A night.
A sprite animation engine.
game.cs, FrameAnimation.cs(NEW), SpriteAnimation.cs(NEW), Text.cs(NEW)
Last night was spent doing alot of research, reading up on techniques, what functions the xna framework has and so on. I also had to get used to typing C# code.
I must've spent alot of time iterating on different methods on how to build the foundation of drawing a simple image on screen. While this doesnt sound hard(in fact, it isnt) you have to keep in mind that you are supposed to be able to manipulate, interact and implement gameplay around this image.
To draw an image(a sprite) in XNA all you have to do is Create a spritebatch object and then use that spritebatch to draw a texture.
This can be done with a few lines of code. but if you want to have a game character moving around a screen and doing stuff you have to code some sort of game character class that has variables such as position, movespeed, hitpoints, experience Etc. This game character class will also have its own texture and will when called draw itself onto the game screen.
Anyway, enough rambling about that.
The first iteration of the game character class was simple. It only had variables such as Texture, size, and position. This was ok for a start but i had some trouble making animations. So i scrapped that, did some research on the internet and found a new way of doing it.
My second attempt on making a character consisted of two classes. A basicsprite class and then a gamecharacter class. Basicsprite had basic methods that would load an image, draw it and position it. Gamecharacter inherited all of the methods and properties of basicsprite and added its own properties such as startposition and character speed. Gamecharacter also had its own methods that would listen to the keyboard for movement.
Anyway i ran into some problems with my second approach and scrapped that aswell.
A class that set ups the frames in an animation.
A class that handles the position of a sprite on screen, the texture and which animation to play.
And a Actor class that will have gameplay interaction tied to it such as movement. The Actor class provides us with way to manipulate a AnimatedSpriteObject.
Im going to try to get a scrolling background in place.
I guess the pseudocode will be something like this.
int maxBackGroundCrap = 10;
if(currentBackGroundCrap < maxBackGroundCrap ) AddNewBackGroundCrap(random,bottomOfScreen);
if(backGroundCrap.Y < topOfScreen)removeBackgroundCrap();
backGroundCrap.Y-=scrollSpeed;
And thats it for todays update. I will report back in when i´ve gotten some new shit to work in the code.
I am going to make a game. Why? cause i want to and need to get something done for real.
My name is Jan and I´m an gamer from Sweden.. I played so much videogames in my days that i actually went and studied it. I programmed during High School (PHP, JAVA, C++) and i programmed during my free time (Alot of Flash) and i programmed on college level (C++ Direct X stuff). Yet i still have no real portfolio.
Most of my work has been lost in numerous computer failures, lost harddrives and forgotten SVN´s. Most of this is actually gone cause i thought "whatever, i just format it, i got a backup somewhere".
I do this now cause i´m unemployed and got alot of time over. And why not do something productive. I also think that programming is something you have to keep fresh. It was 3 or 4 years ago i last did some real programming so i need to see whats new out there.
Anyway. Back to the topic at hand. Im gonna make a stupid game.
The project title will be "Drop Dead" and it will be a quick little sidescroller. You are falling. And if that wasnt bad enough you are getting tested by a higher power.
I will make this using XNA 4.0 which means the code will be C# , im not that good at C# but this will be an excellent time to learn. It´s basicly easier C++ as far as i know. Ill program in Visual Studio Express.
The game will be 2D.
Control Scheme will probably me either an Xbox controller or a PC mouse.
Im probably gonna try to port it to some other platform later... much later. right now it will just be a Windows app.
I will post new updates a couple of times each week. And if people want to help me in some way, just tell me.
Gameplay will be simple. You are free falling, while you are falling you will have to avoid objects. The further you go the more points you score. Objects can be anything stupid i come up with, why not get some whales, angry birds or unicorns in there somehow.
Sometimes you will get prompted with a task or a question and you will have to either do what the task says or suffer the consequences.
Questions will ask you a stupid question that will have to be answered quickly. It can be something like "IS A RECTANGLE A CIRCLE?". When the question is asked 2 paths will open up. One with a YES arrow and one with a NO arrow. Pick the right one or its game over(or some other penalty). It will either be questions like this or it could be some easy math problem. The challenge here isnt the question. It tests your reaction time.
Tasks will prompt you to do something. in the above picture it tells you to "TYPE BANANAS" while letters are appearing in front of you. Get the letters in the correct order to get bonus points. Get the wrong question and you will get some type of penalty.
Im probably going to include some sort of powerups. Powerups will be carried in parachutes. Why not hamburgers that give bullet time. Sheep that grant invincibility.
High score. What else.
Im bad at drawing. So im probably just gonna scribble down some crudely drawn figures in my notebook, photograph it with a cellphone-camera from 2005 and then import it to the game. Just as i did above with the concepts.
The game will take place in the sky.
Any thoughts? Is this a stupid endeavor? Do you want to help? Got any game ideas you want to share?
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