20151005-20151011: Textures and lightning

I got tired of using only my steel-texture and created some new ones.
I also tried to improve the lightning so that every light in the scene wouldn´t affect every object as if nothing was in between.
After tests with shadows & spotlights, I finally gave up and gave indoor lights a smaller distance as a temporary solution.

20150914: JSON import

I did some modeling with Blender and exported with three.js JSON-exporter.
Then I loaded the mesh with THREE.JSONLoader.
After some testing & tweaking, I finally got it working with textures.

20150915: Collada import

The JSON-loader could only load 1 mesh at the time and I needed to build larger models containing several meshes and materials. I found the THREE.ColladaLoader after some searching and tested to set it up. One important thing I noticed along the way was to set the option “loader.options.convertUpAxis=true”, so that the imported scene has the same XYZ-orientation as the existing 3D-enviroment. Everything seems to be working at the moment.

20150916-20150918: 3D modeling

Mostly 3D modeling and some experiments about creating a building with different parts through loops. For instance when building a floor. By iterating through a buildings width while iterating through its depth, I could put pieces of floor at every point in the loop like this:

floor[x][z]
0,0     1,0     2,0
0,1     1,1     2,1
0,2     1,2     2,2
0,3     1,3     2,3

20150919-20150920: Cells and girders

I did some more tests with the creation of buildings and added girders as ceiling on each floor while adjusting the new cell-mesh so that the cell-frame would fit. Then I created pillars for the corners of buildings and added some faint lightning in cells.

20150817: Editor

I´ve decided to remove the toolbar and focus more on a complete editor. So I replaced all form-elements with a canvas dedicated for handling the editor. In this way I can make images for every area that will act as a button and that button will automatically be integrated with my scaling-script.

20150819: Resize & Values

I replaced the fields for width/height/depth with buttons and submenus.

20150820: Toolbar replaced

Now the toolbar-functions are finally available at the editor and the toolbar is removed.

20150821: Updating

Instead of reloading all objects after a change, all changes will affect the loaded object-array and then the database will be updated without any reload. New objects will have their ID collected in the creation-process and then appear selected so updating and relocating is no longer necessary. When a cell is created in or removed from a building, the building will remain selected.

20150822: Organizing code

I´ve spent some time rearranging the code.

TheNestConsole – contain all elements, event-listeners and functions for input & feedback.
TheNestData – contain JSON-parser for objects and requests involving SQL-data.
TheNestLogic – contain functions for objects. (resize, add, kill)
TheNestPointer – contain event-listeners for mouse/touch and functions for selecting, zooming, pressing at what location and so on…
TheNestEditor – contain everything that involves the new editor. The dedicated canvas and functions for displaying info, menu-navigation, selecting cells in buildings and editing values on objects.

20150810: Zoom

Added support for zooming and panning of the view.

20150811: Redrawing

Redrawing the world instead of rebuilding when panning the view.

20150812: Collisions improvement

More detailed collision detection for creatures.

20150814: Touchscreens

Added support for touchscreens, rebuilding interface for pointers.

20150815: Clipping

Performance improvement by filtering what to draw. If a object is outside the clipping-box, the script will not try to draw that object at all.
I also did some more work on the touch-interface. (Select/deselect, pinch-zoom, long-press, drag-and-drop, panning)

I decided to develop a place where visitors will be able to add creatures into “The Nest”.

It will probably not be a game where the player can do much besides adding a creature with different properties. No action or interesting quests. More like having a Tamagotchi, if you remember those “digital pets”, and just see how long it will survive depending on what´s going on in the world.

I am going to post updates here about the progress in this project, starting with the first three weeks.

20150723: SQL & Commands

Created input for commands. These commands are sent through AJAX-requests to a PHP-page and based on what the user writes, different SQL-query-commands will be sent to the SQL-database. Feedback will be echoed/printed on the PHP-page as a response to the AJAX-request and that data is then shown in consol.log (browser-log)

So, if I type: -list
My JavaScript will request “page.php?command=list” with a AJAX-call and put the response in a variable once the page has loaded. While the requested PHP-page is loading, it will try “Select * from table” and echo the result.
My JavaScript-variable will then have the result “{id:5,type:1}” from the PHP-page and print it in the browser log.

20150726: World & Creatures

After playing around with the commands, I added a column named “type”.
Every row with value 1 in “type”, will act as a creature.
The world will have value 7.
Depending on this value, every row/object will act differently in the program and be displayed differently too.
I also moved the feedback from consol.log (browser-log) to an element on the page.

20150727: Selecting & Toolbar

Added support for selecting using pointer.
Multi-selecting by holding Shift or Ctrl.
Added a toolbar.

The list-response is changed into JSON-format for easier handling. (removed string-functions for searching specific characters like { : , } and let a built-in JSON-parser do the work)

20150728: Drag & Drop

Added support for moving objects with pointer when user holds down the pointer button.
(onmousedown-function will set timer, onmouseup-function will move object if timer>0.5s)

20150801: World circle, Collisions & Buildings

The world is now displayed and functioning as a circle.
Added a function for collision detection
Added a new type of objects: Buildings

20150802: Save

Added support for saving current state in world.

20150804: Cells

Added a new type of objects: Cells.

20150807: Editor

Added a small editor for updating values on a selected object.

20150808: Designing & Moving inside cells

I created a world-image and a building-image.
Then I took a head from an old room to display creatures with something else than a circle. (Will change it later)
Creatures can move inside cells and travel between cells if they meet each other from above or below.
These cells will function as “homes” or hallways inside buildings.

20150809: Drag & Drop improvement

Selected object will have a transparent copy of itself at the pointers location until the user releases the button. The moving function snaps to a gird and won´t place objects on top of each other (unless It´s a creature that´s put in a cell). If the new position isn´t valid, the color will turn red instead of orange on the transparent copy.
When moving a building, everything inside it will follow. The moving function will also take the offset from the selected objects center, so it won´t be placed right under the pointer position when dropped.