Level Editor Version 0.2b

Today, I've returned to working on the level editor. In that to be able to reach my first goal of finishing a single level, I'll need to add enemies and objects to the game, (and having this completed will also be a motivational thing for me to0).

So, today I've spent four hours working on the level editor, and have added a nice little menu that opens up so the user can change between adding the level tiles, (which build up the world in 32x32 blocks) and adding enemies and objects.

I did have a bit of a 'Damn it!' moment when I couldn't figure out why when loading a level it wouldn't load the objects, because I'd forgot to read the part of the level's file that tells the editor how many objects there are, so I wasted some time here, until I suddenly realized what was missing when I was eating a sandwich.

I have actually been putting this of for a while, as I wasn't looking forward to getting back into the messy code of the editor and adding all this. But, I guess it's a big relief to have it done.

Only a tiny bit of progress

Well I've been back at the game today, well only for an hour. I've finally fixed a stupid and basic little bug that meant the player wouldn't fall all the way down if he fell or the player moved him to close to a building on his left.

I've also tried to create my very first worklog or tasklist, so I can see what needs to be done, it's not very professional, and I will need to add a lot more to it, but you can see it here: http://sionco.110mb.com/worklog.html.

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Update,

I've started creating a new about section on the website, Even though I've just started, I hope to include may details of games I've tried to make during my childhood and early teens, such as eh-oh Bebo (who's 'telly-tubby like' recorded voice pestered my parents many times) and Military Bananas 1,2,3,4,5,6.

I have got back to game programming, and returned to BlitzMax for the time being, I'm thinking that I don't think I'l release mobile versions of my games at first, so I can concentrate on getting the game done, without worrying about scaling, memory, resizing, etc. But I will re-access this when I've finished the game.

Sometimes a rest is good.

I know I hadn't really started on my game, but a collision problem I was having with the players movements in jumping from building to building had got me stumped and due to being busy with work and having a cold which seemed to not go away, all this de-motivated me, and as you can see from the date of my last post, I didn't touch my game for about two weeks.

But after watching some movies based on comic book heroes, today I decided to jump back in and my god, I solved the collision problems in an hour, it also seemed so simple today, that I don't know how I didn't fix it before.

So, I guess it's true, sometimes if your lacking in ideas, it's best to have a good rest and totally forget about it, so you can come back fresh faced and with a fresh outlook.

Player Movement/collision

Ok, I've started creating the player movements and collision detection today.
It's been a bit of trial and error, as I've never created a platform game before (well except in gamemaker or klick & play).

I've spent a few hours working on this and had some hair-pulling moments such as working out the stupid errors I had made in my code that meant either the player sometimes was half in a wall, or on some blocks the player floated just above the ground when walking and others he walked perfectly. But, I managed to solve these (hopefully)

As for now, the player now moves left, right, jumps and falls down if he walks of the side of a block or building. The code for this is pretty basic, but it works okay for the moment, and I'll come back to it at another time and improve it and also add new movements.

I'm very happy with my switch to glbasic at the moment, and the movement I've programmed is a lot better than the movement I managed on blitzmax in about the same time.

GLBasic

I've recently been playing around with a few different programming languages and frameworks/engines such as java and slick, and some basic variants such as playbasic, blitzmax, and I've decided to switch to glbasic.

I really like the cross-platform capabilities of glbasic (Windows, Linux, OS X, iPhone, Windows Mobile, GP2X/Wiz, and for a bedroom coder like me, who's main aim is to actually finish a game, this would be a great help. It's also a basic variant so similar to Blitz3D/Max which I already know a little bit of.




Sion