Page 2 of 2

Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 6:07 am
by Kaelis
While this is certainly ambitious and quite amusing, why not just make it in software thats dedicated for this kind of stuff, ie. sprite animation? Or heck, just make it in Game Maker?

Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 9:30 am
by jwa8402
Thanks all, its got a ways to go in terms of adding ships and such(ie there will be nanz or pirates attacking the station, and other ships with the enterprise) but glad its not a fluke.
Arcalane wrote:Word of warning: GM can only run ~3000 lines of code per object, IIRC. An unarmed ship with ~200 sections has used just over half of that already. You'll be lucky to get it to load unless you combine it into a few very large custom sections.
Arc: Good to know. I'm in new territory as far as the demands of the rotation, movement, and gifs, so I'll have to keep an eye out for that limit, if I haven't already reached it.
Kaelis wrote:While this is certainly ambitious and quite amusing, why not just make it in software thats dedicated for this kind of stuff, ie. sprite animation? Or heck, just make it in Game Maker?
Kalis: Thats actually an interesting idea, I've been wanting to play around with gamemaker, so this might be a good excuse.

Exe and others: Even if you don't have 'creative' ideas to contribute, if you have ships, especially vintage pre .90 ships, that you wouldn't mind me using, let me know that its ok to put them in there and I'll do the rest!

Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 1:10 pm
by Commodore111
Word of warning: GM can only run ~3000 lines of code per object, IIRC. An unarmed ship with ~200 sections has used just over half of that already. You'll be lucky to get it to load unless you combine it into a few very large custom sections.

Actually, in BSF, each section is a separate object. I know this because making a separate object is much, much easier than having an array with over 1000 parts for a 100 section ship. you'd need a lot of variables to do it with one object, so multiple objects is better. That, and section debris would take forever to do if they weren't objects(creating a object for each variable).

But yeah, it would still lag horribly unless you made the thing into a gif, which would be very hard to do.
Also, just asking, where did you get that number? I'm not trying to disagree with anything, I'm just wondering where you got it.

I'd suggest just making a game in GM for this. I can help, if you want.

Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 6:35 pm
by Kaelis
Okay, before Arcalane drops a rage brick on you...
Commodore111 wrote:Actually, in BSF, each section is a separate object. I know this because making a separate object is much, much easier than having an array with over 1000 parts for a 100 section ship. you'd need a lot of variables to do it with one object, so multiple objects is better. That, and section debris would take forever to do if they weren't objects(creating a object for each variable).
No, you're wrong. Sections are instances of one object, not separate objects. Same for debris. And its irrelevant anyway, since thats not what Arcalane was talking about.

By "GM can only run ~3000 lines of code per object" he meant that there can be at most ~3000 lines of code in an .shp, otherwise it won't open.
Commodore111 wrote:But yeah, it would still lag horribly unless you made the thing into a gif, which would be very hard to do.
Again, thats not the point. And he doesn't have to make the whole thing into a gif, just the parts that have many sections (ships).
Commodore111 wrote:Also, just asking, where did you get that number? I'm not trying to disagree with anything, I'm just wondering where you got it.
Through testing.



Not to be rude, but... what makes you think you know more about BSF source than Arcalane? Hell, you don't seem to know much about GM to start with - separate objects easier than an array, wth?

Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 7:51 pm
by Arcalane
Commodore111 wrote:Actually, in BSF, each section is a separate object. I know this because making a separate object is much, much easier than having an array with over 1000 parts for a 100 section ship. you'd need a lot of variables to do it with one object, so multiple objects is better. That, and section debris would take forever to do if they weren't objects(creating a object for each variable).
"Object" wasn't exactly the word I was looking for as Kaelis pointed out. My brain failed me at the time when it came to getting the correct terminology.
Commodore111 wrote:Also, just asking, where did you get that number? I'm not trying to disagree with anything, I'm just wondering where you got it.
Kaelis found it a while ago when people were building some large ships that were failing to load.

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2009 12:28 am
by Commodore111
Okay, I see.
Not to be rude, but... what makes you think you know more about BSF source than Arcalane? Hell, you don't seem to know much about GM to start with - separate objects easier than an array, wth?
I meant to use the word instances. I keep accidentally using the two words inter-changeably.

Using separate objects would be easier than using an array to store each sections info. Sorry for not making that clear, but if you used arrays or even ds lists, it would be much harder because you'd need to have a 2d array with sections[0,0] being the first sections sprite, sections[0,1] being the distance from the parent, sections[0,2] to be the parent section, etc. Using objects is easier because you can just set variables for each object rather than creating a massive array and then using the for statement and such. That, and collisions would be extremely hard to do.

You're obviously a better programmer than me, but I can still make a game with GM. I'm just really bad at managing my time and I can't really keep an interest on a certain project for long, so I never actually finished a game. But I have a working game engine anyway, and I might actually finish a project this time.


Enough derailing though. I get it, and sorry.

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2009 11:20 pm
by Exethalion
jwa8402 wrote:Even if you don't have 'creative' ideas to contribute, if you have ships, especially vintage pre .90 ships, that you wouldn't mind me using, let me know that its ok to put them in there and I'll do the rest!
Then you can feel free to use anything I've ever made, if you wish to.

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2009 11:45 pm
by ArcaneDude
You can have the entire MRA, and the To'Hol Venaari Dreadnought, on one condition; there be a Battle of Cortese in there.

Re: Now taking submissions

Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 1:08 am
by jwa8402
AD:
jwa8402 wrote:Did you miss out on the Battle of Cortese?
That was one of my first thoughts :lol:

Exethalion: Excellent! Yours are some of the most recognizable to me!

Commodore: Once I get to that point, any help you can offer me would be awesome. Same to Arcalane and Kaelis but I know you guys are busy and I want to read up a bit so I can at least understand the advice I get.