The Graphics Guy

As the guy who draws the graphics I don't get to show off amazing videos of building paths, modifying terrain or opening shops, though all the graphics in those videos are my work. As I said before we are aiming to produce all the graphics ourselves. This may seem like a crazy huge task, but it will give us more flexibility and ease in getting the fundamentals of the game up and running - we can custom make any and all the graphics exactly as we need. "Home made" graphics certainly doesn't mean we are compromising on quality though!

Basic track tiles

It is likely that about 20,000-30,000 separate images will be needed for all the game graphics. This is a huge number but through smart use of 3D software and automation making these graphics is comparatively simple. Since starting the FreeRCT project I have been working on several projects with similar graphical requirements to FreeRCT. These projects have let me work out streamlined workflows for creating this type of image; my last major project was an extra zoom level graphics set for OpenTTD. If you are interested you can read more about that project at these blog entries: Making a Massive Graphics Update, Moving to 3D, Automation, The Finished Product.

The very first shop

So far land, cliff/foundation, water, path and path support graphics for FreeRCT are made (although there are some technical issues that still need working out). The next big challenge will probably to make templates for track rides, in particular the track pieces which stretch over more than one tile.

We're in business!

Today, you can open a shop, and have guests buy things from them. The video demonstrates it :)
(At 3:05 and 4:17.) The recording program had some trouble around 3:38 apparently, the delay and speed-up was not at the screen.

The most wanted feature ever...

It's been a long time coming, and due to message-loss (my fault) in the blog registration, has been implemented for a couple of weeks now.

The closebox is here!

Looks good, huh?

EDIT: As of r830, closebox sprite is now the proper colour.

Mountains in FreeRCT

With shops, clicking on stuff and opening a window about it became useful. However, the mouse was always used for terraforming (changing the terrain), so that has to move to its own window first.

While at it, I decided to also add foundations (the vertical walls between the levels, and at the edge of the world).

In the picture an example of the result, at the bottom-left the terraform window, with the main part displaying the size of the area you modify (from a single corner-point to a 10x10 tile area).
You can either level the area (move the lowest parts up or the highest parts down), or move the entire area as-is (preserving the hills and holes within the area).

The other thing that got fixed is the connection of the shop with the path. The path is now extended towards the shop. In the air it was difficult to see whether it worked, so I added platforms under the paths and shops. It looked so great that I also added the supports as well.
It is starting to look very nice!

The code is still somewhat fragile, guests don't know about shops yet, and while preparing the above picture I found that path-building also sometimes gets confused.

Place a shop

Yet another step in the right direction, this time placing a 1x1 shop in the world.

The window at the top allows selection of the 'rides' (only one exists at this time). Click 'select' at the bottom, and optionally rotate it, then move the cursor to where you want to place it, and click again.

The shop can be placed next to a path, or on the ground.


Lack of supports was always somewhat of a problem, and now it has become really useful to spend some time on it, as it is quite impossible to see where you put the shop.

Other issues that must be resolved are the fact that there is a gap in the path just before the shop, the path has to be extended to the front of the shop.
Also, when placing a shop at the ground, you lose the ground surface (you can see this near at the right back of the bottom shop). This is however not a big problem, it just needs a bit of shuffling of data in a voxel, so you can have a voxel with both a shop and ground surface.

Happy birthday FreeRCT

Today, FreeRCT exists for one year, always a happy moment in the life of a project.
Time to look back and reflect a bit on what happened.

The start was pretty quick. After about a month of talking how, what, and when we decided to just go ahead and do it, and created the FreeRCT project.
It has been an interesting ride so far.

I started with some world-display code into the project, while Richard provided some first sprites. (Probably everybody starts with a display of the 2D world in a game like this, I think :) )

Then the real work started. Since the project literally started from nothing, lots of infra-structure got created in the past year:
- A 3D voxel world holding ground and paths (and tomorrow shops and rides).
- Display of the world to the screen.
- A GUI system for creating and managing the windows.
- A string system.
- Mouse, keyboard, and screen handling.
- Time and clock ticks.
- Random numbers.
- Colour/brightness parametrization.

The infra-structure is still not complete (no rides yet), so in the coming year it will be expanded further. Also, existing parts get replaced or expanded when the need arises (like the replacement of the Python code that generates the RCD files, and the string system that got unified with added translations).

The highlight of the past year was of course the moving people video. Your response was heart-warming. A clear sign that many people still like these games. Many thanks for your support, let's hope we get another highlight like that this year.

Last but not least, a sneak preview of what I am working on (very green currently).

Strings and translations

Translated texts

It has been a while, but another small step is made. In this case it's strings.

Remember that one of the aims was that different people could make parts of the game? A consequence of that decision is that every part must have its own strings.

The hard part was to find a way to have all these strings live together, such that you can combine strings from different parts without worries. A second puzzle was what to do with strings in the game windows. Eventually, this proved to be quite simple, see it as yet another part!!

While below the surface and in the build system, a lot has changed around strings (I completely removed the old gui string system), at the surface you don't see it. The windows are the same (including the missing closebox, I really should fix that one day). The layout is also the same as before. The only thing that's different is that you can now switch language (by changing a variable and recompiling the source code due to lack of a window for it). The screen shot proves it. Most strings are Dutch (spontaneously provided by Kenny), while some other strings are still English due to not having a Dutch translation.
(Please don't start sending in translations in your favourite language now, I appreciate the thought, but it will be a long time before they become useful, and quite likely strings I have now are obsolete by then. Better wait until the game is somewhat playable.)