Miscellaneous Notes

[Pazolli]

A few miscellaneous notes (listed in no particular order):


Keep up the lively discussion - we're beating all of the other iDevGames forums and our closest opponent is around 35 posts away. :)
Special thanks must go to Kjurtyl has completed and submitted the Dates in High Scores task. Thanks Kjurtyl! (Note to Kjurtyl: I made a few user-oriented changes to your work but generally it was pretty much spot-on).
A bug which may have caused the level to not finish until the timer expired (or you moved Hooptie) should now have been fixed. Tell me if you see anything like it again.
Looking over it again, probably the whole "handling level endings" code is a bit of a mess I might edit it sometime in the future.
The number of downloads for the second milestone release of Hooptie has exceeded the number of downloads for the first month of the first milestone release of Hooptie. You can view the statistics here (http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/index.php?report=months&group_id=31218).
In a very positive indication of the tremendous support we're recieving from people like Chris, Kjurtyl and Mathieu, we are running out of programming task specifications. Keep up the good work guys - I'll post some more soon.
If anyone, including Kjurtyl ;), is looking for another not-too-difficult task to help out with. Why not try the Bonus Screen (http://sourceforge.net/pm/task.php?func=detailtask&project_task_id=38692&group_id=31218&group_project_id=13463) task? To my mind the bonus screen could be just some simple black text on a white background (with a not-too-thin sans-serif - that's no tail - font) to start out with and we can always add extra colour to it later. BTW while I say "not-too-difficult" it certainly is more difficult than some of the other tasks we've had so far.


In closing, thank you to everyone who's supported us this week, offered to help out, contributed and/or plans to contribute in the future.

Good night all,
Mark.

[BobbyWatson]

Now that the custom level loading is finished (though I haven't commited it to the CVS yet), I'd be happy to give a shot at the bonus screen programming task. I won't be able to work on it before this week-end though.

Mathieu
aka BobbyWatson

P.S : By the way, I also thought of something the other day while testing Hooptie : is it possible to use the escape key to toggle the pause game status? I think it would be more natural to most gamers (I often found myself pressing it to pause the game). I could try to do it while working on the bonus screen...

[Kjurtyl]

About the custom level loading, I've noticed you've (BobbyWatson) explicitly created an option to reload the default level set. Now everything works right as it stands today (From the download you made available.) The one question I have is the following: Why do we not remove the default levels from the Hooptie app and create an external set, just like Alan's, with the default levels in it.

That would allow us to drop one function. Also, perhaps the menu item "Open Custom Levels.." could be renamed to "Open Levels.." or "Open Level Set.." as I think the custom in this case is rather unnecessary.

Since you can't work on the bonus screen task till this weekend, I'll take the opportunity to look at it before then. If I don't have anything to show for it by then, I'll be happy to let you do it. Despite Mark's claim that tasks are running out there's still enough to keep us all busy.

-Kjurtyl

P.S. That's very subtle, Mark, very subtle..

[Pazolli]

I think using "Open Levels..." instead of "Open Custom Levels..." is an excellent idea. I'm also happy for Mathieu to implement pausing upon pressing the escape key (the key stuff should be handled in the GameView object which should then call the GameController's pause method - I don't know the name of that method exactly). I think you'll find implementing pausing upon pressing escape far easier than implementing the "Open Levels..." stuff. As for getting rid of the default levels altogether, I don't recommend such a move. The reason why is because in future we may have an Internet-based High Scores list which to be fair would mean everyone would have to play the same set of levels. It's only with a MIT-type License (which allows closed-source modifications) that it would be possible to do this without providing everyone with the code for the authentication techniques in such a program. I've also assigned the Bonus Screen task to Kjurtyl, once Mathieu submits the "Open Levels..." task I'll find another task for him to work on (probably one which will involve creating alternate AIs for the Scoutbots).

Keep the contributions coming. I'm certainly looking forward to custom level loading.

Cheers and thanks to everyone making this project a success,
Mark.

[DaFalcon]

Wow, I take a few days away to deal with schoolwork, and everything explodes in a flurry of activity! Awesome :-)

Mark, if you don't mind, I think I want to push back a "you win" screen until there is another enemy sprite, so I think that new tiles/sprites seem like the next logical thing for me to tackle. Or is there something else I'm supposed to be working on that I've forgotten? I do that alot :-)

Also, I will be dealing with school extensively for the next couple weeks, and won't be done with Finals until after June 1st, so I'll stop by when I can, but if anyone misses me, well, that's where I'll be.

Great job everyone, it sounds like you're all pushing Hooptie along at a dizzying rate... I'm all excited, even though it has been nearly 50 hours since I had more than a few consecutive hours of sleep :-)

[BobbyWatson]

Originally posted by Pazolli
I think using "Open Levels..." instead of "Open Custom Levels..." is an excellent idea.
Done
I'm also happy for Mathieu to implement pausing upon pressing the escape key (the key stuff should be handled in the GameView object which should then call the GameController's pause method - I don't know the name of that method exactly). I think you'll find implementing pausing upon pressing escape far easier than implementing the "Open Levels..." stuff.
"Open Levels" wasn't that hard, aside from the problem with NSArray's :) I'll work on th escape key thingie this week-end.
[...] once Mathieu submits the "Open Levels..." task [...]

I'll probably commit it to the CVS this afternoon (I wanted to do it yesterday, but I thought I might screw things up on the CVS and I hadn't received feedback on my changes yet, so instead I chose to wait a bit)

BobbyWatson

[Pazolli]

Committing to the CVS should be a pretty simple process. Using the terminal go into the folder in which you made the changes and type:

cvs commit -m "A Message Describing What Change You're Committing"

I must admit I'm intrigued as to why you were using arrays.

Looking forward to being able to switch levels,
Mark.

---

:) 'cause a smile costs nothing

[BobbyWatson]

Originally posted by Pazolli
I must admit I'm intrigued as to why you were using arrays.
Basically, the beginSheetForDirectory method requires an NSArray (or NSMutableArray) containing all the file types that can be opened. In our case it only contains "hlvls" and nil, since nil was required :)

The code which allows to load custom levels is now on the CVS. Enjoy!

BobbyWatson