March 3 2014

2014: Debugging, mySQL Database, Animations, Ranks

I spent much of this week debugging and stabilising the code base. I am nearing a releasable state with this project. It will be an early Alpha state, but still playable.

I also implemented a mySQL database in Torque3D. This is actually very easy to do, however care must be taken to avoid breaching the terms of the mySQL licence. According to the licence, a fee must be paid if the code is to be released to the end user. This basically precludes it’s use in most indie or amateur projects, however, this licence fee does not apply if the code is not released.

Since this project is a multiplayer game, I can put all of the SQL functions on the server, and just send the data back and forth from the client using custom commands. This satisfies the terms of the licence without having to pay a fee.

I have implemented a system of promotion points and ranks in the game, where players will win experience points for completing a mission, keeping their squad members alive, killing enemies, etc, and lose experience points for dropping out of a mission before it is over, killing friendly players, etc. These promotion points will be used to determine the players rank, which will be displayed before their name in the game.

There is also an additional rank of “Marshall” which is actually not a rank per se, but a position. It will be held only be moderators and development staff, and it willl be appended to the players name in addition to the rank, so, for example “Marshall Admiral <Player Name>”.

These ranks server only a cosmetic function at the moment, but eventually they will determine the weapons and items that each player can bring into the game. Higher ranks will have access to more equipment. It will also determine which special abilites the player will have access to.

The ranks follow an exponential growth pattern, which is set up to allow the difficulty of progression to be changed easily, this should make game balancing much easier. The image below shows a simple graph from gnuplot proving that the growth rate of the rank system algorithm is in fact exponential.

I created several animations for the main player model this week, including crouch, prone and death animations, and transition animations between those. I also slightly modified the textures of the player models to make the team colour more obvious. The image below shows the curve editor of the main player model in the game.