If you write code, anything to do with threads and object synchronisation issues probably strikes a chill down your spine. And kudos to you if it doesn't! If you don't write code, picture this, you're walking along in the game world. There's a wolf in the shrubs, about to leap out and attack you! There's a split-second of panic, your characters aren't all that healthy, this could mean disaster... and then.... everything just stops. The game hasn't crashed, at least not as far as Android is concerned - but it's frozen. The only way to resolve it is to kill the app and restart it.
And that is a problem no more. I seem to have resolved it through using some new (to me) concurrency tools that I wasn't even aware of before.
So, that's the utterly boring development stuff. Now for the good stuff. I've built out pretty much all of my test/starting zone and although there's a bit of work yet, properly zoning things out, adding in world lighting and so on, that's probably going to take (I can see myself already writing "Actually, it took much longer than I thought it would..." at a later date) not too long comparatively. And the good news is that it's big enough. I did a lap, basically legging it non stop, doing the slightest bit of sight-seeing if things were nearby and it took just over eight minutes. That's a decent sized place. And it looks good. At least I think it does. There's a few things to look into as I did my lap. I'm not sure why one NPC's name wasn't showing when I ran past them, but that's all small fries.
So, what's the world look like you ask? Well, see for yourself in this little tour of the Islands.
No comments:
Post a Comment