It's been far too long since I've written up any updates for SFPC, so here's a double update to try and make up for that! I may have stayed quiet this summer, but that doesn't mean I wasn't busy! Originally I didn't think I would have an internship this summer so the plan became "Work on SFPC Full Time", but an offer finally came through in early June to work as a Programming Intern at Schell Games. I spent a couple months there this summer working with some wonderful people making some very cool stuff that I unfortunately can't talk about, such is life in the land of NDAs and unannounced projects. While I had less time to spend on SFPC because of the internship, I did end up learning a lot of new stuff and making several new friends in that time, so I'm pretty happy with how my summer went. I got back into my old groove of working an hour or two a day on SFPC before work each weekday so that I'd still get some stuff done, just not as much as I was planning on.
The first part of the update is in regards to SFPC itself:
I spent a little over 2 solid weeks working on implementing A* pathfinding in the engine so that enemies can move in combat. There's no AI yet to control how they choose what target to move to or have them inch up when there are no targets in range or anything like that, but this is an important first step.
The second part of the update is the unveiling of a new companion project which will be developed alongside SFPC:
SHEd is my GUI based editor for SFPC. Built with C# and .NET 4.0, SHEd will eventually be the main content creation and editing application used for building games with the SFPC engine. For now it supports editing characters, items, and battle animations, but I plan on expanding it to support map editing and scripting as well.
That's it for now, feel free to email me any questions or comments you may have about SFPC and SHEd!
