*PROGRAMMER'S JOURNAL* Short Introduction

[Merk]

PRO WRESTLING MANAGER
DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL
Programmer diary
By Merk

Much progress has been made on PWMan this month, mainly due to the fact that I’ve been on a break from university. This has simultaneously allowed me the most masturbatory freedom of the year and the most amount of free time. Noteworthy and completed features that this article aims to cover will include:
>> Database establishment
>> Data processing
>> GUI Information
i. Navigation
ii. Uniform header
iii. Transparency overlays

DATABASE ESTABLISHMENT

For the in-game data content system, we opted to make use of Visual Basic’s ADO/DAO data access functions. These twiddle, suck and squeeze tantalisingly with/from Microsoft Access databases, providing a clean and quick data sorting process. This, we’ve found, has greatly decreased load times to an absolute minimum. That’s not to say that there won’t be a certain amount of loading in the final build but we have, as yet, managed to keep them incredibly sparse. This also means that the in-game editor will allow you full flexibility over every aspect of the game’s data. You will, for example, have the respective abilities to create new match types and edit existing ones. The Access method will, additionally, allow an incredibly quick processing of a TOP-SECRET, game engine feature which we’re keeping under our hats for the time being. We will provide more information on this subject as release draws nearer.

DATA PROCESSING

Our employed methodology of database management also allows for the ability of infinite (in theory; relative to the size of your hard drive) save games. We’ve consciously decided to steer away from the commonly used ‘save-slot’ method of previous promoter simulators, such as EWR. We saw no reason to confine the user to a set amount of save data and weren’t inhibited by our visual programming framework. In all honesty, we could never understand the ‘save-slot’ policy either – buy hey-do. We hope that this will increase the potential for stats updates and user-created scenarios, if the mood so takes your little fancy.

GUI INFORMATION
INTRODUCTION

Stylistically, we’ve gone for an interface which is indicative of modern commercial text-based simulators, such as Football Manager. There isn’t really any practical application for this – except, of course, being courteous enough to the user so as not to provoke them into pulling their own teeth out and trying to use them as implements with which to gouge out their own eyes. It’s simply a matter of personal preference; we, at camp PWMan, like to look at pretty things and have endeavoured to make one. I suppose the user should be the judge of whether or not we have realised this aim.

NAVIGATION

In terms of navigation, we’ve tried to think of various ways that will quicken the game-playing process for the user. We’ve given thought to various forms of navigation and settled on a combinatory system of collapsible menus (they expand and contract), one-page feature systems (the booking wizard will be presented on one screen – there won’t be incessant rounds of clicking through steps to book a match), unique display models (we’ve created a few custom controls to compensate for Visual Basic’s interfacial limitations).

UNIFORM HEADER

With a view to improving the amount of information available to the user at one time, we decided to make a banner which will be visible from all of the major menu screens, which displays the current date and the events which you should currently be planning for during your day. We found, in previous simulators, that the absence of such a banner would often lead us, having had forgotten a piece of planned information, having to needlessly click back through screens to find the notepad. This will hopefully aid in that respect.

TRANSPARENCY OVERLAYS

In order to reduce the packaged game size, Pro Wrestling Manager won’t be utilizing multiple graphical models for each page. Instead, we have employed one or two fixed models and simply chosen to make use of transparency graphics with which to overlay the background. This way, we can build unique screens without the cumbersome file size of a completely new screen model.