So along with my 3000th post on the Ambrosia Software forums being an Xsera progress post a few days ago, I decided to post an update on the most recent happenings in Xsera (including the fruits of some arduous labor even today).
Firstly, I'm working on wrapping up some of the most basic features of the interface - namely, those tutorial boxes and messages that popped up from time to time in the original Ares. I've even got the blinking pointer part working. I'm also working on polishing up the interface, especially the side panels, in order to make it look better as a whole, and also to address Xsera working on different aspect ratios and resolutions. It's good stuff!
Second, I've been creating some neat little tools that allow me to do some fancy text manipulation - although it's stuff that we take for granted, like text wrapping in lines. Today I finalized the primary wrapping function, and it appears to limit the text fairly well.
Third, I've been working on a special way of building Xsera called "symbolic linking". All this means is that I can edit Lua scripts in Xcode and see them update in the Xsera application without rebuilding the app. This is a huge time saver - although it did cost me about 4 hours today, it will save me, and the other devs, a great amount of time in the future.
Sure, these recent updates are fairly technical things that don't really show any improvement moving towards a Demo 3, but polishing Xsera up a little bit right now will make things that much easier in the end.
That's all for now!
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Friday, February 5, 2010
Holy Macaroon, Does Time Ever Fly!
Doesn't seem like I last updated this blog over two months ago. I apologize for letting it fall into such a state of disrepair ;)
Major work is going on - inside and outside of Xsera's source code. First, we're polling the Ambrosians on what font we should use for Xsera - we have a few great fonts picked out, and we need help deciding which one is decidedly more Xsera-like. (check it out here)
Another great thing that's going on is the team's focus on the development of the original Ares level "Space Race, The Musical". This level is our goal for when we release our third technical demo. More details about how that's going along here.
Another interesting thing that I'm personally developing is IRC support through Lua. I'm doing this in a different way than you might expect though - through an IRC bot. I'm currently developing an IRC bot, which is written in Lua, in order to be able to connect to an IRC environment. I hope to be able to use the knowledge gained to add IRC capabilities to Xsera. More exciting details to follow.
Other than that, crazy stuff is going on in Real Life™. I find myself signed up for beta testing two games (Xenos and Frozen Synapse are the two games; the former is in closed beta while the latter is not). While this may take some time away from working on Xsera, it also helps me to see what aspects of a game are good and what could be improved on - essentially, helping me to see the game from the user's perspective, which is invaluable to a developer.
Alright, I think this spiel's long enough, and it's pretty late anyways. For those who feel like "tl;dr": in summary, lots of exciting stuff going on, check out #xsera on irc.ambrosiasw.com, and hopefully I'll update this blog more in the future!
Major work is going on - inside and outside of Xsera's source code. First, we're polling the Ambrosians on what font we should use for Xsera - we have a few great fonts picked out, and we need help deciding which one is decidedly more Xsera-like. (check it out here)
Another great thing that's going on is the team's focus on the development of the original Ares level "Space Race, The Musical". This level is our goal for when we release our third technical demo. More details about how that's going along here.
Another interesting thing that I'm personally developing is IRC support through Lua. I'm doing this in a different way than you might expect though - through an IRC bot. I'm currently developing an IRC bot, which is written in Lua, in order to be able to connect to an IRC environment. I hope to be able to use the knowledge gained to add IRC capabilities to Xsera. More exciting details to follow.
Other than that, crazy stuff is going on in Real Life™. I find myself signed up for beta testing two games (Xenos and Frozen Synapse are the two games; the former is in closed beta while the latter is not). While this may take some time away from working on Xsera, it also helps me to see what aspects of a game are good and what could be improved on - essentially, helping me to see the game from the user's perspective, which is invaluable to a developer.
Alright, I think this spiel's long enough, and it's pretty late anyways. For those who feel like "tl;dr": in summary, lots of exciting stuff going on, check out #xsera on irc.ambrosiasw.com, and hopefully I'll update this blog more in the future!
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