Line Intersection

Apart from My Work PC suddenly dying yesterday afternoon and making my current milestone a real bear to achieve (yes virtually everything is in Perforce). It's a bear because i now have to setup a new machine, though that is waiting till i know for sure i cannot resurrect the dead one. PC Necromancy ftw! hahaha

Well, erm, onto the title of this post. Line intersecting code.
I want to do two new things in my next game, or at least in this playfull prototype i am working with. Those two things will be awesome additions to my main game cod ebase, even if i end up not actually using them in my next game.
They are:-
1. LOS check (line of sight)
2. Line Collisions (radius, or distance from a line)

Number 1 (LOS, is gonna be great for controlling when enemies can actualy see me. I just don't want that dumb loking enemy firing at me through walls etc. Looks dumb, and i am better than that. It should make a game seem so much more solid too.

Number 2, collisions to lines. This is gonna be great coupled with the LOs checking. When an enemy fires at me i can see if it hit a thin wall that i just ducked behind. I already have point vs rectangle checks for bigger objects. this will just give me some fine control.

With these new technologies added, i reckon i can make some more interesting games to play.

Laters

Pretty Instructions

Today i finally got around to upgrading my Help/Instructions page. I already think it scrolls in a nice way, and also has a nice fade out and in at the top and bottom of the screen (or near it). I think it looks very nice and professional, however i have always though that my Instructions screen was a bit bland. The main reason for that i believe is the fact that the Instructions (every line!) are all single color.

So slightly off white text is the order of the day and it looks ok i guess. Anyone that has read this blog for any time will realise i like a bit of color in my life. So today i finally got around to fixing up some color into some lines. So far the system is a bit primitive. I am able to color any single, but whole line. So this is great for headings that are already Capitalized and are now in a more stand outish color.

I may go further and make it so i can recolor in the middle of lines. This isn't really too difficult now i have the String.substring() and String.Compare() under control. It was a bit of a trial to get right at first as i am a veteran programmer that started writing in machine code. So I tend to view memory as memory, laid out in whatever fashion it is. I do not really view data as types per se. This of course means i am a pointer using Freak, that it seems is TOO dangerous for folks to program with in Xna. To be honest i am sure it has more to do with managed language control than any useful prevention. So will i recolor partial lines? I don't know, maybe if i have a good reason too.

And that brings me to why the hell did i waste time on colorizing a few lines in the Help section of my game, that hardly anyone will ever read? The reason is of course that every aspect of a game should be given attention. Why should i short change people that want to read the help section. Same goes for the Credits section. It should be as good as you can make it. It oddly enough could be the deciding factor on why peolpe buy your game. Not overly likely i know, but what if even just 0.5% of people that picked up your game saw the excellent credits, would that make a large percentage of them buy it? I'll let you decide your own course. Mine is set... I want this game to be great quality and that means everywhere.

G'night