Cow RPG, state of conversion.

So thats the junk I got on my screen while I work. Yes I use calculator.

Task manager has been my friend for many reasons, for a long time. One of course is being able to monitor CPU consumption and memory usage. Its very useful in knowing whether your code is inefficient, and when you try and improve it, whether or not it was successful.

At first I was having all objects(graphics atm) draw with one function, contained in one array. This would be fine but it did put twice the strain on the CPU, and if I'm looking to develope for a portable device, its something I need to pay attention to.

So to fix this issue, I simply seperated it into foreground object and background objects. Background objects are simpler, drawn only when scrolling is effective and only when scrolling exceeds the overdraw amount. Overdrawing the background a little allows for smoother scrolling in general.

Things that have been done so far:

Graphic indexes assigned, and a method for loading/unloading graphic data to maintain memory.

Sprite based font system, that uses an array to check characters and place the proper icon. I only use 72 characters, symbols, numbers, upper/lower letters. To allow for beginning and end qoutes, and since you can't really put a qoute in a qoute, I replaced them with <>'s.

Basic graphic engine, in progress…

Setups for rountines and functions I need to flesh out.

Majority of game variables and types are done.

Although I only manage a few hours a day at the most, it has been moving along. With reference data and graphics from my Mo Mini's version, I don't have to deal with content as much, except with some modifications to system graphics.

Able to use transparent png, so that helps for smoother looking outlines, although I'm not certain on alpha effects. So far it doesn't seem like I can use them as much, but still have the use of additive and subtractive blending.

A nice feature in GLBasic is that the blending is contained entirely in the alpha setting. 0 = opaque, 1 = fully transparent, 2 = additive blending and -1 = subtractive blending. I haven't played with this too much yet, but I imagine you can do some interesting things with it. Sure GM had a lot of different blending modes, but I could never find much use for most of them.