Scenes and navigation

Scenes

While the player moves around in the game, each view is made up of a Godot scene that contains Hotspots which trigger code that changes the current scene.

This makes designing a game straight forward.

Caching and scene naming

Because changing scenes - especially with large images - takes time, EgoVenture includes a scene caching algorithm that preloads upcoming scenes in the background.

To achieve that, the algorithm expects that scene files names contain a numeric index.

Scene filenames need to start start with a letter, an underscore or a dash. At some point it needs to include a number. After that number any other character other than a number can follow.

Here are some examples:

  • woods1b2.tscn invalid, because two numbers are included

  • Woods12.tscn invalid, because it contains an upper case character

  • woods1secondtree.tscn valid

When the player enters a scene (i.e. woods12.tscn) it will do the following:

  • Cache scenes woods13 to woods15.tscn and woods11 to woods9.tscn (if they exist)

  • Remove scenes woods8.tscn and woods16.tscn (if they exist)

Note: the amount of scenes the caching algorithm caches, defaults to 3, but can be changed in the Game configuration. Remember, that more scenes require more memory.

Locations

Because not all views can follow one another, EgoVenture includes a concept of locations. Locations allow scene files to be placed in a subdirectory. Together with MapHotspots and foreground caching, they allow seamless transition between ready-cached scenes.

Four-Side-Room scenes

Since most of the scenes that the player walks through, consist of a front, right, left and back view, EgoVenture includes a helper scene four_side_room.tscn, that can be instantiated in a scene to speed up creating walk-throughs.

After instantiating it in the specific scene, it can be configured which images will be displayed on the four sides.

The four sides will be shown around the center like a cut-open box.

The scene will take care of showing the images and navigating left and right.

Additional hotspots (e.g. for moving forward) can be placed over the four sides.