Input Trees Budding New Leaves

Ooh check that out! 9 days and we've already got a new posting. Crazy! Developmentally I've had on days and off days this past 1.3 weeks. Seems the holiday fervor is quickly starting to culminate. Soon it will all be over though, thank goodness. Tonight I probably won't get a whole lot done, I'm going to a local piano bar for my sister's 21st (Happy Birthday Erica!)... and tomorrow my girlfriends dreaded COOKIE BLITZ begins so I don't know that I will be able to concentrate for an extended period of time. But Hey! An update's an update, right?!

A few days ago I was hemming and hawwing and hooing and hurling... in the figurative sense... over thoughts of how to tackle the ever mysterious input tree. I've been aware of input trees since ehhh... Killer Instinct II (which seriously needs a sequel) I think? As I recall, the training mode in that game displayed your mash of button presses along the top of the screen as you went to town. I think that was when the understanding clicked in my head that "Hey, that's how they decide that quarter-circle A is a fireball!"

I knew all along that the input tree would be a major factor in any game with any sort of fighting game mechanics (such as mine)... possibly even any game in general. And I had a feeling it would be a fairly trivial task, but when I sat down to do it it crushed my face. With no clue how to approach it, and a really difficult time finding any reference online for it I had to retreat a day or two. When it did click, however, it was pretty amazing. In fact, the whole input tree creation was embarrassingly easy (if you're curious, look up Binary Search Trees (BST), as they can easily be adapted).

So my input trees are in full bloom in the middle of winter... how's about that? I can grow them or wither them at will, which will really aid my goal in the long run. Now, I just need to focus on how to get the inputs to control what's going on in the game. The trifecta here is input, state, and animation, and I'm wrapping up the input stage. Hopefully next week (or sooner) I'll be able to let you know how easily the state stage was eliminated.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! (all you PC hippies, use your imagination here)

Delay of Game...

Much apologies to my THRONGS of faithful readers. I know you've been frothing with anticipation, I honestly can't blame you, but you really should have better things to do than watch me do nothing.

Anyways... my... delay has been inevitable I suppose. Ever since the summer all those years ago when I first truly hunkered down and played Halo multiplayer. It was inevitable. I would lose myself in the splendour of Halo 3 for these past months... I've finally loosened the grip a tad (ironically, I say so on the very day the first downloadable map content is released), I've got a respectable Colonel and skill rating of 41. I can shift my focus back to what I set off to do all those months ago (see previous posts).

I've got good news! I've managed to get beyond the ever-looming milestone... for real this time! (see previous posts) My physics are working as intended... they're in need of a bit of tweaking, but I've got my MapTastic map editor creating landscapes, and I've got my full game allowing the player to interact with those landscapes. There's a LOT of work left to go into it, but with this hurdle past, the hard part is really past me. That hurdle was the one that has done me in so many times before and now it's so long gone it's not even remembered... not even a footnote.

Please be patient while I tweak those physics settings, add a few more animations for my crappy test model (see previous posts), and I will be posting a movie demo of my crappy test player in my crappy test environment, with crappy test animation and crappy test interaction for you to crap to. Ohh it will be crappy!