A Lot of Rambling About a C# Project

Hello everyone!

About a month ago a friend of mine told me a local company was hiring for a software developer, and they had told them I would be stopping by to talk to them. Unfortunately, my friend didn't really know what the company did exactly or what coding language they used for developing software. I went in and talked to the company and got a bit more information on what they do. They use C# for all their software development, which I had no experience with. It is an Object Oriented Programming language like Unrealscript, so at least I has some knowledge of how the language was supposed to work. Long story short, the guy I talked to said he'll put together a small project for me to try out and see if we're compatible. While I'm waiting for that project I went ahead and started learning what I could about C#. I'm nowhere near being proficient in it yet, but I've learned quite a bit. Hopefully enough to work out the project when it arrives.

So, Winds of Commerce is on hold until I learn if I will be getting the job. It saddens me because I really want to finish it, but all my free time has been spent going through tutorials and creating some basic programs with C# to work into more advanced stuff.

One project I'm working on is a meal list/meal generator. How it works is you create a master list of different meals(like dinners and such) with optional ingredients and notes. Once you have some meals in your master list you can either manually add them to a smaller meal list(for instance to make a dinner plan for the week), or you have the option to automatically generate how ever many meals you need, or both.

For example: if you knew you wanted to have burgers next week you could manually add burgers to the list, then generate the other 6 meals randomly to make the full 7 days of meals.

After you have your finalized list of meals you can then print them off using several different formats. You can choose to just print the meal names, print just the ingredients, or a all the meals and their ingredients. If you choose to print just the ingredients it will compile all of the ingredients from all the meals into one list, combining duplicate ingredients into one with the combined quantities. On the other hand, if you print meals and ingredients it will print each meal with the individual ingredients directly underneath the meal name. This way you can see exactly how much of what goes into that particular meal. I guess I should add one in for printing the notes off, but I forgot about that until just now...

Enough rambling for now, I'll go over some of the issues I ran into while trying to create this once I'm satisfied with it. Here are some images of the meal generator:

Main Page

Adding a new meal

Viewing the notes

Viewing the ingredient list

The selected meal list randomly generated

Print options

Printed with the "Both" option

Printed with the "Ingredients Only" option

A Little Detour To Revisit a Old Side Project

Hello everyone!

My buddy Andrew contacted me the other day and asked if I wanted to help him redo a lot of the stuff that we made for SpaceWings now that we have a bit more experience. So, we dredged up as many of the old files that we could and got to work figuring out what we needed to redo. He wanted to tackle most of the base code himself, while I took on getting the menus put together.

Unfortunately, the only assets we had from the original menus were screenshots. A bit of Photoshop magic and I had almost all the elements I needed. A major thing I was still missing was the font. None of the other guys that worked on it before that I talked to had the name of the font we used in the original. So, I had to find some new fonts. I then had to try and replicate the effects that Justin Bucher made for the originals. He's much more proficient at Photshop than I am though, but I did my best.

Here are some of the HUD assets:

Once I got the main aspects of the menus done I decided to start working on getting the pickup system working. This has four main parts to it: Picking up and classifying an item, adding to the inventory if applicable, updating the HUD if something was added to the inventory, and checking to see if the player has a particular item. 

Picking Up and Classifying

---

Getting the item to be picked up proved to be surprisingly difficult for me. I haven't really worked with skeletal meshes/skinning/animation before in UDK. I got almost all of it set up thanks to some help from Andrew, mostly setting up the anim tree. The part that kept throwing me off was the collision. To get collision on a static mesh is really easy, but I was having a trouble with a skeletal mesh. Turns out I was looking at too much code and over looked adding BlockNonZeroExtent = true default properties of the skeletal mesh component...

As for classifying it, there is a variable in the actual pickup that holds what type of pickup it is. When the pickup is touched it calls a function in the player controller class that takes that variable and decides what to do with it. Here is my base pickup class:

class SW_Pickup extends Actor
    abstract
    placeable
    ClassGroup(SW_Pickups);

var string PickupType;
var SpaceWingsPlayerController PC;
var SpaceWingsPawn P;

event Touch(Actor Other, PrimitiveComponent OtherComp, vector HitLocation, vector HitNormal)
{
    PC = SpaceWingsPlayerController(GetALocalPlayerController());
    P = SpaceWingsPawn(PC.Pawn);
    
    PC.MyLog("A" @ PickupType @ "Pickup was touched", 'PickupTouch');

    //If the instigator is the player, then process the pickup
    if(Other == P)
    {
        PC.ProcessPickup(PickupType);
        Destroy();
    }
}

defaultproperties
{
    PickupType = "None"

    Begin Object Class=SkeletalMeshComponent Name=PickupMesh
    Scale3D=(X=1.0, Y=1.0, Z=1.0)
    CollideActors=true
    BlockNonZeroExtent=true
    End Object
    Components.Add(PickupMesh)

    CollisionComponent=PickupMesh

    bCollideActors = true
    bBlockActors = false

    CollisionType = COLLIDE_TouchAll
}

And then all you have to do is extend off of that and add the relevant skeletal mesh properties in the defaultproperties of the child class and assign the item type to that variable I mentioned earlier. For example, here is the the red key card pickup class.

class SW_RedKeyCardPickup extends SW_Pickup;

defaultproperties
{
    PickupType = "RedKeyCard"
    
    Begin Object Name=PickupMesh
        SkeletalMesh=SkeletalMesh'SW_Meshes.KeyCard.KeyCard'
        Materials(0)=Material'SW_Meshes.KeyCard.RedKeyCard_Mat'
        AnimSets(0)=AnimSet'SW_Meshes.KeyCard.KeyCard_Anim'
        AnimTreeTemplate=AnimTree'SW_Meshes.KeyCard.KeyCard_AnimTree'
        PhysicsAsset=PhysicsAsset'SW_Meshes.KeyCard.KeyCard_Physics'
    End Object
}

Adding To My Inventory

---

Adding it to the inventory was really simple. Since the inventory can hold a maximum of 3 items I didn't need to implement a grand inventory manager. For simplicity I assigned each pickup that could be added to the inventory a number instead of trying to save a class into the array, or something overly complex like that. I could have done a string, but I end up using the id number when updating the HUD. Here are the functions that manage my small inventory:

exec function AddItem(int ItemID)
{
    local int i;

    if(ItemList.length < 3)
    {
        i = ItemList.length;
        ItemList.length = ItemList.length + 1;
        
        ItemList[i] = ItemID;

        HUDGFx.UpdateItems();
    }

    else
    {
        MyLog("ItemList is full", 'AddItem');
    }
}

function bool CheckForItem(int ItemID, out int FoundItemID)
{
    local int i;
    local bool bHaveItem;

    bHaveItem = false;

    for(i = 0; i < ItemList.length; i++)
    {
        if(ItemList[i] == ItemID)
        {
            bHaveitem = true;
            FoundItemID = i;
        }
    }

    return bHaveItem;
}

//This would be used like this in whatever function needs the check
//If not being called from this class, get PC reference like normal
/*
local int FoundID;

if(CheckForItem(1, FoundID)) //If we have a keycard (ID 1)
{
    RemoveItem(FoundID);
    //Insert the rest of the code that happens if they have the keycard
}

*/

exec function RemoveItem(int ItemID)
{
    ItemList.Remove(ItemID, 1);
    HUDGFx.UpdateItems();
}

Updating the HUD

---

Now that I have all of that in order I have to update the HUD to show which items I have in my inventory. As I do more and more Scaleform projects I try and migrate as much code as I can from AS3 to Unrealscript, since Unrealscript runs faster than AS3. Since I will be spawning movieclips directly from Unrealscript I have to keep a reference to them in order to adjust them or delete them. To help manage my references I decided to make my AttachMovie function a bit more dynamic on what parameters are passed. The first step was to create an array that holds the linkage names(to match the ones in Flash) and the desired instance names for all of the different item types that can be added to the inventory. The element number then corresponds to the ID I gave the items when I added them to the inventory. Here is how I have the AttachMovie and the reference array set up:

var struct ItemInfo
{
    var string LinkageName; //Name used in Flash
    var string InstanceName; //Desired Instance Name
} ItemReference;

//ItemSlot[0] holds the id number of the item assigned to that spot.
ItemOneSlot.AttachMovie(ItemReference[ItemList[0]].LinkageName, ItemReference[ItemList[0]].InstanceName);
ItemOneMC = GetVariableObject("_root.itemOneSlot_mc." $ ItemReference[ItemList[0]].InstanceName);

//In the defualt properties
ItemReference[1] = (LinkageName = "redKeyCard_item", InstanceName = "redKeyCard")
ItemReference[2] = (LinkageName = "blueKeyCard_item", InstanceName = "blueKeyCard")

CheckForItem Kismet Node

---

Since I like using Kismet for setting up triggers and other level specific things I needed a way to check if I had the correct item before the actual action could be executed. For instance, if they have the red keycard when trying to lower the force field. If they don't have it they shouldn't be able to lower it. So I made a custom Kistmet node that calls my check inventory function in my PlayerController class(see above), then outputs the correct result. I wanted to be able to set which item was being checked and also if I wanted it to be removed when the check was made. If I had like a master key card or something that could be used over and over again I wouldn't want it to be removed from my inventory. Anyway, here is my Kismet node:

class SeqCond_CheckForItem extends SequenceCondition;

var bool bResult;
var int ItemID;

/**Remove the item if found? */
var(Items) bool bRemove;

/**Expected Item Type*/
var(Items) enum ItemTypes
{
    ITEM_RedKeyCard,
    ITEM_BlueKeyCard
} ExpectedItem;

event Activated()
{
    local SpaceWingsPlayerController PC;

    PC = SpaceWingsPlayerController(class'WorldInfo'.static.GetWorldInfo().Game.GetALocalPlayerController());
    bResult = PC.CheckForItem(ExpectedItem + 1, ItemID);

    if(bResult && bRemove)
    {
        PC.RemoveItem(ItemID);
    }

    //If the check result is true, activate the first output link, else the second
    OutputLinks[(bResult == true) ? 0 : 1].bHasImpulse = true;
}

defaultproperties
{
    ObjName="CheckForItem"
    ObjCategory="SpaceWings"

    bRemove = true

    InputLinks(0)=(LinkDesc="In")
    OutputLinks(0)=(LinkDesc="True")
    OutputLinks(1)=(LinkDesc="False")

    VariableLinks(0)=(ExpectedType=class'SeqVar_Bool',LinkDesc="Result",bWriteable=true,PropertyName=bResult)
}

Wow, this post ended up being a lot longer than I had anticipated. I was going to throw up a video of the pickups and HUD in action, but that will have to wait until later. Time to work!

Returns and Removing Children

Hello everyone!

I don't really have much to report on Winds of Commerce, I wrapped up the transaction list/receipts feature. When you bring up the receipts menu it will show you a list of all the cities you've been to, what day of the journey you visited it on, and how much you spent or earned there. You can then click on a city in the list and it will bring up an itemized list of what commodities you purchased/sold, how much you spent/earned on each commodity, and how much you spent on purchasing information.

The next thing I have to tackle is the navigation system. Right now I'm using exec functions to simulate going between cities. This will probably be the biggest system I've had to tackle developing this game. Unfortunately, before I can even start coding I have to get the routes figured out. That way I know how many days away each city is from one another and try and make the shortest route to each city. The hard part is trying to make it logical. Each time I get a route down I look at it and think, "Is that the most efficient route to that city?" then proceed to convince myself it isn't... and redo it again!

Returns

---

While I was working on getting this game put together I ran into how to use returns in a function. I had only used them a handful of times before, and didn't quite know how to use them. I knew you had to have 'return SomeVariable;' but I guess the usefulness didn't really hit me. Since I read more about them and did some tests I have started to use them more. I find them very useful for doing calculations, conversions, or simply checking if a function has completed running.
Setting up a function to return something is really simple, though it is different in Unrealscript and AS3. In Unrealscript the function setup looks like this:

function ReturnType FunctionName()
{
    local ReturnType SomeVar;
    
    //Set SomeVar

    return SomeVar;
}

Here is an example of a function that returns an int:

function int GetSum(int A, int B)
{
    local int Sum;

    Sum = A + B;
    
    return Sum;
}

//To call use it
Total = GetSum(5, 10); //GetSum would return 15

The return type can be any of the standard variable types: bool, int, string, array, and even a class. An example of a class being returned can be found in the GameInfo class, with the SetGameType function. This function returns the GameInfo class to use for the game.

static event class<GameInfo> SetGameType(string MapName, string Options, string Portal)
{
    return Default.Class;
}

A bool return can be useful if used in an if statement to make sure that function has ran completely before moving on with the if statement. An example of this is in a lot of the bot AI code that is floating around the internet. It is being used to make sure that a path has been found or not, basically:

if(FindPath())
{
    //Commence moving
}

Return functions work the same in AS3, just with the different declaration. Here is how you would declare a retunr funciton in AS3:

function functionName():ReturnType
{
    var someVar:ReturnType;
    
    //Set someVar
    
    return someVar;
}

Speaking of ActionScript, in my last post I mentioned the different ways to call a function in AS3 from Unrealscript(ActionScriptVoid, ActionScriptBool, AsctionScriptInt, and so on). These are there to allow you to receive a return value from your AS3 function. For instance, if you had the GetSum function in AS3 and needed to call it from Unrealscript it would look like this:

//In AS3
function getSum(a:Number, b:Number):Number
{
    var sum:Number;

    sum = a + b;

    return sum;
}

//In Unrealscript
Total = ActionScriptInt("_root.getSum");

Now you have several examples of how to use a function to return a value!

Removing Children

---

The next code bit I found extends what I talked about in my last post with the removeChild function. Sometimes it is necessary to remove all the children from a MovieClip, and since there isn't a function for removeAllChildren there is a work around using a for loop. It's pretty simple, you get the number of children in the MovieClip, then go backwards through the children and remove them one at a time. Here is an example of what I'm talking about:

for (var i:int = container_mc.numChildren-1; i >= 0; i--)
{
    container_mc.removeChildAt(i);
}

I think that is all I have for you this week. Hopefully by my next update I'll have all of the routes figured out.

Chuggin' Along - Winds of Commerce

Hey guys!

Just a quick update on Winds of Commerce. I've been steadily getting components of the code done. I recently finished up opening and filling the information page which will give you a random amount of information about the city you click on. From there you can purchase additional information if you'd like. I also decided to add a transaction list to the game, that way you can look back and see how much you spent, or made, at a given city and on what day that was on. It will also show you the net profit from each city.

While I have completed quite a few things, I still have a lot of work to do with the menus, choosing the starting options, and the end game.

Here is a neat bit of code I found while doing all of this that would have made some of my previous projects a little smoother. This allows you to create a movieclip in Flash, from Unrealscript. This helps because you then have an easier reference to dynamically created objects than you would spawning them through AS3. Here is the code to add the movie:

//In your custom GFxMovieplayer class

var GFxObject RootMC, TestMC;

RootMC = GetVariableObject("_root");

RootMC.AttachMovie("mySymbol", "myInstanceName");

TestMC = GetVariableObject("_root.myInstanceName");

This part of the code is pretty self explanatory. The function AttachMovie takes 4 parameters, but only two are required.

/** Attaches a symbol to specified movie instance.  If no instance is found in this object's scope with the InstanceName, a new instance is created and returned */
native final function GFxObject AttachMovie(string symbolname, string instancename, optional int depth = -1, optional class<GFxObject> type = class'GFxObject');

The first parameter is the name of the linkage name you set in your Flash file.

The second is what you want the instance name to be of the newly created movieclip. You  can also set the depth of the new movie clip, or where it falls on the z-order in the SWF. The last parameter is what class to cast the return as, but I'm not entirely sure.

Now, even though they have a function to add a movieclip, they don't have one pre-built to remove one through Unrealscript. Matt Doyle, on the Epic Games forums, posted a work around(here) that works like a charm. First you'll need to create a new class extending from GFxObject. This will allow us to add the proper functions to remove the clip.

class GFxDisplayObject extends GFxObject;

function RemoveChild(GFxObject childObject)
{
    ActionScriptVoid("removeChild");
}

defaultproperties
{
}

This will allow us to call the removeChild function easily on a movieclip cast to this class. When ActionScriptVoid(or similar, like ActionScriptBool, or ActionScriptObject) is called it will automatically pass whatever parameters are passed to the function that is calling it. In this case it will pass childObject onto the removeChild function in AS3. To actually make use of this you just need to add this line into your custom GFxMoviePlayer class:

//In your custom GFxMoviePlayer class

GFxDisplayObject(TestMC.GetObject("parent", class'GFxDisplayObject')).RemoveChild(TestMC);

Here, you are grabbing the parent of the movieclip you want to remove, casting it into the custom GFxObject class you made, then calling the RemoveChild function of it, passing the desired movieclip. This line is really versatile since you don't have to set a hardcoded path to the object, since you are getting the parent.

Well enough rambling. hope this was helpful to someone.

And Now We're Back From Our Intermission!

Hey guys!

Sorry it's been so long, life has been hectic! Thankfully, my life has mellowed out a lot now, so I can get back on a regular updating schedule.

In the spare time I have had I've been dividing my time between working on that commerce game I mentioned in my last post, and helping a buddy with a game he's working on.

The premise of the trading game is you are the captain of a merchant ship. You can find more information here. You start off with a set amount of gold and you buy your first cargo with it. You then have a set amount of  'days' to go to different ports to try and make the greatest profit in that time. Each port, except the starting one will have randomized prices and quantities so each playthrough will be different. I've made some pretty good progress so far. I have the core system down for determining the value and quantity of the various goods, and I've almost finished up the information system in the game. This will allow you to get information on the different ports ahead of time, to help you plan. I still need to implement the actual buying and selling of goods though.

I've made a very simplistic mock up to give a representation of the game. To exit the trade and information windows just click them.

That's all I have for now. Once I get things a bit more organized I'll put up some interesting code bits, images, or something.

AssetManager Is Complete!

Hey guys,

Been a while, but I am happy to say that AssetManager is as done as it is going to get. It is fully functional, and mostly pretty. It can be downloaded from here, if you want to give it a shot. The ReadMe that comes with it gives some instructions on how to use it, but almost all of it is self-explanatory.

For those of you who don't know, AssetManager is a project management tool that allows you to add projects and assets to keep track of all the things you are working on. It uses UDK for two reasons; one is because I'm too lazy to learn C++ or another language, and the second reason, ironically, is to learn how to use AS3 and Unrealscript for more complex tasks. Due to using UDK it is probably a much bigger file size than it needs to be. As I went through this project I did learn a lot about using config files, spawning items in AS3, and just managing a dynamic system in general. It was a  lot of fun to make, but I'm glad it's done. After working on that immediately after PrepHelp I was getting pretty burnt out on looking at mostly the same code.

Unlike PrepHelp I tried to make graphics for this. Overall I am unhappy with them, but it looks better than my placeholder graphics. If there is enough interest in the program I'll probably redo the graphics and fix the one (potential) bug I know of. The one thing I do like is the logo. It is kind of plain, but when it is smaller it looks better without realistic textures, which was what I was originally intending to do.

The only bug I can foresee is that you can add an item to a project even if there is no projects. Should have thought of that before, but I didn't. I know it sounds lazy to not go back and fix it, especially since it would be around 3 lines of code...and you're right! I want to be done with it for now, since it is starting to no longer be fun to work on. Since I'm not getting paid I figured that means it's a good time to wrap it up. Also, when your internet is so slow it takes 30-60 minutes to upload a file less than 200mb ...

I don't think I have anything else to add that isn't in the ReadMe. Now that this is out of the way I plan on working on a isometric, commerce strategy game. Just something small to see if I can do it and to get more practice with another type of game.

One Project Completed - PrepHelp

Hello everyone!

I should have posted this a little earlier, but time got away from me. I finished up the code stuff for PrepHelp. It now is a fully functional little program. Yippie! You can download it from here, but be warned: I have not improved the visuals past the mock ups I made for testing. I was planning on it but another idea came up that I will explain a little later. I did, however, provide a little instruction image pointing out what some of the more obscure, unlabeled buttons do.

I believe on my last post all I had left to do was set up the search feature, as well as implement the medical item category as well. The latter was very simple, just copy, paste, change a few names, and done. The search function...at first I thought it'd be easy, just do a check against the types and it will find them and sort them. Well, I was partially right. Actually finding the elements was the easy part, the hard part was figuring out how to display just the search results without overwriting my existing inventory.

Since I wanted to find all of the elements in the array that matched the given item type I found that the Array.Find() function wouldn't suit my purposes without a bunch of work. Instead I created a for loop, where on each element it would check if the item type matched the searched type. Here is an example below.

function SubmitSearch(string TempType)
{
    local GFxObject DataProvider;
    local GFxObject TempObj;
    local int j;

    //Clearing the temp array
    PP.TempFoodInv.length = 0;

    for(i = 0; i < PP.FInv.length; i++)
    {
        if(PP.FInv[i].T == TempType)
        {
            j = PP.TempFoodInv.length;
            PP.TempFoodInv.length = PP.TempFoodInv.Length + 1;

            PP.TempFoodInv[j].N = PP.FInv[i].N;
            PP.TempFoodInv[j].T = PP.FInv[i].T;
            PP.TempFoodInv[j].Q = PP.FInv[i].Q;
            PP.TempFoodInv[j].E = i; //Setting the temp element number to i so it will show where it is in the food inventory

            PP.TempFoodInv[j].D.Y = PP.FInv[i].D.Y;
            PP.TempFoodInv[j].D.D = PP.FInv[i].D.D;
            PP.TempFoodInv[j].D.M = PP.FInv[i].D.M;
        }
    }
    
    //If any matches were found, draw the new inventory
    if(PP.TempFoodInv.length > 0)
    {
        bFood = true;

        DataProvider = CreateArray();
    
        for(i = 0; i < PP.TempFoodInv.length; i++)
        {
            TempObj = CreateObject("Object");
    
            TempObj.SetString("FoodItem", PP.TempFoodInv[i].N);
            TempObj.SetString("Type", PP.TempFoodInv[i].T);
            TempObj.SetInt("Quantity", PP.TempFoodInv[i].Q);
            TempObj.SetInt("Element", PP.TempFoodInv[i].E);

            TempObj.SetInt("ExpY", PP.TempFoodInv[i].D.Y);
            TempObj.SetInt("ExpD", PP.TempFoodInv[i].D.D);
            TempObj.SetInt("ExpM", PP.TempFoodInv[i].D.M);
    
            DataProvider.SetElementObject(i, TempObj);
        }

        RootMC.SetObject("foodInvo", DataProvider);
    
        ActionScriptVoid("_root.clearInvo");
        ActionScriptVoid("_root.drawFoodInvo");
    }
    
    //If no matches were found, show an error
    else
    {
        ActionScriptVoid("_root.spawnSearchError");
    }
}

If the for loop found an element it would copy it to a new array. After it finished searching the entire array the temp array would be sent over to the SWF to be displayed. This way, my original item array would remain intact and I would only be displaying the contents of the found items.

Now, to talk about the idea that got in the way of redoing the graphics for PrepHelp. I have been calling it AssetManager, but the name will probably change. Basically it is just a remake of PrepHelp, but focused on helping keep track of the different assets needed for the projects I'm working on. I hope this can help me, and possibly others, keep track of how many things they need to work on, when they're due, and at what stage of development they are at. I could just take PrepHelp and rename few things and call it good, but that just isn't good enough.

While I was figuring out how to do the search feature I thought of a better way of doing things to make the whole system more dynamic. I figured if it was going to help you keep track of all the assets for every project you are working on it will have to be more flexible than having only two set categories(like food and medical in PrepHelp). So I am in the process of reworking it to allow user added categories with their own asset lists. This way a person can add as many projects as they would like, and the system would still work perfectly. I do plan on making graphics for AssetManager though, since I will probably be using it more than PrepHelp.

One feature I wanted to add, but couldn't figure out until a couple days ago was having a auto adjusting thumb on a scroll bar. Meaning, if you only had a couple items the thumb on the slider would be really big, while it would be a lot smaller if you had a bunch of items. That way you wouldn't have to drag as far to move a few items up, just like on a webpage. I have a working version, though it could use some tweaking if I can figure out to... Anyway here is the first version of it, using the inventory test I made a couple months ago and put up on my blog.

That's all I have for now. When I get the rest of the code wrapped up for AssetManager I'll fill in more detail on how I went about doing some of that stuff.