3ProngEngine Update - Images, animations, and lots of progress.

School is finally over so I had time today to do some more work on the engine. Things are coming along really well! I even had the chance to start developing a game with the engine (with the help of two friends).

In the recent push I have added support for different animations (walking, jumping, attacking, etc). I added a "state" field to each custom object so now everything has to be stored as a dictionary inside an array. Other than that I just did a lot of touching up here and there.


The gif below is the engine in image mode, the mode that would be the end product of the game that shows all the fancy graphics (not made by me btw). The gif demonstrates the pushing of objects, background bliting, and just some general movements around the map.

(Picture removed)

There is still a lot that needs to be improved on. The gravity feels a little too slow to me right now, and jumping is choppy. There is still a long way to go, but progress is being made. If you notice within the gif that when I move the play he turns back to Rect mode (the blue square) this is because I don't have any images set for the running animation yet. This is a feature that I found useful when debugging the animations so I left it in.

Hopefully with my next post will come a full fledged level that will be playable, but we'll see, I still have a lot of work to do.

This was just a quick update, I don't really have anything else to say about this right now so until next time, thanks for reading.

- Frankie

3ProngEngine Update - Preliminaries done, now for some more fun stuff

Just about a minute ago I pushed another change to the 3ProngEngine repo. With the change comes with it optimizations to the physics module, enemy mechanics, and in game object mechanics (inanimate objects that is). It is so exciting! I am getting closer to having a full fledged usable engine that I can adapt for a lot of awesome games.

I have been planning this change for a very long time, but with school and exams during this time it has been hard to really sit down and code. I was free today so I just sat down and started programming. I did have a plan so everything went very smoothly, but it is just such a relief to have it done.

There aren't many visual changes yet, it still looks as it did in my previous post. There is however a new amber square that represents the inanimate pushable objects in rect mode, but that isn't really too exciting. All the changes are mainly backend, I am starting to gear my programming toward making it easier for other people to add modules, and get things done, instead of just myself so that was also a part of this change.

The next step in development is to get all the animations situated. Working with the JSON configs for each object. That is going to be a tricky part, but once it is done adding sprites is going to be so much easier. In the next update I hope to also add some support for text on the screen, that is a must in any game obviously so it is on my to do list.

I have also been thinking about adding support for main menu screen and all that stuff.... but I digress, I am starting to ramble because all of a sudden I am getting a rush of thoughts through my head.

One final thing, as I start adding support for images and all that I hope to start developing the game that persuaded me into creating this engine again. I will have to remake it from scratch using 3PE but that was the whole point... with that will come many pictures and hopefully some videos as well .

The future is looking awesome, and with summer vacation just around the corner I am expecting to get a lot done!

Until next time, thanks for reading.

- Frankie

3 Prong Engine Coming Along Well

Recently I have set out on a mission to create a graphical game engine on top of the PyGame framework that I will be using to make most of my games in the future. The reason for this is simple, game programming is a long tedious and boring process when a new project is started. I have found that I repeat code again and again from other projects. It takes hours to set the ground work of a game before the actual fun stuff can be begin (graphics, game logic, etc). Due to this I have decided to create the 3 Prong Engine so that when I make games in the future there will be little to no programming, besides maybe adding a new custom character type or something, and I will be able to focus entirely on the content of the game and make it awesome!

The engine will be open source of course because I feel that everyone should have a chance to make awesome games, and also to spread the word about Python and PyGame. People underestimate the power of these technologies and hopefully by churning out some games using this engine more people will be able to see Python's power.

Here are a few pictures of the engine in use, so far I have the collision engine completed as well as a module system so that adding new object types is as easy as writing a Python class. Each module is described by a JSON file that will direct the engine toward where all the different sprites are held. I wanted to make all the preliminary work quick and easy so that the developer can work on maps and gameplay.

(All of the images below are of the skeletal version of the map and players because the examples are in Rect mode. This mode makes it easy to test the game without having images created)

The images below and above are the edit modes. They allow you to draw the collision grid and set the starting point of characters and enemies. 

 The file above is what a json config file for a player/enemy type module would look like. It is basically just defining all the images that the object will use when it is in a certain state. When not in Rect mode they are arrays of images so that they can be animated.



3 Prong Engine is still in it's very early stages of development. I plan on posting later on when more progress is made, and hopefully in the near future start creating some games!

If you would like to try out three prong engine you can check it out on my Github here: https://github.com/Max00355/ThreeProngEngine

There aren't any docs yet so it may be a little confusing.

If you'd like to check out some of my other creations check out my Github projects here  https://github.com/Max00355/

I have a lot of cool stuff on there.


Until next time, thanks for reading!

- Frankie

Welcome

Hello everyone and welcome to the site 3 Prong Productions! My name is Frankie and I am a game developer. This blog will consist of my current projects, and all the progress I am making on them.

Stay tuned!