Blade Edge

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Today I woke up at 8am (somehow) and went up to NYC to audition for a stunt job. They were looking for stuntmen to do a commercial for a SpikeTV documentary. The management firm I’m associated with called me up yesterday and set me up with the audition. It went pretty well, I had to pretend I was a hardcore gamer (not hard) and be playing a portable device (like a PSP) and so there was some acting involved with the facial expressions. Then they had me act all happy and jumping around like I just won. Next I had to pretend to hug an old lady standing behind me and then react to a slap in the face with a handbag. Then they had me to a frantic sprint as if I were running from the cops she had just called – across a 7 foot room mind you 😛 Yea I couldn’t stop before sorta running up against the walls a bit, next to the sign posted saying “Stay away from the walls” yea okay whatever 😛 Finally I had to pretend to hurdle over a park bench and catch my foot and fall flat on my face. The only problem is that they had no mats, so I had to do my best faceplant on a tile floor. Oh yea that was fun Scraped up my left arm just a bit – seriously just a bit, no sarcasm intended – but gave them a good show, they looked extremely pleased. We’ll see if I get a phone call tomorrow – the shoot day is either Fri or Sat.

So on the way to and from the city I got to sit on the train with my laptop and get some work done. I implemented a new way of indicating to the player whether they can place a planet or carry out an action over a certain system. Instead of having the cursor change to a crossed-out red circle, the system gets highlighted along the edges a green or red color to indicate okay and not okay. This made things a lot easier code-wise too.

After that I worked on how players go about using special actions. The steps are

1. The player right-clicks on a system – if the planet there has 1 ring or more the highlight turns orange and the system stays highlighted to designate it as selected. The range overlay also appears
2. The player then selects an available special action – not all will be available if there is less that 2 or 3 rings around the planet
3. When the cursor is back over the map it will be a crosshair and the player then selects the target for the action, red and green highlights will let them know what planets they can and cannot use the action on

In order to cancel a special action the user just right-clicks anywhere on the map and they can place a planet again.

Finally I coded in all the special actions’ usage rules, so that when you select a system and select a special action the crosshair appears and the systems are highlighted green or red accordingly. The final step is to have the action carried out at the click of the mouse button. That will come tomorrow.

So here are those screens I promised yesterday, and then some!

(yesterday)The new completed game panel with special action buttons and timers

(yesterday)The timers when activated

(yesterday)Some disabled buttons

The system is green, which means you can carry out the action here, whether it’s placing a planet or applying a special action

Uh oh – red system means no-no

Here’s a system that’s been selected. With only one ring its range doesn’t extend very far

There we go – add another ring and we can reach one of our enemy’s planets. Note we also have another special action option

Here’s the full range of a planet – 3 rings is maximum range and gives you all 5 special actions to choose from

So wait a minute… I fell asleep last nite at ~5… I woke up at 8…. and I’m going to bed at… 4? Wow. Something’s wrong with me And I love it!!

Nite!