Re: ANN: pyroENGINE SDK v1.0 for Delphi/C++ Builder 2007

In PESDK all objects are derived from a base class called TPEObject.
This class implements fundamental functionality that is needed
throughout the SDK so that all the different parts work together as a
whole. An important feature that this class implement is that it's a
node object and can be placed on a double linked list called
TPEObjectList. An object can also be assigned attribute values
(0-255). This is important because now you can query a group of
objects based on these values. An object can be "blue" and be a
"powerup" or "red" and can "teleport" for example.

An actor (TPEActor) is the base level object that can exist and have
representation in the game world. It has a OnRender, OnUpdate,
OnCollide and OnMessage virtual methods that you can override to make
your actors behave in a specific way. They live on a derived
TPEObjectList class called TPEActorList. You just create an instance
of your actor and drop it on a list and during the game loop call the
Update and Render methods of the list object and all the actors will
come to life. Since an actor can have up to 255 attributes set, if you
wish to only render or update certain actors, you just pass this
attribute value when you call TPEActorList.Update/Render.

Another object called TPEScene allows you allocate as many lists as
you desire to manage a whole scene of actors. For example, you can
have your particles on list #0, your player on list #1 and the enemy
actors on list #2. When you call TPEScene.CheckCollision you can
specify which list to do collision checks on. In this case you would
test collisions between the player and an enemy and avoid looping
through the many particle objects that would never be part of the
collision. This makes collision detection even more efficient. This
can be combined with the fast and accurate PolyPoint collision system
of the SDK.

In addition to grouping actors by attributes, the object list supports
a message system. You can broadcast a message to every actor in the
world or expect an actor to respond to your message. An example of
using broadcast is where you drop a nuke and it will destroy all
objects in the world out to a certain distance. When the nuke spawns,
it will send out a message saying "I'm a nuke and if you're are 100
units or less from me you must die." When the actor's gets this
message via their OnMessage event handler, then can respond
accordingly and destroys themselves.

The TPEEntity object is a high level class that is made from a group
of sprite images. It can be positioned, rendered, scaled, rotated and
more. It includes such methods as Thrust, RotateToAngle, RotateToPos
and many more that can make it really easy to have robust and dynamic
objects. For example, the ThrustToPos method can rotate the entity
towards a position and it will accelerate towards this position until
it reaches a slow down distance at which point it will start to slow
down as it comes near. The entity object is derived from TPEAIActor
and has a StateMachine that allows you to manage your AI.

.

Relevant Pages

  • KKs songs in Pehli Tarikh and Sheesham
    ... Is there any documentation which lists the actors for whom kishore ... has sung (for each song). ...
    (rec.music.indian.misc)
  • Re: Where the hell am I?
    ... I would prefer to avoid solutions with two lists with pointers to the same object, because in that case one list is "destructive" and the other one is "nondestructive" so it's additional problem... ... Adding and removing actors should be done using two methods, keep all the critical pointer handling code there. ...
    (rec.games.roguelike.development)
  • Re: Where the hell am I?
    ... But you should have two lists then: one with items / actors that are sensitive to time (like a bomb:)) and other that is bound with a particular tile. ... I would prefer to avoid solutions with two lists with pointers to the same object, because in that case one list is "destructive" and the other one is "nondestructive" so it's additional problem... ...
    (rec.games.roguelike.development)