Re: [Bontz-team] walls

[Ryan Wilkinson]

Thought I would introduce myself to the bontz team (probably just 
Owen).  Chuck kept mentioning bontz to me, and he asked me if I wanted 
to help out with it at least twice a month.  In order to appease Chuck, 
I kept telling him that I would work on it when I had more time and more 
programming experience.  I never did get that extra experience (unless 
php counts), but I do have more free time this semester, so I thought I 
would start helping out.  I poked around at the code this last weekend, 
and was happy to find that I could understand most of it, and better yet 
that I could actually get visual results from a few hours of work.  
Since I needed a senior seminar project, I decided to choose game 
programming with SDL.  So, now I am sort of committed to the cause if I 
want to graduate next May.

The menu hack is a bastardization of your old textbox class.  I am 
currently working on getting it to accept either keyboard or mouse 
input.  With Chuck's help I am trying to make the MenuBox class more 
open, so we could use it for everything from dialog, character 
inventory, plus regular menus.  The surfaces will be interchangeable so 
our character dialog won't necessarily look the same as our game menus.  
Also, this might be useful for things such as having a pics of items in 
the character inventory rather than just text descriptions.  Going along 
with idea of making this game platform independant, I am trying to make 
the menus workable with either mouse, keyboard, or gamepad.

Random Ideas for Furgason's lab:  You could have some caged animals.  
Maybe just a room filled with caged monkeys or something.  How about 
some sort of 'Igor' hunchback that works for the future Furgason?  Also 
electricity is always cool.  So circuit breakers, huge double throw 
switches, and cables.  Some sort of weird boxes plugged into the wall.  
An oscilloscope that was synced with the background music would be neat, 
but probably more trouble than its worth.  An old Commodore 64 or Apple 
IIe laying around might be amusing.  If we could have a Van De Graph 
(?sp) generator that Furgason could interact with...If the lab is 
underground we could have some green ooze running down the walls at 
random locations.  I'm trying to come up with some good Back To the 
Future reference, but am coming up empty.  Lasers.  Lasers with mirrors.

I will try to get some NES emulator screenshots for wall and floor tile 
ideas.

Ryan Wilkinson 

Owen Swerkstrom wrote:

> First off, Chuck... very nice with the menu hack.  I
> haven't explored the code much (and I'm guessing it's
> all very temporary anyway) but should I take this as
> meaning you're volunteering to take on the menu system
> yourself, since I've been slow to do anything about
> it?  :^)
>
> I've been trying to come up with some halfway decent
> tiles for the lab where Furgason meets his future
> creation, Sterdroid.  I've only managed to create very
> boring stuff so far.  Have a look and tell me what
> lab-looking stuff needs to be added.  Tables with
> beakers and equipment and stuff on them I've got (not
> shown in this mockup) but in terms of what the floors
> and walls should look like to make them less boring,
> any advice would be appreciated.  Part of it will be
> designing a good layout, of course, but at some point
> we're basically going to have the lower half of the
> screen be floor and the top half wall that Sterdroid
> will come crashing through, so I need some wall and
> floor ideas.
>
> The bricks are too big and certainly too tall, I'll
> take care of that, and I'm sure I can make the floors
> a bit better, but apart from the odd control panel and
> crack in the wall, what would walls and floors look
> like that were built by a madman and/or his servant
> bots in order to protect him from himself?  I must
> have written too much code for work in the last couple
> days, my creativity's not too good right now.  :^)
>
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