Friday 27 March 2009

New Map Screenshot!















Well my map class is finally starting to come together, Ive edited the positioning somewhat so its more aesthetically pleasing and easier to see whats going on. The proper textures are now in place so that I can see what the map is really going to look like. I've edited the size some, to a size of 80x40 squares. This is to make space at the bottom - the black section that is going to be for the GUI to relay information to the user.

The next goals to work on will be the assignment of the starting and ending zones on the map, and maybe play about some with the density of each tile texture and value, to make maybe more mountains and less desert for example.

Once this is completed, it will be time for construction of the Agent class and the GUI class. What I want is for each agent to have their own version of their map which the user can select and display at any time, meaning the agents progress can be tracked in real time, with the user able to see their known and unknown terrain and how they each individually react throughout their respective journeys.

Saturday 21 March 2009

Current Progress

Well since my last post, i have met with various tutors including Dr King and Dr Lucas about my absence the last couple of months. Also since then I have not really made much progress with my map generator, but instead I have focused on making my code fully object oriented rather than the single C file that it was.

So far I've managed to separate out the code so that there is improved flexibility without losing any of the functionality. As well as a separate map class, I now also have classes for the loading of bitmaps and the conversion of these bitmaps into textures for use within my application. Now that I have this framework in motion, the next step will be to finish off with my map generator class to move onto the next step which will be the implementation of the agent class.

Friday 13 March 2009

First Screenshot

















Here is a screen shot of the map generator spoken about yesterday, it doesn't look like much yet, but its a start.

Hi there, remember me ?

Hmm, well its been a couple of months since I last wrote here. I've spent most of the last 2 months back home in Glasgow for personal reasons, and well its really played havoc with my plans, and my schedule.

Anyways with the project work I finally got started on the application last week, I'm using the OpenGL application and coding it in C++. For a starting point I have used one of the starting Nehe lessons from here specifically lesson no.6 for those interested.

The first thing that i have started to work on is the map generator. My initial idea is to have a map with all the tiles (aside from the starting and ending tiles) being randomly assigned. Each tile will be either green (grass), yellow (dessert), red(danger) and brown (mountains), with varying penalties assigned to each tile or travel costs.

So far I have managed to code a generator that creates an 80x80 size board of tiles that are each individually textured. The chose texture is randomly generated from choice of 2 (huge variety i know, but its the principle that is important) textures. This definitely forms the basis of my project but at the minute EVERYTHING is included into one C file, as the code is done on the Nehe tutorials. This is not acceptable for me, so i think before I advance too much coding into the map generator I will have to sit down and work on building a proper framework to complete this project under.