Active Elements

So far my plan for dynamically creating random elements is working. I have an endless game universe. It is still buggy though. I'm only rendering the elements in view bug there's a problem with that logic, it seems the active area is moving faster than the current x/y somehow. I think once I get that worked out I can test that I am only creating new elements when the player is in a new location in the game.

I'm currently doing that by looking at the min/max x and y of the existing elements, if the view is beyond either I can generate more.

I ran into an issue when adding elements while I'm reading them so I added a boolean I can set to true while I'm reading them. I don't spawn anything while that's happening. So far that has resolved it while still giving me windows of creation opportunities.

I just need to debug the active element check.

New Endless World Approach

I'm changing my approach. I've tried building and endless game world of random items using panels, related to each other and with their own coordinate systems. This has resulted in stuttering and glitchy positioning and lag. My new approach uses the idea of an exploration history. If the player goes into new territory, by about half the display width/height, random checks are made and possibly new elements spawned.

I'm not yet certain of how long a player can explore before the element count is too much for the game, resulting in lag. That will be one of my first tests. But surely I can mitigate this much easier than trying to make the panel techniques work.

My next steps are to store the created elements for restarting and saving games. I also need to code the starfield and planet surfaces, which will be tiled images. That will also be a challenge, I will have to store surface features like craters etc so the planets look the same when restarting or returning to them. It should be similar to tracking any other element type though.

Is It Time

I recently watched a video on a script someone authored to generate their personal blog. The script will stub in new articles etc. It was a pretty interesting idea. It got me thinking, maybe it's about time I move my blogs out of Blogger to a site I put together myself. I've hosted my own blogs in the past  maybe it's time to be better about maintaining my online presence, if nothing else, for career related work.

As I've mentioned before, I really need to get up to speed in web development anyway. It has been a long time. I've mainly been working with back end code recently. Lots of Oracle, some C# console apps, some shell scripts etc.

I would like to build something from scratch, even though the idea of using WordPress or similar is VERY tempting. I love having the ability to add functionality just by installing a plugin or two. I usually grab a basic WP theme, and rebuild the GUI completely. However I would like to build the backend as well.

So even though it may lack the power of WordPress or similar frameworks, I may have to give it a go.

Not Jumping Ahead

I am re-re-re-starting the space mining arcade style game. This time I want to start simple. I want to set up a grid of nine world panels and ensure they are arranged properly. THEN I will worry about populating them etc. In the past I got ahead of myself and tried to build everything out AND get them arranged correctly. This time out I want to get them arranged and moving correctly, and creating new panels as the player approaches them. Once that is working properly THEN I will populate and or load them from files.