Well, Save/Load basically works.
@p
A few things are still missing before I would like to release the next demo. What I've done to try and streamline the process of networkizing vex is to allow multiple characters on the single player version. What you have is a slot for each character, which contains it's own save state. This system isn't very clearly presented right now though.
@p
What I want to do is:
@p
1- The character generation should be part of vex, not umake. Umake makes the world. When you start up vex, you can create a new character from within vex (using a nice gui, whatnot). You don't have total freedom, but you can choose some basic properties. These affect how you will interact with NPCs, what kind of ships you can pilot, what items you can use, etc. Anyhow, you can create and play as many characters as you want, in the vex world. The world itself always advances in time so that if you are playing one character, the other one is essentially sitting there while time passes.. Remember this is all with the mindset that eventually vex will be online multiplayer. So we need to separate the world from characterization even more.
@p
2- Show better menus for save/load slots with the charas. I want to rewrite the gui_list widget, becuase it's a pain in the ass to use and doesn't have a nice feel anyhow. This is kind of a big job but what I'll really do is just make a gui_list2 widget so I can only move over things as I have time/priority to do so, rather than have to port all existing guis to it. At any rate it should be more clear what is going on to the player.
@p
3- Fix time computation. This basically means, allow the vex universe to "advance" even while you aren't playing. This isn't too hard because most of it is deterministic right now anyhow, i.e., it is sort of designed for that, I just need a bit of code to load the system clock or whatever.
@p
I think if I can get these three sorted out somehow, though in a very basic way, I will release a new demo. I probably won't rewrite gui_list just yet though, but it won't really be neccesary!
2004-04-14