MAY UPDATE

• May 23, 2018
• adrien
• DEVELOPMENT
• 1 Comment

Something happened: I had an offer from a company I couldn’t refuse, and I have been working full-time since January. The result is that I don’t have a lot of free time to work on the SHMUP Creator anymore, and it makes my heart bleed.
But since last month I have begun to work again, at a slow but steady pace.

2D SHMUP:
I’m working on a 2D sample level using sprites.
It’s an horizontal shmup, like Gradius or R-type, and it will be part of the package.
It also a good way to polish and debug the engine: I’m doing a lot of small adjustments and corrections.
For now, there is the player space ship, one enemy, one weapon and one explosion, but I’m working on it :)

SPRITE ANIMATION:
Working on this level made me rewrite the sprites animation code.
Until now it was using Ogre3D animation technique, where users have to save one picture file per animation frame. It’s cumbersome and not good for performance, so I wrote a proper atlas animation shader.
Now user can put all the animation frames on one sprite sheet and give the tool the number of rows and columns, the animation speed and the shader will do the rest!

BUG FIXING:
A lot.
This is my primary concern: I want to do an Early Access as soon as possible, but I don’t want to give people an unstable build.
Another concern is that I want to be sure to stabilize the level’s file format before allowing people to start making games to avoid breaking their creations.

NEXT:
Working again on the SHMUP Creator feels good! I know a lot of people are frustrated because this project is taking so long to complete: I’m the first one to be looking forward to its completion, trust me !:)
I promise to write a follow-up next month, even if it’s a small one.
See you!

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