Project_3: Another Generic Space Deathmatch

06/24/03 Some small updates. Now the menu is functional at startup and I made some minor graphical updates along with some updates to the refresh rate and the speed of characters.

06/19/03 God I've been getting lazy with this diary. Anyway I have added in an introduction that sucks pretty bad and a not so functional menu when the game starts up. I'll get it to work soon when I have some more time. Interface is more functional, now displaying number of bots, ammo, health, etc. It also has 8 weapons to choose from that you can cycle through with the TAB key. You don't actually change weapons, but its a start. You can now shoot multiple projectiles until your ammo runs out. Collision detection is in place for projectiles, but the only thing it does right now is display a message telling you someone was hit. Expect that to change soon. Biggest improvement right now is that the background is not tile mapped instead of one large bitmap. I am only using a single tile repeatedly right now, but we'll see some inprovements to that soon, I hope. In fact I have designed how I am going to store maps for the various tilesets I acquired. Other minor changes here and there.

04/29/03 Ok, updated the interface but it is still not functional. Expect that to be updated soon. Now I have a few different tilesets that will suit the game nicely as well as some sound effects for weapons that will be implemented when I get around to it. (I wanted to include them in the zip files, but fortune city has limits on file sizes) Finally, I updated the main screen to cover a much larger portion.

04/28/03 Added in two new files projectile.c and projectile.h that allow for a projectile to be shoot from a sprite. Right now it is just a dot, but I will hopefully add in the option to use bitmaps as well. Now it is on to working in linked lists so that you can have as many characters/ projectiles on screen at once.

04/23/03 Some improvements in the collision detection and some code optimizations today. Whatever I could get done between classes. Also added a directory structure to make the code a little easier to work with.

04/17/03 Well pseudo AI now handles collision detection (although it's a little spastic right now) and I added in some bitmaps for the background and the interface. Project_3 is finally moving into the next phase in which I'll be adding in gameplay, weapons, and maybe even some real AI. I will also be adding some actual content to the UI. Also, P3AGSD is now on allegro.cc so go check it out under action games. Yea, and you can download the old source for version 0.3 here.

04/14/03 Wow, a whole month since I last updated. School has been keeping me pretty busy. Anyway, I added in bounding rectangles to all the sprites (you can even see them when you run the code) and it monitors for collisions, so you can see when that happens. I've yet to handle the collisions, so as of now it just notifies you, but I'll get to it. Also, I added in detection for hitting the screen edges.

03/13/03 Whew. A lot of time has past since updated this diary. I've done a bit of work on the project, but mostly minor stuff like adding more characters, adjusting the pseudo AI, etc. I di, however, put up http://members.fortunecity.com/drunkenbunny to host my projects. My Spring break starts tommorrow, so hopefully I'll be getting something done this coming week. Keep on eye on the site and you should be seeing some of my progress.

02/22/03 OK, it hasn't been 5 days since I updated the code, but I haven't gotten around to updating the diary. I am working on making the sprite structure more robust by adding more functions that do individual routines. As of now you can completly control a sprite using about four functions. initSprite() intilizes, bufferSprite() sends it to the current buffer, moveSprite() moves the sprite around the screen, and animateSprite() changes the source bitmap to corrispond to the current frame of animation and the current direction. The code definitly needs some optimizing because as of now more than 5 moving sprites at once causes some serious slowdown. I have some ideas for that. For one, I want to implement double buffering, secondly, I might drop the color depth to 16 color palates. Sucks, but I want the game to run smoothly:( I also have to fix the problem I've been having with the wrong bitmaps coming up when animationg sprites.

Update OK, cool. Atrifacting. Fixed! slowdown. Fixed! Didn't even have to do anything I mentioned earlier, just fixed the way the game handled bitmaps. I am such a dumbass.

02/17/03 The fact that this game is entitled "project_3" probably leads you to assume there was a project 1 and 2. Well there was, Cracker Jack and Aftermath were my first two projects and I thats about all you need to know about that. Both of them sucked and were never completed. This project, however, seems to be coming along nicely. I have developed a little sprite structure that handles itself quite nicely. I also figured out a pretty snazzy way of handeling a datafile (not the best, but I didn't feel like editing the datafile) of all the character animations (although I seem to be ending up with artifacts when too many sprites are displayed at once). Anyway, here is the diary that I will be keeping track of as I develop the project.