It is the first post from series of posts about my future summer project: integration Director games.
To be quite frank, Director doesn’t need introduction. It is the game engine popular in due time, from the MacroMind company (Macromedia, Adobe). You can read in more detail here:
http://lingoworkshop.com/articles/history
On the basis of this platform the huge set of games was developed. I have chosen as the final purpose full integration The Journeyman Project.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Journeyman_Project
Game has seemed to me extremely interesting, pseudo 3D mixed up with logical riddles.
In the middle of the way I want to realize work with bookshelf animation. It is file, common in Director, so called “movie”. From files of this kind it is possible to receive sounds, images, text, scripts, information about time/frame rate, arrangement of objects, etc. Thus I can allocate the following tasks for 1st milestone:
- Provide loading animation files.
- Drawning simple objects, like bitmaps, text, shapes.
- Organize work of animation cycle. (tempo, FPS, delay moments)
- Execute simple Lingo scripts.
As result of middle point, fuzzie suggest to test simple early game. I completely support this decision, but I am not sure about concrete game.
At the moment is available:
clone2727, Deledrius work
https://github.com/iskrich/director
In fact loading and parts of parsing is already here, I still should study this code.
And animation player/viewer by fuzzie:
https://github.com/scummvm-director/continuity
There are assumptions that at the moment in C ++ a code not all algorithms of parsing which are in Python code are realized. Therefore one of my first real tasks is the code transfer (Python-> C ++)
At the beginning of May I will study highlights of architecture of the engine. I will begin from here:
https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/HOWTO-Engines
In the middle of May I plan to begin studying of the scripting Lingo language and a detail of Director works.
I hope all above-mentioned sounded as the plan.