Modelling Data for the Apartment Server
Today I need to start modelling the player characters, Geru, tanks and apartments. This means modelling things like equipment, furniture, an experience table and a whole bunch of other things in a big old spider web of interdependence.
Starting out with the Characters. I am just going to model them after Endless Online meets Morrowind and see where it goes from there.
I'll try and keep the equipment simple for now, using EO as a template. Stats and levels will do nothing to start out but I feel like... why not just get them in there now?
I am splitting the outfit into two parts, pants and chest but aside from that I am basically using this format.
Things get complex quickly, only been at it 15 minutes...
I'm really tired today so this is probably not the smartest time to be doing this but I need to get it done. I'll probably iterate on this a few times before I go any further, I still need to create the character base sprite too and however I do that will determine how much work each equipment part and hair style, etc will take.
Maybe having an equipment model for each equipment slot would be more clean? This looks like it will get ugly quickly...
Well, I guess that'll work for now. In before I have to completely overhaul it. Most of the data is pointless for now, since I am focused only on the Geru and the Apartments at this point. I do need character data to load though, to make sure character data is correct for the future.
Now to associate the player account with a character...
Now when a player logs in and gets passed to the Apartment server there will be an associated character and if there isn't they will be able to create one.
It's uh, 3:30 now, that took a while but here we are, player characters and some of the associated tabled are in modeled in the back end. I do not look forward to writing the queries in the apartment server to handle all the creating and updating of the characters but that's a problem for future, cognizant me.
I also need to model the Geru, the main point of the whole game. What is a pet sim without the pets? I have a bit of practice with this as I have written a few prototype web-based pet sims with pet image generation APIs and all that. But I should probably model the apartments first since without the apartment there would be nowhere for the Geru to even exist.
After the apartments are modeled I can model the tanks the Geru babies live in based on how the apartments work and THEN I can make the Geru model and generator.
It seems like a lot of work but I only have to do it once. At least, as long as I don't destroy everything. I have a mirrored repository and database but you never really know, do you? Anything can and does happen.
The apartments really raise a few interesting issues for modelling... furniture placement is where I am having a good hard think. I could have a table for furniture placement that looks up an apartment ID and then sequentially places all the furniture based on an X and Y relative to the apartment's floor.
I decided to do it that way because my tired brain could not think of a better way. I also have the furniture keeping track of references to scenes to load in the client and server in order to have collision be handled there rather than have to set it all up in the DB by hand which would be a nightmare, we're dealing with isometry.
I also gave apartments an Energy stat which is used by some furniture. I'll have to figure out how the upgrades to energy work later on but it makes sense here and now.
Another one where writing all the queries to the DB will be painful but again, only gotta do it once (hopefully). With the two models I have created today I should be able to get started on the Apartment Server; The second most complex piece of software in this project.
But before that I will review what I have done with Moon and see if there's anything we'll want to change.
It's near time to clock out and I want to do a little cleaning before I get to cooking dinner so I may as well make my commits and get to it.
