What to Expect from Beta 2
The Citrus Engine’s next beta is coming along pretty well despite the busyness of my upcoming marriage. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I hope to have something for you to play with at the end of September. This next beta has taken some time because there are a lot of architectural improvements that I wanted to make so that my users can be more free to create anything that they need. During the first beta, I learned a lot of good things, and I wanted to share with you the things that will be improved upon for the next release:
Extending objects is easier: If you had a chance to use the first beta, you will remember that you could extend the level objects (I called them Props), but doing things that should be fairly simple were potentially difficult. For instance, disabling the hero’s crouch action should have been easy, but it wasn’t. In Citrus Engine beta 2, creating, extending, and changing level objects (which are now called Machines) will be much easier. I have been drawing an analogy from Mr. Potato Head, where you can easily add or remove body parts from a lifeless blob to give him a life of his own. Similarily, you will be able to add and remove features (called Cogs) from the level objects (called Machines).
Character animations as SWFs: One highly requested feature was the ability for the animators to swap out SWF files of character animations without needing anyone to compile the game. Beta 2 will give you this ability. I have scrapped the PNG image sequence animations for the simpler and more powerful MovieClip timeline. Now, all level objects can be either an externally loaded SWF or an embedded MovieClip. You can even dynamically load graphics while the level is running!
Better memory management: One large sore spot of Beta 1 was that some users were running into memory leak issues after loading several levels. I have re-architected the Citrus Engine from the ground up this time with this in mind.
Globally accessible character properties: In Beta 2, all properties of a character or object will be accessible even if you don’t know exactly what KIND of character that you’re working with. This is done through a untified property manager that allows you to get and set any property of a machine (as long as the developer exposes it).
Those are just a few things that you will find in the next version of the Citrus Engine. I am confident that this next version will allow developers anywhere to come together to share and swap different charaters, enemies, and powerups from an ever-expanding library of features.
Stay tuned!
