State of things

Yesterday I added a Font Engine to our code that I wrote for MUPPETS this summer. It can create any font in any style using GDI, but renders it as sprites on the screen, which is fast.

I also added a Menu State and successful transitions between Game State and Menu State. We had a little issue with input and single key strokes, but Ada fixed that up quick and all works well.

I created a skeleton class for the Battle State, so next I'm going to start work on that. It's going to involve a lot of planning on the IO side, we need a file format for the notes that are going to be played (IE keys that need to be pressed), their timings, and any sound files that need to be played / faded, etc. So I'm going to start working on the basic pieces of this, and then hopefully this weekend we'll get some music going and go from there.

We're thinking of a more traditional side-scroller on-rails shooter type game for the "exploration" mode. So if someone else wants to start thinking about how that's going to work, and start thinking about collion detection for the bullets and stuff, that'd be cool. Some questions: How are we going to aim? (whammy bar?) How precise will the aiming be? Will it be timing based? What's going to happen when they play a note? if music is played, how is it going to sync? Will there be music in the background?

In other news, word on the street is that we may have lost our art guy, so that's going to be trouble.

But things are moving along. I don't have any word on the XNA port yet, but I'd rather keep working on the actual GAME part of things rather than rebuilding another engine. If there's no fun game, whats the point of 2 identical boring engines?

-p3000