Farseer Engine

Up till this point I've played around with implementing the physics for collisions and reflections, but now I understand the complexities and what I was trying to achieve needed a little more than just axis-aligned shapes and pixel-perfect reflections. I've read up on how Farseer Physics Engine can solve all my world's problems :)
What I wasn't aware of was the Bayazit decomposition algorithm, which breaks up textures into convex polygons. This way, I wouldn't have to calculate the reflection angle based on the surrounding pixels.
I'll give the engine a crack, but for once I think there's some hope in getting these darn mechanics right, giving me more time to focus on gameplay.

Seems like its working

I've sort of got it working, I've migrated the code over to XNA 4.0, and it's up and running. However the new Mercury Particle Engine doesn't load the old emitter files !@#$ So the next thing on my itineary is to create new particle effects...actually scratch that, I'll leave that to last. It's a real headache because for some reason whenever I scale my projectiles they don't collide properly. I'll have to look into that.
Anywho, I think I've got the mechanics working! Finally. Jeez. Turns out it wasn't a logic error, I'd written a for..loop incorrectly. How annoying is that! Kept getting 'divided by zero' errors (did I mention that?) because of an incorrectly populated array. I could probably move on to the level design, make a prototype so I have something to SHOW for all this.

Long time no post

Dang, seems like this project closed huh. Some stuffs been going on in my life; new job, destroyed laptop, new house, new computer etc.
So yes, the project is still underway :)
Have been busy trying to get the project working on my new machine, and then I realise Microsoft upgraded from Game Studio 3.1 to 4.0 !@#$ Loads of changes, certain graphic types have been removed, and method declarations revamped, so I've been fixing it up...slowly but surely.

With that said, it's funny I've come back onto this project at this time, because if I'd done it any earlier the Mercury Particle Engine I'm using wouldn't have a release for XNA 4.0, but it came out yesterday!
That and I'm bored.

Out of country

I've been in Singapore for the past 2 weeks, and havent had any internet access, so my updates have been rather limited.
I'm currently integrating Mercury's Particle editor with the project, hopefully I can create some nice effects.

Character animation

Update

I got the state machine in working order! Switch..cases are history! It'll be alot easier to organize everything now.
Well actually, I completed the FSMs about a week ago. Had other personal stuff to get out of the way before a hearty blog write-up.
With player handling out of the way, I've begun character design. I've never been good at art, but I do love drawing, hence I'll probably end up doing all the art me self (artists hugely welcomed tho). Here's what I've got so far:
(expects harsh criticism) ..anyway, I reckon I can animate him effectively..will have to wait and see.

Finite State Machines

So..in order to get any sort of AI down, I'm going to need FSMs. This made me think about the spaghetti code I'd already constructed for the player.
Hence, I shall rewrite the player code so everything stems from FSMs. Could take awhile.