Hey gang.. I just finished probably the most complex interface in the CatanDC 3-4 Player game.. it was tricky because I have to coordinate input from all players simultaneously, animate all the attached VMUS, and draw 4 animated scrollbar-based interfaces all at the same time. But it's working, and here's a screenshot:

Sorry about the big pic but you need to see it at full resolution to see the text properly.

Anyways, I'm working on game scripting, and I'm hoping that I can have something beta-able by the end of June, with a mid-July release. I have also selected the beta team, and will be contacting them in about a week to give them the details on how to download and burn their beta CDs.

Oh yes, and I probably have a job. Just in time to help me pay for that $300 red light ticket. Damn.

The move is complete, I've had internet for a while, and my development setup is working again. CatanDC is proceeding again... sorry for the delays, but my moving out and my job search has taken much of my time lately. I will post progress in the next few days.

I will be without internet at home for a while, so I will probably not be able to update the site for the next little bit. I'm moving right now too, so don't expect any CatanDC updates for a bit. I'm still aiming to have a mid-may release of the game, but until then, try out the 3d settlers for the PC to get your appetites whetted for the Dreamcast version. Many thanks to Drew J. and Nick C. for their texture contributions (they are looking very sweet, I'll post some pix very shortly).

See you all soon.

So I've taken a bit of a break. Not a lot of progress in the last week. My defense is on next wednesday so I'm a bit preoccupied. Anyways, I have had some suggestions for redesign of the trade interface to make it a little more streamlined, as well as received a bit of a start for the VMU trade interface from Nick C, honorary interface codesigner. He may be helping with development in a month or so if he feels up to it. Anyways, I like his suggestions and I think they'll make the trading interface a lot better. I spent this last week looking at how to do a Duke3d port with some other like-minded individuals, but I'm kind of drained from being out so late for so many nights this week.

So much for a break. I've been steamrolling through interfaces left an right. Here's some new ones for you.

Make A Trade

But Who will you Offer It To?

City Up!

More from me later.. only a few more interfaces are left to go for gameflow (status, stealing, discard, error messages)! After that I have a few engine details to code (longest road calculation comes to mind) and basically the whole backend of the game to go.

I've been trying to enjoy a bit of a break, but I've managed to put together a few new things for CatanDC. I had some problems building my Icon engine, but it seems to be working as designed now. I enhanced all the previous interfaces with icons to make the design a little more visually appealing. Not all interfaces will be transparent, as they previously were, because ones with icons appear too washed out. Here's two examples of interfaces that use icons:

 

Resource Summary : Who got what on this Roll

Updated Board Repositioning Interface (no transparency)

That's all I've been able to muster for this week. More to come. Trading interface is in development. Me Out.

Here's some brand new fresh screenshots 5 of the 16 currently identified interfaces are coded and working (alongside the state machine interfaces for them... I wasn't brave enough to attempt threading yet). Transparency is working more or less as I want it to, although the GL interface seems to brighten the alpha much more than programming the PVR by hand.

Title Menu

Move The Robber!

Free Transform of the Board

Place A City

Yeah, there's more made but this is more just to give you a taste of what the interface is going to be like. The tricky ones are yet to come (building, trading, counter-offers etc.). Thanks to the guy who messaged me with the screenshot function heads-up, makes things a lot easier. I haven't received any hex or card submissions yet, but I have one titlescreen - thanks cpe!

CatanDC titlescreen submission #1 - By CPE

I'd like to thank all the people out there that are interested in promoting the DC homebrew scene, and the artists who've been eager to help me out. To give you an idea of what I'm looking for in terms of textures, I've put together a set of templates. You can get the hex template here and the card template here.

The textures are currently stored in Jpeg files. They're stored kind of strangely, here's a sample as a template to help you make your textures compatible. The up direction only really matters for port tiles, but it's the left edge. Here are the textures I know that I will need: Terrain Textures (256 x 256 each) -
-Hills (Brick Production)
-Meadows (Sheep Production)
-Mountains (Ore Production)
-Forest (Wood Production)
-Fields (Wheat Production)
-Desert
-Ocean
-Ports (different types of production 2:1 + generic 3:1)

Card Textures (82 x 128 rectangles, buffered to 128 x 128 each like the
hexes) - These will be smaller because they appear smaller onscreen than the terrain textures. The North American board game cards have the background from the terrain, with the production element in the foreground, but by no means feel constrained to this style.
-Bricks
-Sheep
-Ore
-Wood
-Wheat
-Soldier
-Monopoly
-Year of Plenty
-Road Building
-Victory Points (University, Library, City Hall, Cathedral)

On a personal note the next couple weeks will be somewhat harrowing as I try to put the final touches on my thesis and I prepare to defend, so please don't be offended if I don't reply quickly.

Engine coding has been going well, and I've sort of redesigned the GUI toolkit I started for FrNES and made it more appropriate for a game (animated transitions for cursors, nicer layout of interface elements etc.). I'm still testing it, but I feel it will add a lot to the CatanDC experience (instead of the simple listbox type interface I used before).

Also, I have made a legal inquiry about licensing the game from the Mayfair Games people. No response yet though. If you have any information about the legal status of the Settlers of Catan console rights, please email me with them.

The port to the DC was mostly painless. I was actually quite impressed with how far the KOS tools have come since I used them last (FrNES used version 1.1.5 - CatanDC uses 1.1.9). Lots of things work for me now, that didn't before (namely JPEG textures and stuff), and the GL port was relatively easy, despite a few features that I would have liked to have had (triangle fans, automatic line edge polygons).. and a few I'm not sure exactly how to use (alpha blending/masking under KGL). Anyways, I've completed the board code (all pieces with the exception of the robber have been programmed). Here's a picture of my DC-debug setup as it stands :

And here's a closeup screenshot of the CatanDC visualization running through my crappy TV:

There will be lots of zoom/perspective options for the players.. this one was preprogrammed (all the pieces placed manually).

Yeah, so no journal entries in the last week, all my effort has been going towards finishing my thesis and getting a good start on CatanDC. I haven't heard anything from artists yet, but if there are any out there interested in helping, I will send my texture wishlist out to you!

I have designed the VMU interface today. A VMU will be required for each player of CatanDC. For those who have played the board game, the reason for this will be intuitively obvious. Keeping one's cards secret is of upmost importance in Catan, and the VMU provides a nice way of displaying this information to the players. For the first release of CatanDC, this will be the only method of receiving this information (although an onscreen interface will be developed for the network version).

I also got my DC gear out of the closet to start the porting to the DC... seems to have gone smoothly!

Also, my defense date has been set... April 16th!

Blog update here. I went skiing and stuff - 'twas AWESOME.

Here's the screenshot of the Visualization running under windows:

The textures are from the board game and will NOT be distributed with the DC game. Any artists out there willing to make some resource textures?

Added a couple more journal entries - One of which is half album review - half fantasy baseball featuring zombie rock stars. Read here.

Development on the GL Catan has progressed a bit. Fixed a bug which caused initialization. I've decided to clean up the code a bit, and focus more on 4 player mode because that's more important now than the 6 player network mode that I'd been working on in parallel. GL screenshot will come here really soon.

I'm happy, I hope you're happy too.

I've moved my blog page back to here because this week I've received a fair amount of traffic because the CatanDC page was frontpaged on DCEmulation last week. A greetings to the DC fans in the audience. I figured you folks don't particularily care to hear my musings on life et cetera.

All updates to my site will be posted here (including blog entries), but this way you can choose to look at them or not.

I will put a GL screenshot of the graphics engine, as it is now, in a couple of days.

I also updated my blog with a short little entry.