{"id":312,"date":"2015-06-21T03:02:25","date_gmt":"2015-06-21T03:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brasswatchgames.com\/?p=312"},"modified":"2015-06-21T03:02:25","modified_gmt":"2015-06-21T03:02:25","slug":"shipyard-development-news-20-june-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/brasswatchgames.com\/?p=312","title":{"rendered":"Shipyard Development News 20 June 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, I’ll admit that I didn’t get straight to coding after I posted my outline for Alpha 1.0<\/a>. That’s because, at the time, it was nearing the end of the school year and teachers were doing their very best to cram as much busywork\u00a0as they could possibly into that last month and a half. Now, however, the school year is over, and I’ve got no shortage of free time–some of which has been spent working on Shipyard.<\/p>\n

If you read–or even skimmed–my rambling, essay-length outline, you’ll know there’s a lot to get done before Shipyard is ready to go into alpha. So, I figured I’d start at the top with free-form systems. Before I wrote the first line of code, it took a lot of thinking and scratch work to figure out how\u00a0I was going\u00a0to implement it. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say it took a\u00a0several\u00a0sketches in Paint.net and a considerable amount of math to nail down. Once that was done, I was ready to start coding. The first system to get the free-form makeover was the humble corridor.\u00a0While not the most exciting system in the game, it is the simplest, which made it a good starting point to get the concept locked in.<\/p>\n

Here’s a short video demonstration of the new free-form corridors:<\/p>\n

\nhttp:\/\/www.brasswatchgames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/freeform-corridor-preview.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n

So how do free-form systems work?\u00a0Well, I’m glad you asked!\u00a0Behind the scenes, free-form systems are actually discrete 1-by-1 systems, which change only in\u00a0appearance<\/em>\u00a0when placed next to neighbors of the same type. This is especially easy for corridors, which have no stats, no hitpoints, and no crew or power requirement.<\/p>\n

But what about systems that do<\/em> have a crew and power requirement?\u00a0Nobody wants to individually allocate one crew member or power unit to thirty separate tiles of the same system!\u00a0The solution: tie crew and power to\u00a0types<\/em> of systems rather than individual tiles. Once implemented, this means you only have to allocate crew\u00a0to weapons, engines, etc. in general, and the game will handle the rest.<\/p>\n

Well, that’s it for today! Check back soon, because I plan to be doing a lot of work on the game this summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, I’ll admit that I didn’t get straight to coding after I posted my outline for Alpha 1.0. That’s because, at the time, it was nearing the end of the school year and teachers were doing their very best to cram as much busywork\u00a0as they could possibly into that last month and a half. Now, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[2,4,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ieDM-52","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":76,"url":"http:\/\/brasswatchgames.com\/?p=76","url_meta":{"origin":312,"position":0},"title":"Shipyard Pre-Alpha 0.7.4 Released!","date":"February 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the last in the series of \"preparation\" updates for the big Combat Update. Major features include AI ships that follow you around (they don't attack yet -- that's next update), a new station, a new weapon, and a bunch of UI tweaks and fixes. As always, full details\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Game Development News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":58,"url":"http:\/\/brasswatchgames.com\/?p=58","url_meta":{"origin":312,"position":1},"title":"Shipyard PA 0.7.3 and Launcher 2.1 released!","date":"February 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Shipyard pre-alpha 0.7.3 has been released! This is the second if the series of preliminary updates gearing up for the addition of combat. This time, it adds the crew and power tab to the View Ship screen, as well as some other minor stuff. See the Shipyard page for downloads\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Game Development News"","img":{"alt_text":"Crew and Power Management","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.brasswatchgames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/scrn_2014_02_05_1391671070606-1024x576.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":317,"url":"http:\/\/brasswatchgames.com\/?p=317","url_meta":{"origin":312,"position":2},"title":"Shipyard Development News 28 June 2015","date":"June 28, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been doing a lot of work on Shipyard over the past few days, and although Alpha 1.0 is still a long way away, I'm making progress much faster than I expected. First and foremost, I now have free-form versions of weapon controls, crew's quarters, and cargo bays implemented. In\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Game Development News"","img":{"alt_text":"scrn_2015_06_23_1435097117103","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.brasswatchgames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/scrn_2015_06_23_1435097117103-1024x576.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":348,"url":"http:\/\/brasswatchgames.com\/?p=348","url_meta":{"origin":312,"position":3},"title":"Shifting Focus","date":"August 26, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"This isn't a regular development news so much as a general rambling on my efforts as a game developer. I don't expect everyone to read every word, so the important parts will be written in bold. Shipyard was released as a \"tech demo\" exactly two years ago today. Since then,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Game Development News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":667,"url":"http:\/\/brasswatchgames.com\/?p=667","url_meta":{"origin":312,"position":4},"title":"Shipyard Remake: Friendship ended with Java, now C++ is my best friend","date":"June 30, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"When I started the original Shipyard, I only knew how to program in Java, a language which makes it very easy to slap together something basically functional but not particularly efficient. This was only exacerbated by my lack of experience. To pick one of many examples, the game's graphics were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogs & Other"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":168,"url":"http:\/\/brasswatchgames.com\/?p=168","url_meta":{"origin":312,"position":5},"title":"Combat Update Released!","date":"June 6, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Shipyard version Pre-Alpha 0.8.0, or \"The Combat Update,\" is easily the largest update Shipyard has seen to date and has just been released!\u00a0You can download the update on the Shipyard page or through the launcher. For those who\u00a0haven't been following its development, I'll do my best to condense the massive\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Game Development News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/brasswatchgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/brasswatchgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/brasswatchgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brasswatchgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brasswatchgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/brasswatchgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/brasswatchgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brasswatchgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brasswatchgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}