Cripes! My first entry in almost three months! Progress has been slow due to my 2 month trip to Canada, but hopefully things should pick up a little, as I'm determined to make some headway on Citadel whenever I can.
The main motivating factor to don my magic coding pants once again has been an online Blitz remake of Alien Breed; everything is being done by a group of Blitz enthusiasts, and it's encouraging to see how small acorns can grow. Plus, it's pretty interesting looking at other people's code in the context of a game to see how various elements - such as scrolling routines and enemy sequencers - might be tackled.
Suitably enthused, yesterday I booted up Blitz for the first time in a long time to discover that, thankfully, I hadn't forgotten everything I'd learned in previous months. I started messing with the mouse wheel, as I like the idea of using it to select the current weapon, and tonight I implemented a specific routine to do just that.
This got me thinking about the Status display (or HUD, as I'll refer to it from now on); I worked on a game design a number of years ago, which will probably never see the light of day, and I remember that the HUD design was pretty cool, even if I do say so myself. This led me to have a quick dabble in PhotoShop to see if I could recreate the design and, more importantly, if it would suit the game and be able to accommodate the required information.
After a little scribbling and head-scratching, I had the design roughed-out and even added a little bit of code to display this on screen. This got me thinking about a couple of important factors, the first being screen size. Currently, the game is running in a 640x480 window (the final game will be full-screen). I was a little concerned that the HUD might look fairly crude in this resolution, but after a little bit of tinkering to run the game in full-screen mode, my fears were alleviated.
The second issue concerns how intrusive the HUD could potentially be. I had originally envisaged the scrolling system to work the same as the C64, i.e. Monitor remains in the centre of the screen until it reaches the edge of the map - at this point, the map ceases scrolling and the Monitor craft is allowed to move right up to the boundary.
This wasn't an issue on the C64, as the status panel was tucked away at the top of the screen. My HUD idea, however, is overlaid onto the playing area, and sits nicely in the corners of the screen; if I implement the C64's scrolling system as-is, there's the potential for the Monitor craft to get lost behind the HUD. I sense much head-scratching on the horizon... :)
