Dev Blog
Hi, this is the Stranded III development blog (see also Forum Thread, Comment Thread).
Entry 37 - Not Much Progress & Ugly Flower - April 3, 2016
Lua UI System
I didn't have much time to work on Stranded III this week. Actually that's not entirely true. I had a lot of time this weekend but I didn't really manage to use it. Let me explain why.
What I wanted to tackle is some stuff in my Lua script for the game UI. I have so called "areas" there which are basically something like windows or panels. You can place UI components like buttons, labels etc. on them. This process is made easier by an "insertion system" which automatically positions and scales the components you create in their parent area. It's a very simple system which makes use of rows and columns but it's sufficient for basic menu layouts. This way you don't have to deal with positions and sizes for UI elements at all. Unless you want to have super fancy and crazy UI layouts.
Most of this is already working fine but there are still some nasty problems. The thing is that (at least to me) it is annoying work. Trying out things and working with a lot of numbers, positions and figuring out the best way to make a generic and clean system. I'm also so used to the comfort of awesome IDEs now that working with Lua in Notepad++ feels ridiculously crude and inconvenient. Maybe this is actually the biggest problem.
TL;DR: I don't have much progress code-wise because I wasn't able to motivate myself enough to solve the problems in the UI system. But: I have a guilty conscience now and maybe this helps to motivate me a bit more...
A Flower
This is a video of me drawing a flower. I chose the lazy approach which means that I'm duplicating a lot of stuff and that I use some Photoshop effects. I'm not 100%happy with the result though
I'll probably touch this texture again to improve it a bit.
Click to watch on YouTube!
I also made a model and textured it with my flower texture (and a new little leaf texture that I also drew):
click to enlarge
That's it for this week! I hope I'll be able to show more stuff next week!
I didn't have much time to work on Stranded III this week. Actually that's not entirely true. I had a lot of time this weekend but I didn't really manage to use it. Let me explain why.
What I wanted to tackle is some stuff in my Lua script for the game UI. I have so called "areas" there which are basically something like windows or panels. You can place UI components like buttons, labels etc. on them. This process is made easier by an "insertion system" which automatically positions and scales the components you create in their parent area. It's a very simple system which makes use of rows and columns but it's sufficient for basic menu layouts. This way you don't have to deal with positions and sizes for UI elements at all. Unless you want to have super fancy and crazy UI layouts.
Most of this is already working fine but there are still some nasty problems. The thing is that (at least to me) it is annoying work. Trying out things and working with a lot of numbers, positions and figuring out the best way to make a generic and clean system. I'm also so used to the comfort of awesome IDEs now that working with Lua in Notepad++ feels ridiculously crude and inconvenient. Maybe this is actually the biggest problem.
TL;DR: I don't have much progress code-wise because I wasn't able to motivate myself enough to solve the problems in the UI system. But: I have a guilty conscience now and maybe this helps to motivate me a bit more...
A Flower
This is a video of me drawing a flower. I chose the lazy approach which means that I'm duplicating a lot of stuff and that I use some Photoshop effects. I'm not 100%happy with the result though
I'll probably touch this texture again to improve it a bit. Click to watch on YouTube!I also made a model and textured it with my flower texture (and a new little leaf texture that I also drew):
click to enlargeThat's it for this week! I hope I'll be able to show more stuff next week!