Development has started on the Installer for Astrum Futura. It should be noted however that the installer won’t be finished until the game is. It is just something to help me get the game working without to much manual modifications. It won’t remove all manual work and will most likely fall behind on future development, but starting it now should at least push the release forward.
I was able to get a WAMP installation working with XDebug and some other helpful extensions. I work visually, so it should help with any future development I do for the Astrum Futura game. It is also help getting to know the Astrum Futura core and the Quantum Game Library components, besides the components I’m working on.
Other Game Components
I’m planning on working on other game features/components over the next few months. It is nice to not have the weight of an entire game engine project. It leaves me time to do other features that are useful in any applications and work on them for Astrum Futura. I doubt I’ll be the only one working them after I start them, but finishing most of work allows others to see where I’m heading and help out.
Modification System
The game needs to be more developed before I can start this. The admin system at least needs to be workable and able to add new components to it.
Modifications shouldn’t modify to much the core system. All game features should allow plugins to hook into and modify or filter its system. New unofficial feature Mods not part of the core don’t have to follow this system, but would help. Unofficial mods that add new features have to have some way to add their functionality, either to the menu so they follow this convention.
The ability to add plugins will depend on the coders who created the code for it. A plugin system would have to be created for each game component for which a mod can be created. If a game component doesn’t have a plugin system then no mod can be made for it that wouldn’t need to be committed to the trunk of the game system.
News Feature
This feature will allow the admin to post changes to the game and receive comments on the news item. It is going to be part of the core and something that games have. I’m thinking of doing things a little bit differently for this feature.
In the old news feature, you only had a SQL based system. I would like to add an RSS feed enhancement to the news feature, which also tracks the comment feed. In this way, the news won’t be bound by the SQL and could get content from outside sources.
The reason for this is that there are better packages out there for handling News Feeds and I don’t want this to just be another blog source. Most developers will get better admin features from other packages that should be located elsewhere. Duplicating those features will have to be made in some parts to make the news feature work. However, it won’t be Wordpress or S9Y, and it would still be advised that the admin use those sources.
Help/Faq System
I was thinking about including this feature, but I think wikis and other sources would be better for the user to use. The primary focus should be the game and its development. Even the news feature is kind of outside the scope of the project. As good as media wiki is for setting up help systems and faq packages are for their content, it would be better to use them instead.
Some would question not integrating the systems, but I really don’t think they have used Wikis before. The idea behind Astrum Futura is to reuse old libraries and sources. Recreating the wheel takes away time and resources for better features that could instead be added, like AI development.
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Tags: Astrum Futura