, and a overall rating.

Just got started with HAMlib and I must say I like it already. It’s easy to use and powerful at the same time. SV4 will have a hard time matching it. The handling of graphics are great and it supports rotation of both bg’s and sprites.

Update: Haven’t done anything on the review today as I have been busy with real life stuff. If I have time tomorrow I will try to finish the HAMlib version.

I have done some work and created a menu system. This is for the main menu at the moment but I will make it appliable to a ingame menu too. Also I have never seen a menu system in a engine before so it’s quite unique. To all you programmers out there who wonder how it works I will post the prototype functions and how to use them here:

void CreateMenu(int colR, int colG ,int ColB,int cellSizeX,int cellSizeY,int screenPosX,int screenPosY);

int CreateMenuCell(char* cellCaption,FONT cellFont);

CreateMenu(128,128,128,152,32.472,196);
CreateMenuCell(”NEW GAME”,menufont);
CreateMenuCell(”LOAD GAME”,menufont);
CreateMenuCell(”SAVE”,menufont);
CreateMenuCell(”OPTIONS”,menufont);
CreateMenuCell(”INTRO”,menufont);
CreateMenuCell(”EXIT GAME”,menufont);
CreateMenuCell(”UPDATE”,menufont);

This should all be pretty self explanatory. And to the result. This is the menu for a game in progress which I’m making alongside the Ogtrax engine.

You can probably see that the image is resized which is why the image doesn’t fit the code above. If you double the size of the image you will see it. Link to bigger image

This is the first entry to this blog. This is mostly of my programming projects. There are alot of them at the moment. Since I’m involved in the Sonic fangaming scene many projects are dedicated to Sonic fangames. The project I’m currently working on is these:
Ogtrax Game engine ( A commercial game engine )
Sonic Extension for MMF
Sonic plugin for 3DGS
Sonic Maker Suite - A set of tools to make more out of the Extension , Plugin and for the free -Ogtrax lite ( Ogtrax SDK - no sources for the run-time ).

The progress on the MMF extension is faster than I expected. By making a wrapper for the instructions I use the most I save a lot of time. This is stuff like repositioning an object and updating the object and redraw collision hull. I started on movement yesterday and I have somewhat crippled movement. Not good enough for a release. I expect to have a alpha ready for public testing by the end of the week.