Visualizing the Future

The last month hasn’t been idle time. I’ve been working towards TransientVisualizers (think animation sequences for certain splashy actions) being associated with certain server-side model activities and being transmitted to the client where they can rendered. I’ve added support for “literal” brush keys, in which the key name represents a solid color or a linear gradient (horizontal or vertical) so that I can encode fail-safe animation colors without having to have mapped brushes defined (in Ikosa packages) for the models.

I’ve also added a storage area in the map for holding transient visualizations for the current tick. When the map time changes the transient visualizations are cleared (hence: transient). This storage area is accessed by an operation contract in the visualization service contract. Well enough to have a place to store and retrieve visualizations, but I also added bits to the power definitions and (by extension) the spell definitions for supporting animation types based on targets and animation style. Turns out that not too many spells (in the 0th to 2nd level range) require flashy animations, as some of them are buffs, divinations, “invisible” effects, or create persistent (not transient) objects such as dancing lights.

I did add one new type of animation over my previous set: namely a flying orb that moves a sphere from point to point. I already had a flying “bolt” (ray bolt), but there are some low level orb-spells that are necessary. I bound animations to the spells that needed it, and fixed a few power and spell issues I noticed along the way.

Finally, the past week or so has been fixing some client-side items (and server-issues that led to them) related to icon imagery, which I never implemented in the client (despite being the reason for doing all my flat XAML icons), but now have.

My next bits of effort are in surfacing wand and spell action selection and targeting in the client (they are defined and should be “working” server-side) so that I can test and fix the animations that should be bound to them.