Messages

16

SFML projects / Re: K Station: An adventure game of disappearing lives

« on: April 09, 2016, 10:35:59 pm »

Does anyone here use a particular library or approach to menu screens?

I have various interactive UIs in the game, and I put together an ad hoc configuration system using JSON (same as the rest of my game's content/config). It processes key-downs, and updates visible sprites and sf::Text contents, according to the currently focused element.

It works, but maybe there are canned approaches for this. (Also, I should've used Lua, not JSON, but it's too late to change.)


For example, here's the typewriter UI:

...And the time machine:

17

SFML projects / Re: K Station: An adventure game of disappearing lives

« on: March 31, 2016, 04:06:19 pm »

Did any of the Chzo Mythos games inspire this game?

No because I hadn't heard of these, but I'm going to give it a shot. I see there's one that uses text input. Thanks for the tip!

18

SFML projects / Re: K Station: An adventure game of disappearing lives

« on: March 30, 2016, 04:51:19 pm »

This is a minor technical demo. I was researching particle engines because I needed to vent some steam (literally, in the game). I ultimately tried a simple one-class solution with a VertexArray, and here's how it came out (gifv link):



I think it's not bad! And I like how my simple code inadvertently captured the way the steam ebbs when it's turned off.

19

Feature requests / Re: Re-check if sound device becomes available after failing

« on: March 29, 2016, 02:07:12 am »

I know this thread is old, but for what it's worth I was in the same boat, so I'm describing the little hack I used.

I'm coding in Windows on a Macbook through Boot Camp, which is an experience full of delightfully wonky little behaviors. Sometimes (maybe 1 out of 5 times, erratically) when I started my game in Visual Studio, the sf::Music would fail to initialize correctly and I'd get OpenAL errors dumped to stderr. The naive checks I tried, like sf::Music::getStatus(), all returned normal values despite the OpenAL errors.

Fortunately I was building SFML from source, so what did I do? I hacked in an "ALErrorHolder" class into the SFML source, had ALCheck.cpp set an error bool there, then checked ALErrorHolder from my own code to decide whether to re-construct my sf::Music instance on the next game loop.

It's ugly, but it works on my Macbook now. I'd need to test it on more computers to feel better, though.

I'd also love to be able to peek at OpenAL errors after ALCheck.cpp swallows them, but then I'm just some user.

20

SFML projects / Re: K Station: An adventure game of disappearing lives

« on: March 24, 2016, 03:21:19 pm »

What i never liked though was the command line input. It suggests an amount of freedom, but instead often resulted in "I don't know what you mean".

I hear you, though my personal preference is the text input for exactly the freedom you describe. But like you said -- when they're bad, they're terrible. So I'm making mine good.

21

SFML projects / Re: K Station: An adventure game of disappearing lives

« on: March 23, 2016, 05:50:29 pm »

Oh, if anyone can show me how to embed the YouTube trailer, that'd be much appreciated. Curse you, computers!

22

SFML projects / K Station: An adventure game of disappearing lives

« on: March 23, 2016, 05:49:21 pm »

K Station is my Space Quest-inspired sci-fi adventure game.

Vote for us on Steam Greenlight!: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=649211984

It's New Year's Day, 2319, and the happy denizens of K Station are disappearing one at a time. That's all you know.

You are Maya, a lab assistant and government employee working on K Station. You're hung over from the New Year's Eve party, cranky, street-smart, and a little tired.

K Station is an adventure game where the world and story are collapsing, room by room and life by life. Discover new lives, new hopes, new dreams and new disappointments -- all from the friends and coworkers you thought you knew.

Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SXNYnyjicQ

23

Graphics / Re: Simple lighting effects: should I use shaders or plain SFML code?

« on: June 28, 2015, 11:43:23 pm »

Thanks for the link. Looks like that library uses shaders, so I'll take that as an implicit vote for "use shaders" (and maybe that library)

24

Graphics / Simple lighting effects: should I use shaders or plain SFML code?

« on: June 28, 2015, 07:19:38 pm »

I'm writing a 2D pixel art game in SFML and I want to add some simple mood lighting effects, such as a fluorescent lamp hanging overhead, or a glowing button on a computer console. Any thoughts on using OpenGL shaders vs. plain SFML/C++ code to do this?

I figure I could implement lighting well enough in SFML using overlaid textures and blend modes and my own pixel-crawling logic. Then I wouldn't have to worry about learning GLSL, graphics card compatibilities, avoiding "deprecated" features like gl_FragColor, etc. etc. Performance is probably not an issue since my game is visually simple.

But maybe someone with more experience knows reasons I should suck it up and use a proper shader. Any thoughts on these general approaches? Thanks for input.