Post holiday update

Gamescom 2010

Had a great couple of weeks of vacation, spent going to Gamescom, Lowlands and Berlin, and reading Kevin Smith´s diary cover to cover.

Unfortunately I didn´t get to do as much coding as I´d have liked to, but still managed to get a couple of days of solid work in.

I noticed, especially after taking a short break from the project, that the code was getting messy. I was using the same classes in the game as in the editor, so stuff like 3D rendering was living confusingly alongside 2D editor drawing. I´d also put a lot of editor UI code directly in the classes that dealt with the actual editing, so they were busy changing the level and updating the screen at the same time, leading to more muddledness.

So I cleaned up! I now have a nice layer between the level and the editor (aptly called EditableLevel) that exposes whatever data the editor needs to change but hides all of the hardcore engine stuff. While I was in there I also improved on a bunch of other stuff, among which a move to the new XNA 4 framework (potential winphone support yo!).

I´m pretty happy with the results!

Using the new architecture I´ve put an undo-list in place. Repeatedly adding and removing nodes, lines and sectors doesn´t look like much, so I won´t make a video out of it, but I assure you it´s pretty neat!

In other news, I´ve asked the talented Pete Brannan (of Evil Aliens fame) if he´d be interested in doing the soundtrack and he´s into it! This guy´s great and I really hope we can make it work. If so, I´ll be sure to post some tune previews!