AstroLiger

I’ve been working on pieces of code over the past couple of weeks that will come together to form a codebase that i intend to work from for future projects, part of that was writing some dual analogue joypad input code.  I was pretty miffed at the apparent lack of example code or tutorials on this specific requirement, so I’ve decided to make some example code with just the stuff required to make it work and post it on this site, not just this joypad code, but some other stuff like a simple timer and more like that.

I don’t know when this will be, and i don’t claim to be an expert, but what i have so far works, and if i can keep it free of confusing additional elements, maybe it can help others.

The upshot of my latest efforts, as i suggested previously, is that i have a nice dual analogue joypad routine for AstroLiger

There’s more, but its dull, even to me.

So I’ve not finished Atoms yet, there’s a few things i need to work out for that and frankly I’m having a pretty shit time at the moment and i just don’t fancy that right now.  Instead I’ve decided to look into solving the two major conceptual difficulties I’m having with games programming, timing and sprite classes.

These are important to games, but haven’t been show stoppers for Atoms, so I’ve been able to use work-arounds for the moment, but really, I’d rather just get them sorted and do it properly.  The Atoms codebase is too crowded for me to be introducing fairly major and completely new code concepts at this point, so I’m starting with a blank editor and beginning with line 1, why not make it the basis for the start of the AstroLiger project?

I’ve created a second googlecode project for my SVN repo, but nothing else just yet, I’d like to get something compiling before i setup a page for it here, but as with Atoms, it will be free and Open Source and cross-platform.

When i make progress, I’ll update here as usual.

Its been a while, i’m sorry but i’ve just not done any code at home in ages

I sat at the computer today much as i have on numerous occasions with the want to crack on with AstroLiger but the will to work on certain parts of the code lacking, so i chose to look at implementing a tilemap engine -something thats needed for this and probably any other game i’m likley to make hereafter, and i’m glad i did. A few words of wisdom from my friend Haowan (Alex of Deadrock fame) pointed me in the right direction and now i’ve (almost) got a working tilemap engine

Now i just need to hook it into the renderer, add mouse controls and make an editor, then i can put together some mock levels

Progress is slow, i’d forgotten how much i dislike webdesign nowadays, so i havent done the webpages yet, even though i’d decided thats what i was going to do this weekend.

I have been doing a little code though, not much, its been a pretty boring weekend, low motivation.  I’ve been working on the game engine, i’m keeping it generic as much as possible so i can use it as a starting point for future projects, today i added framerate control, and thats all working very nicely now.

Over the next week, i need to try to get a tileset renderer up and running, so i can build levels, not that i have a game to play them in, but its what i want to do next

While muffing about in #tigIRC as usual, I was insulting someone and misspelt astrologer as astroliger, this tickled me as i love Ligers and we started to riff on the inter-species thing that ended with me finding out there are such things as Tigons.

Well, something turned on the idea light bulb and a name came to me, “AstroLiger versus the Space Tigons from Mars” - such an awesome name deserves a game, and so I have to make it.

This gives me two active projects, and one on the backburner for now, my codebase is still a little messy, so i’m re-writing it all again to accomodate a range of genres, to make it more generic.

This means that Atoms will be another 2-3 weeks, which is ok really, because at that point, i’m hoping to have some music made for the game by one of the guys in #tigIRC - this is a good thing, it saves you from programmer music.

AstroLiger versus the Space Tigons from Mars is going to be a shmup where you control AstroLiger, in his efforts to iradicate the universe of the scourge of the evil Tigons from Mars, you’ll be land-locked, scaling the hilly terrain with the ability to jump and fire the laser cannons he has mounted on his saddle, the closest i can think of is a mix of Saint Dragon and Revenge of the Mutant Camels

Thoughts welcomed.

So i almost got to the point where a few simple gameplay mechanics would turn what i had into a functioning game, i was all set to finish up and get the prototype up and running and instead i decided to re-write the whole thing from scratch, making the whole thing class based, abstracting SDL into an object for easier interaction (at least for me.)

Anyway, thats almost done, i’m not far from where i was and Atoms might be playable at some point this week