Update#11 : Let There Be Light!

Friday, the twenty-ninth day of June in the year noted as two-thousand and twelve.

And so it came to pass that the stars in the heavens began truly to form and coalesce, their warm glow sure to set the skys alight, and pave the way for the formation of mineral-rich worlds from which great civilizations will be born.

What I mean by this, is, that I've finally completed a fully functional Star Generator. It is a tool that is built by several parts working together, and what it does is it easily creates stars for me. Lots of stars. In this case, they're limited to being placed in a spherical form, but, now that this is working nicely it should be a matter of mere geometry to create generators that will set stars in other patterns.

However.

Those additional star generators can wait for later. The next step is to display the stars in all their pixellated glory. My next project block for a while will be developing the mapping pages and methods. My intention is to allow 3-D viewing of the stars in a local area. I don't think we'll be spinning cameras in smooth 3-D but I do intend to allow some camera rotation to view stars from a certain angle, and I would also like to add the ability for users to create a 'default' camera view, so that when they go to the map, their will be shown a view that is most relevant to them at the time based on what they're doing in the game.

One step at a time, though... star map: show me some stars  =)


Looking back a couple steps... It's been really frustrating to get the star generator fully working. Code bugs, code inefficiency, datainefficiency, more bugs, more inefficiency, more big bugs.... and yardwork! It's been a taxing job, this star generator.... I hope that the planet generator won't be so buggy as I put it together... but it will probably be even more complicated, so, there's another week of agony to look forward to, yay~


Time for a little break and a snack :3

Update#10 : What's That Over There?

I lost a few hours of work to a really stupid mistake on my part... but most of the last day and a half was genuinely spent coding and bug-fixing the star-designer. I thought it was going to be simple and no problem, but I was so very very wrong.  Not only did it take a full day to make the star designer, but when I finally debugged it to the point that I could start seeing any results, I found that it wasn't even close to producing the results that I was hoping for.  I'd spent the better part of 3 days pre-designing how the designer should work, and it failed.  Fortunately, some extra-hard work and a few eureka moments led to an acceptable solution.

Even still, it's only partially finished. Looking at the numbers produced by the star designer is one thing, seeing them actually come out the way I want them to is quite something else. I'm still a little iffy on the numbers coming out of this thing, too...

I just finished writing the next step, which is the part that takes the star data and makes it into a reality.... next part should be easier though, and hopefully it won't drive me nuts; the star cluster generator which is basically practise for the galaxy generator, and will use the previous parts to actually build star clusters (duh) which will allow me to really start on the next step: finalized design of planets, planet formation, and the introduction of player-controlled elements.

I need to stay focussed and keep myself held back though... I think I also lose a fair amount of work time by thinking too much about next-steps. Many times I had to stop myself, as I got into tangents of how various star properties should be used or handled, while I was trying to figure out how to generate the properties. I need to remind myself: handling the properties of the universe can come later... and if I don't like the properties, then too bad, because it's a harsh place XD

I won't simply allow you, players, to suffer in a harsh game, though. A major reason that I'm building this game is because I want to play it myself! So, I'll feel first-hand how things are and aren't working well, and I'll suffer with you when requirements or living conditions are harsh.  It will be tough, but I promise I won't cheat  o7


Time for a short break, and then on to the cluster generator.

Update#9 : Dust in the Dark

A quick and uncharacterful update, because I'm tired and busy.
1) Finished determining the formation factors of stars, and their properties.
2) Started the first mapping page.

That's it! Goodnight.

Update#8 : Another Block Down, Ninety-Seven Or So To Go

As is often the case, it's 5am when I'm finishing something and writing this update.

Today's accomplishment is finishing all the base coordinate-handling functions that I need.  Alot ended up changing as I went along. I thought I had it all ironed out before but, well, WRONG. That's okay though, because all these time sinks are learning experiences!  I now have a lean set of tools that I can rely on when I start dealing with spatial objects, which should be soon.

What I don't have finished yet (regarding strictly coordinate-handling abilities) is the full coordinate validator; that one will be a bit of a moonster and will take a full day (maybe two) to complete from start to finish. That won't be an issue until later though, so it can wait for now.

Now a really exciting period starts as I am about to finally set in stone the properties of stars and planets and other such entities, which is half a step away from actually creating and mapping the stars&planets.

The bad news is, it seems that I'm behind my schedule again, by a lot. I'll try to keep pushing forward and see how it goes. If I can start catching up (or at least stop falling further behind) then I'll just adjust my schedule and go back to being on-schedule. If I keep faling behind, I'll change my style from 'keeping on schedule' to 'following the roadmap'  ^^;

*looks out the window*  Hm, a red dawn... blood has been shed this night.


That's all for now. Goodnight.

Update#7 : Back to Work

I have my new schedule, and with re-consideration I should have basic mapping to be done in about 2 weeks, with an estimate that more advanced mapping will be finished 1 week later. I will be wholly focussed on mapping during this time, which unfortunately means still no player-playing for a little while. As much as we would all like to start building things, we can also appreciate the value of having a solid foundation to build on.

Update#6 : Schedule Needs a Fix!

So I spent the better part of today still doing on-paper planning and prototyping. I didn't expect this section to take as long as it did, I expected to be writing code already! My plan before was to have mapping all finished by next weekend, but I think I need to be a bit more generous to myself and project it to the end of June :( It's not all bad though; while I feel that some time was wasted with this paper work, I have to remember that it's leading up to a better final product. Besides, some parts might end up taking less time to do than expected.  It's about 5:25am right now so I'm going to bed.

I'll write up my new schedule/plan tomorrow and let you know how it looks.

Update#5 : Coming up!

Based on what I have written up on my schedule, the next 2 weeks will see some massive transformations and additions. Of course, that's assuming that I can actually figure things out as quickly as I think I can, and not get stumped and stuck repeatedly like I did with the mail system.

It also depends on me keeping my sanity through the next 2 weeks, because from today until next friday I have what I think is a fair amount of work laid out. I'm pretty sure it will be fine, but it's a bit daunting to see how long it should take to do what I want.... and knowing that's it's just the first of multiple 'hard' parts.

Once again, wish me luck  <:3

Update#4 : Time Off?

Sooo the last few days were devoted for cleaning, some of tomorrow will also be spent cleaning but mostly it will be about UNIVERSE planning. Sadly I did not get my day off for gaming and relaxing. I've been getting antsy about not working on it, maybe withdrawl? Heh. I'm feeling tired now, I might even set back my schedule by a day to take tomorrow off. I'll make me sad to take another day away from game work, but some times breaks are necessary; and once I get started again, it will be a while until I take another break.

Either way, wish me luck.

Update#3 : Introductory Stage Completed

As the title suggests, I'm declaring the 'Introductory Stage' of UNIVERSE Project* to be completed. There was some delay introduced by unexpected guests, but not enough to put me much off schedule. My creation now sits tidy with...
> CSS structure : stable, flexible, working
> PHP structure : stable, flexible, working, neatly written and/or packed
> Javascript : all which is applied is working

> Message system : stable, safe, working
> Backups : created safely, saved regularly, well-described
> Page headers : there are now 4 layouts to choose from

* = "UNIVERSE Project" is a name I use for UNIVERSE when talking about working on it.

As stated before, the next two days I'll be taking a break from programming to have some personal time. After which I'll be going to back to work, probably Tuesday, possibly Wednesday depending on how my under-the-bed and other cleaning goes.

Once I get back to work there won't be many visible updates on the site for a little while. The next few working days on the site will be writing up back-end code and planning on how to build the real foundation for the game. It might not sound great, but I'm looking forward to making code and tools that will immensely help with building the rest of the site.... if you only knew what I did/had to deal with last time... welp, done for today. Ta~!

Update#2 : Rework, Rework, and More Rework

So, having finally completed the full mail system just last night, I found a bug and realized another. So, today I set out on two tasks, and have now completed both, sort of.

#1 - Rework the mail system to remove the bugs, streamline the code, and make it more multi-language-friendly ... no I don't have any plans to support additional languages soon, but once I'm ready to go there then I won't have to edit as much core code as I would have before.

#2 - Rearrange the whole file structure. I expected this to take about an hour, turns out it was actually a four-hour job. I'm glad I did it though... better now than later. Doing it now took 4 hours, and I only had a few pages to deal with. The next major segments of development would have added a lot more pages and a lot more ... stuff to have to re-organize. As it is now, though, it should be pretty much optimal and I doubt I'll need to do this kind of re-arrangement ever again. Aside from tomorrow, when I'll overhaul my CSS structure... today's PHP structure overhaul was a tangent of that goal, but it's probably best that I took care of this first anyway. Tomorrow's CSS target should be relatively easy to do... maybe just another 3 hours =P


SO tomorrow's first aim is to restructure the CSS, and something else... add a few new header layouts! It's not much, but it's something I can do that won't take too much effort and will give us something to do other than just talk to each other while we wait for the rest of the game to come together.... didn't I announce this last post? Oh well.

Also, like I said last time, I'll be taking a break for a few days to get some personal chores done and do some relaxing.

As much as I would like to force myself to take the days off completely, I won't... the next stages of the game need to be developed and added in a sepecific order, because each step will be completely reliant on the thorough completion of the step before it. Here, I'll show you:


1 - Coordinates - Everything has to go somewhere.
2 - Mapping - Without a specific coordinate format, how can anything be placed in the UNIVERSE?
3 - Cities - Without star systems and planets being placed, where will bases be placed?
4 - Economy - Without cities, where does the money come from?
5 - Production - Without an economy, how do you buy&build an army/fleet?
6 - Combat - Without a fleet/army, how will you fight?
7 - Bragging Rights - How can you brag when you have nothing to show for it?


You probably get the idea by now..... well it's just about 5am now, so I'm going to bed. Goodnight!

Update#1 : There's Always Something

So last night(?) I went to bed about 5am after making slow progress (I may have been distracted, and maybe just tired) and then realizing&discovering two mistakes in the message system at about the same time. Not only will those mistakes set me back a day, but I also had the courage to assign myself a bit more work before taking a break from the project.

The 'break' will actually be just a few days: one day for play (I like to play StarCraft2, Diablo3, League of Legends, EVE Online, HALO WARS, plus a few others) and another day or two to clean my room. It's a chore that I've been meaning to do consistently, but have been putting it off in favour of finishing the mail system.

And then what? After I finish the start-new-conversation page I'll fix the little errors I made in the mail system, then I'm going to restructure my CSS in such as way that will make it easier to work with, and also reduced traffic load on all pages (not an issue now, but it's better done than not once the site gets busy). Once that is all done, I'm going to have a bit of fun for the site by making a few new page-header layouts for players to choose from; As much as I am happy and proud of my 'Galaxy' pattern page head, having a few options is good too. It will be easy to add, and I think it will add a bit of a cool factor to the site.

Welp, back to work!

Update#0.1 : Mostly Then

 The following is the contents of the text-file-journal that I was using prior to 'Blogger' ... I've pasted it here and replaced the link to that file with a link to this 'blog' site.... I hate the word blog!


 

12.06.02
 The website's mail system is well under-way now! The 'Message Center' is now mostly finished, and I'm currently working on the actually message-read/reply page. It will be a pop-up window. The game will have numerous pop-up windows, large and small, functional and informative.(THERE WILL NEVER BE A POP-UP AD because everybody hates them!) This should make it easy to sort through your mail and find the most important things.

I would also like to note the following about UNIVERSE's mail system: Mail will be kept for 7 days, after which it will be MOVED to an archive section where it will be stored. It will still be accessible, it just won't come up every time you go to check on new messages. There will be a link in the Message Center to go to the Archives.  However, I won't add the Archive feature until later when the message system starts to see some serious use.


12.05.22
 Woo! Fireworks! Victoria Day is finished! And with it, I finished assembling the form for the universal (no pun intended) page headers, where a player will find a link to all of the major pages! I have to say, I'm feeling good about it; much better than in the previous build! I hope everyone else likes it as much as I do :) Now I'm finally putting a start to the universal page format as well, and I think I might even be done already! It will be quite easy for me to build the core of most pages now. Having only realized now that I do have the core outline made, I think I'll finalize it into a template that I can use once I finish this journal entry. Thank you journal for your contribution to progress! XD


12.05.19
 I've been a bit negligent about posting news; partly because I procrastinate, and partly because I was lazy and didn't feel like writing in HTML format! Ah, sorry... Anyway! Diablo3 is finally out, also causing some delay in the progress. TOTALLY WORTH IT, maybe. Anyway, I have the core login function working, and now I'm starting on a proper page format that I can use across the whole website. I'm having a hard time deciding on the format for the page head (where all the nice game-control links go!) but I think I'm centering in on one that I like. Maybe I can eventually make a few layout options and you pick your favourite? Either way, I'm going to make it like the rest of the website; flexible! So that I can easily make it grow along with the rest of the game.


12.04.30
 Okay it just happens that I'm taking a trip with some friends to their cottage for a few days... but don't worry! I'm still committed. I almost didn't go, for teh sake of the project! But I realized, I need to do a lot of work on paper still to figure out some of the details on how the game will work, so I'll still be working on it while I'm there!


12.04.29
 Here we go starting again on the UNIVERSE project! This time we'll see it through and get it done! Serious! I know I can do it and with a little help it'll be the best game out of all the text-based MMORTSG's!

Update#0 : Then to Now

I hate the word 'blog' but I guess that's irrelevant right now.

Here is the beginning of my development log, not sure if I'll stick with it but at least here is a record of me trying to!  Today I've pretty much finished the message system, minus the ability to start a new conversation with another player; practically speaking, that will be dependant on having a way for players to find another player to send a message to. That doesn't exist yet. Fortunately, that should be fairly easy, and I'll be doing that tonight/tomorrow. How does anything work now? Having access to the database, I've been able to insert some messages directly (with some effort required for proper formatting!) to allow me to view and reply to messages, and a few more manipulations. The creation of a new message should be mostly copy-and-paste from the Reply Message page, so no problem!  This message system has taken about 1 week longer to create than I expected it to, but I think it's unique and cool for a browser-based game. I hope you all like it :)

Of course, even when I have it working, there's little else to see on the site, there's a lot to do before I can start to open alpha/beta testing, so I'm afraid I won't be posting up any links yet. Sorry!

You might be wondering what this game is? It's a Space Empires game, text-based and played via web browser. There will be graphical elements for mapping, but that's about all I can go into for now about that. It is also a MMORTS, and it will be quite epic. Choosing the name UNIVERSE isn't just for the sake of sounding big; it will really be a large-scale environment, and there will only be one instance of it running. One Verse. One, very large, very expandable universe.

As a player, you are the leader of an industrious society who has reached a point in their social and technological development that they are ready to join and compete with the larger galactic community. Your goal is to grow, survive, and thrive by whatever means you see fit.  Whether your empire is a military or economic giant, or a diplomatic and social civilization, or perhaps a centre of high-tech marvels... it all depends on how you apply your resources, and how you get along with those around you.

One of this game's unique aspects - which I'm really looking forward to seeing how it gets used by players - is the existance and use of 'dead space'. Dead space? It's space with nothing in it as far as the environment is concerned. Players will be able to travel to dead space as they wish and do what they want with it.... which will include things like building outposts or space stations, or perhaps just parking a fleet in someone else's back yard to make a statement.

Well I guess that's all for now, I'll babble some more another time. I'm busy trying to build a game and don't actually want to talk too much about it before it's there; it's mostly in my head now, but the good stuff is making it a reality. Ta~