Strides Interactive

Difficulty starting a new projectFiled Under: Strides Octopus

Hi all,

Recently I’ve did a sanity check on Strides Octopus and found out that there’s a problem whenever new projects are created.

Therefore I’ll explain how things are being done over here. Hopefully, people who are struggling with a new project setup will find it easier to setup their new games.

If this applies to you, please read on…

Known Problems

Even with a wizard to guide users on the flow of the setup, the flow doesn’t dictate when you should do what. On top of that, Strides Octopus was built for other purposes other than building games. Therefore there’re a lot of things that are fluid and configurable.

To this end, there’re several steps required in order to properly setup Strides Octopus for your game project’s development to commence.

First Things First:

In order for you to start your game project, it’s recommended that you copy the game folder into another folder that represents your game project folder.

This folder should and will hold all the data, resources and executables for your final product.

The default installation of Strides Octopus comes with 2 main folders.

1) editor
2) game

Strides Octopus resides in the editor folder.

While the game executable resides in the game folder.

Compilation, Build and Link?

If you’re using Strides Octopus to develop your games, there’s no need to compile, build or link. The primary engine for Strides Octopus to run your game resides in the Game.exe stored in the game folder.

The game executable will contain all the functionalities necessary for your game; you do not need to rebuild or compile this executable in any case.

Create a new game project

Once you’re done copying the game folder into your own folder, you’ll need to create a new game project. Based on the wizard, you’ll be able to see the button below:

If not, you can always click on the file menu, Game Project > New Game Project

A new panel will appear. This is panel contains all the basic information regarding your project. Fill in the blanks for the following:

1) Game Name:
<The name of your game>
2) Deployment / Export to Folder
<Your resource deployment folder>
3) Load Default Files when profile opens (Doesn’t apply to all editors)
Ensure that this option is checked.

After that, click on New Project.

StridesLib Configuration Manager

The next step would be to configure your game itself. Since you’ve copied the game folder over, you’ll need to open BBLibCfg.dat from that particular directory itself.

* Caution - do not replace the wrong BBLibCfg.dat as it will affect other games that uses it.

In the Configuration Manager, the options are primarily meant for advanced users. However, on the first screen as you can see below:

This screen actually provides you with most of the things required for the game. The next most important screen will be the Screen tab, as seen above.

It is here where your game name is configured into the game engine and be shown as an application with your game’s name on it.

You’ll need to see the frame rates for the game engine to perform its required calculations.

1) Minimum Frame Rate
2) Maximum Frame Rate
3) Desired Frame Rate

As of now, StridesLib only deals with 1 frame rate. To make things easier, simply enter the same frame rate for all 3 rows.

Just a little information on this frame rate. This refers to the Game Execution Rate in which most of the logical operations (including your scripts) are being executed. It does not determine how smooth your game will be rendered.

Leave the Frame Skip and Design-Based Memory Leak Management area alone for now; I’ll explain in details in my next post on Strides Octopus.

The next thing you’ll have to set is  your playing area and screen resolution.

While it’s not necessary to constrain your window area to a certain fixed dimensions, ie, you have have weird dimensions for your windowed mode as long as they do not exceed the current resolution.

However, for full screen, you’ll have to decide on resolution that is commonly used by most users. The configuration manager doesn’t auto-detect whatever resolutions you have however.

Nowadays, most people use the following resolutions:

1) 800×600 32 bits, A8R8G8B8 (8 bits each for all the components)
2) 1024×768 32 bits A8R8G8B8 (8 bits each for all the components)
3) 1280×800 32 bits A8R8G8B8 (8 bits each for all the components) [WIDE screen]

Try not to use 16 bits since it only and usually reserves only 1 bit for the alpha element. By doing so, your game assets can look terribly ugly even in the 3D accelerated world.

Ignore Palette Options as it’s used mainly for the old 256 colors games. This feature is also deprecated in StridesLib 1.0.

Select your initial game screen state. Whether should the game be started in windowed mode or full screen mode.

Save the configuration file and that’s it! We’re done configuring the game engine for the game! You’ll only need to do this once per game and we’ll unlikely return to revisit the configuration manager again.

* Note : If the configuration manager refuses to save your options, press F8 or go to View > View Logs to find out why. You can double-click the errors should there be any, to go to the exact option that is in question.

Strides Script IDE (Integrated Development Environment)

Once we’re done with the engine setup, the script IDE will automatically use the right set of values for the modifications and updates.

I’ll explain Script IDE in greater details in my next few articles.

Signing off,
Jeremy