Something tells me I've done this before...

I've been doing a bit of work on my new project. Some of this is stuff I feel like I redo for any new project (output and error-logging stuff). After this project I think I'll have it at a point where I'm happy to just plug it into future projects without having to re-implement too much. Some other stuff I have been able to re-use like this sprite-sheet editor that I wrote back in 2007.

I've also implemented the beginnings of a resource-management module (similar to what is described in "Game Coding Complete" that I mentioned in my last post). The module is a generalised method of loading various game-assets from one or more zip archives (when the engine says it needs them) and passing them through to where they are needed. Currently the only asset types it supports are textures and their (optional) attached sprite-sheet (which specify the coordinates for any sprites and animations in the image), but obviously there'll be many other entries for things like map levels, sounds, save-files, etc. I had to modify the sprite-sheet classes to allow loading and saving to arbitrary streams as the resource-manager loads from the zips into memory buffers.

The most recent addition is that I'm all setup with an interface into SlimDX and I'm ready to start on map definitions and stringing together some renderable-stuff. I guess I'll leak some more info on the actual project as things shape up.

P.S. THX 4 TEH 30K HITS!!!1one