[UPDATE 3.5]Angry Square

[HippoSocks]

Hey, glad you like the changes, I have started work on a "speed apple" it just has no graphic and im not happy with the speed it changes to.

The apples work fine for me now, but I see what you mean by they stick to one area, I have most fixed most of it though.

As for the sounds when you take damage, I cant find one I like, I previously thought about this when working on the spikes, but after 30 mins of searching, I found nothing, if i can get a sound, I'll will work on adding it.

Im am planning on adding "bad apples" to spawn in the space unused by the spikes, so untill I have decided, I might not be adding any more spikes.
The "bad apples" i plan on adding will cause a square that changes random colours to spawn in the back ground and perk's spawning.

As for removing the safe zone, It removes itself when Score < 490 is true.
I'm thinking of diving into the deep abyss of code called "The menu system" and adding a difficulty selection,

Outline of difficulty selection:
Easy - Safe zone stays through out the game, lots of apples spawn.
Medium - Less apples spawn, safe zone gets removed during the game. (Current set up)
Hard - No safe zone, Same amount of apples as Medium, No safe zone, More Spikes.

This will add more variety to the game, but will just get to confusing since I really made a mess of the menu's...

Another small thing I will add is a string at the top right of the screen to notify if the frozen perk is active or god mode, so you know when its on or off..

But for the jaws theme, it kinda add's slight comedy to the game.

[thetoddfather]

Hmm, you could just add a couple of >> marks to an apple to signify speed or something.

I recommend trying a couple simple sounds out. A very short beep sound that plays once per 1 or 2 HP loss. The way you have the taking damage code written, this simple beep code will become a good "YOU'RE DYING!!" sound I think. It's a thought. I'm sure you almost certainly haven't played Star Control 2, but if you have, when you take damage in the planet lander it is done in a similar way to yours and that sound comes to mind for your game too.

Here's a let's play of Star Control 2. At 10:15 he lands on a planet and takes a little damage while down there so you get an idea of what I mean. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60Ex4tSwfk8

Hmmm, another way you could go would be to have bad apples spawn occasionally instead of the perk apple, at the perk apple location. So, if the gamer is lazy and doesn't know his apples, he may go pick it up. I would keep the spikes and apple stuff seperate personally.

Oh, I think I played that far on your first version but never noticed that haha. I like the idea of it disappearing at a certain point more than not having it at all actually, but maybe have it disappear sooner. I'm sure you'll find a good balance.

I think you should just get one balanced version working where you are happy with it. THEN add either more difficulty if it's a little on the easy side, or simplify it if it's too hard, or both, and make these additions in the menu later. For me, that's how I work because overloading your list of stuff you're working on can make coding/programming not fun anymore all too quickly. So as much as possible, keep it linear and simple, then layer compexity on that.

That's my rant haha.

For sure add the '!!!GOD MODE!!!' text! Maybe make it randomly change colors or something funky.

[HippoSocks]

I like the idea about the damage sound, I'll have a mess around with it, I was playing with it earlier, but I was trying to make the sound play once and wait before it played again, but just got a laggy mess of pixels, and i can't explain how..

As for the bad apples, thats exactly what I had in mind, plus if I add more spikes, they could get in awkward position's causing the player to take the risk of spikes, or apple..

I preferred the idea of having the safe zone get remove rather than just not having it at all as well, just because at a lower score, if you're having trouble you have a fall back.
It might be a bit more helpful once I balance out the difficulty of the game though..

I tried making the "rainbow apple" help/tip thing in the instructions screen randomly changes colour..
But it kinda just jumps back.. I think there might be a small detail in the code im overlooking but I cant spot it.

Code: Select all

gfx.DrawString("Rainbow Apple - Temporary god mode. ", x, y, &font, D3DCOLOR_XRGB(r,255,b));

if( r == 255 && b == 0 ) col = false;
if( r== 0 && b == 255 ) col = true;
if( col ) { b += 1; r -= 1;  } 
else { r -= 1; b += 1; }

If there is a better way then i obviously didn't think hard enought..

Hopefully that mess of code makes sense.. It's possible to see how I overlooked it since I wrote that bit half asleep, sipping a cup of tea..

I do think you might be right, about me needing to keep the future feature list low as well, if it gets to high, I might have problems adding all of them without the causing issues with each other, or something small like keeping my code readable, And that would just make me drop the idea of working on the project all together, which after so much debugging and breaking stuff, would be a waste of time.

[thetoddfather]

I think you just had your letters out of order. Try this.

Code: Select all

gfx.DrawString("Rainbow Apple - Temporary god mode. ", x, y, &font, D3DCOLOR_XRGB(r,255,b));
if( col ) { r += 1; b -= 1;  } 
else { r -= 1; b += 1; }
if( r == 255 && b == 0 ) col = false;
if( r== 0 && b == 255 ) col = true;

[HippoSocks]

It didn't make any difference to the result, it still jumped back.. And what im after is it to transition back.. Ahh well, I guess it till just take a little bit more tweaking once I've got time to spare.

At least it is no major problem..

[thetoddfather]

Play with it too.
Personally, I think what you are going for is more around the:

Code: Select all

r += 25; b -= 25;

and try putting the b variable in the green position and such.

[thetoddfather]

It works for me. Be sure you are initializing your variables at runtime to
r(255),
b(0),
col(false)

[thetoddfather]

I think putting the b value in the g-spot (That's what she said), looks best.
So: D3DCOLOR_XRGB(r,b,255)
then increment around 25 per frame (r += 25; b -= 25;) (r -= 25; b += 25)

Which reminds me. Make sure this is being run EVERY FRAME or it will do it once and stop. Other than that I am not sure why it wouldn't be working cause I have it running on mine and it looks great.

[HippoSocks]

Ahh nice, I didn't check to see if I remembered to initialize them at run time, just assumed I did,
thanks for pointing that out.

That's going to make me rest easy when I add the text saying what perk is active.

I just swapped b to the g-spot( ) it looks a lot better, nice...

Thanks for the help with that.
I was trying to sort that out for about half an hour before i just admitted defeat..

EDIT: Ohh yea, and it does run every frame, im now messing with some stuff to see if i can get it to look even better

EDIT 2: It looks even better with
r += 20; b -= 25;
r -= 25; b += 20;

It brings more colours into the mix..

[thetoddfather]

If you want an easy way to mod those you could do a small rewrite:

Code: Select all

// game.h or where your defines are
#define MODR 25
#define MODG 25
#define MODB 25

// game.cpp

gfx.DrawString("Rainbow Apple - Temporary god mode. ", x, y, &font, D3DCOLOR_XRGB(r,g,b));
if( col ) { r += MODR; g += MODG; b -= MODB;  } 
else { r -= MODR; g -= MODG; b += MODB; }
if( r == 255 && b == 0 ) col = false;
if( r== 0 && b == 255 ) col = true;