For Foxes Sake WIP

[micky4fun]

Hi all

yep that sounds fine , fish will make it harder ,

ps: i have no idea why that .swf animation is so small

lol so small on mine i cant see it , i have tried link on 3 pc's all have latest flash on them , but will no gfx's at all

mick :)

[BlinkOk]

would it be a big pain in the arse to make a layer that goes IN FRONT of the player (fox)?

[kevin]

  it'd be about as hard as setting the capture depth.   CaptureDepth, in other words trivial.

[BlinkOk]

yeah but has mick implemented it that way? i thought he was using levels to display the various layers

[kevin]

 yep, it's camera based.

[micky4fun]

hi all

would it be a big pain in the arse to make a layer that goes IN FRONT of the player (fox)?

no thats ok , reason i have not expanded level to far yet,

it'd be about as hard as setting the capture depth.   CaptureDepth

ahh thats handy , did not see this command

ok well spent a day or two mucking about with dog chasing fox thing , i tried so many ways of doing it and all looked pretty rubbish , so i left it this simple way as it was one of the better ones , what do you think will this way do ?
also may need a little advice from Kevin , i was going to do say one level split into 3 , then boss
so about 5 screens per level so i can get in 100 coins , 100 fence pieces without cramping them in to mush ,
now which way should i go , do a level at 15 screens plus boss , of just do them all seperate at 5 each then reload part 2 , 3 etc ?

also at the moment fox dies and goes back to begining , now once level is complete if was thing of doing what they did in mario , the black circle thing where it starts big and goes right in to where mario is and then they switch level and open black circle up again , whould this be ok ? or something else , ?
right just incase this seems ok , is there a easy way of doing this circle thing ?

ok thats about it , heres the dog chasing fox thing

mick :)

[kevin]

i was going to do say one level split into 3 , then boss
so about 5 screens per level so i can get in 100 coins , 100 fence pieces without cramping them in to mush ,
now which way should i go , do a level at 15 screens plus boss , of just do them all seperate at 5 each then reload part 2 , 3 etc ?

  I don't think it'd really matter for the block data, as you can create the 'world' as one big long level (of how many layers it has),  then load this all data into memory at the start of the game or start of a new world.

  Now when the player goes to start World #1, Level #1,  you could copy the 'rect' of blocks into the display levels.. and your done.   To make this simpler, i'd add a marker chunk to the block data (in the header). So you can tag  the start (left hard block) of each level.   Assuming they're stored left to right in the editor..

  level 1 within this world will no doubt start at column 0,  level 2 might start at column 250 from the left (i've no idea), level 3 might start at 623 etc etc.     So levels can be as short/wide as they need be.   There's no point externalizing the game data, only to hard coding this stuff into the program.  

  The editor could use the 'level markers'  to tag dropped characters as belonging to each level.  So if you add entity creation to the editor, which personally is a must if you want to have a more than 3 levels.  Which i think people will be expecting.  

also at the moment fox dies and goes back to begining , now once level is complete if was thing of doing what they did in mario , the black circle thing where it starts big and goes right in to where mario is and then they switch level and open black circle up again , whould this be ok ? or something else , ?

  There's a few ways that come to mind, in the Missile Attack & TwinTrix (from memory)  uses shape to create such an effect.    You plot a circle around the player using Cos()/Sin()  (ie. polar coordinates)  Then link this these coordinates as edges in the shape.    To invert you add one final edge, that's off the screen.

  Could do the same thing with TRI/ GrouaudTri/TextureTri, just by plotting to two circles (inner & outter) at say 10 degree intervals, then connect the coordinates.

PlayBASIC Code: [Select]

  AngleStep#=10

   For angle#=0 to 360 step AngleStep#
           
         InnerX#=CenterX#+Cos(Angle#)*InnerRadius
         InnerY#=CenterY#+Sin(Angle#)*InnerRadius

         OutterX#=CenterX#+Cos(Angle#)*OutterRadius
         OutterY#=CenterY#+Sin(Angle#)*OutterRadius

etc
   next   

   Polygon Ring



    Also, rather than manually drawing font characters,  spent a minutes and make a little conversion program that runs through the characters, make a bitmap font from them and then saves them.     once save you can then just load the crf and use the Print /Text commands to draw stuff.   

   conversion code..

PlayBASIC Code: [Select]

   path$="C:\MicksGames\platform12\gfx\hud\"

   ; load the font frames into image memory
   For lp =1 to 11
      LoadFXIMage  path$+"FOnt"+Digits$(lp,4)+".png",lp   
   next
   
   ; get the size of the first frame/character
   Width   =GetImageWidth(1)
   Height=GetImageHeight(1)
      

   ; -------------------------------------
   ; Mask colour our images are using 
   ; -------------------------------------
   MaskColour = $00ff00ff

   ; -------------------------------------
   ; Create Bitmap front from images (FX formated)
   ; -------------------------------------
   CreateBitmapFont 2,Width,Height,4   
   fontmaskcolour 2,MaskColour

   TempImage=NewImage(width,Height,2)
   chrlist$="1234567890x"
   For lp=1 to 11   
         RenderToImage TempImage
         ; clear our temp image..
         Cls MaskColour
         drawimage lp,0,0,false
         Thischr=Mid(chrlist$,lp)      
         GetFontChr 2,ThisChr,0,0 
   next

   ; set the widht of the X characterso it's little thinner
   FontChrWidth 2,asc("x"),Width*0.75



   rendertoscreen   

   ; demo this mini font
   setfont 2
   print "01234567879xxx"   
   
   ; save the font with what ever name
   SaveFont Path$+"Hud-Numbers-Font.crf",2


   Sync
   waitkey
   

   So the code required in the game is now just.

PlayBASIC Code: [Select]

   path$="C:\MicksGames\platform12\gfx\hud\"

   ; Load the HUD font.
   LoadFont Path$+"Hud-Numbers-Font.crf",2

   ; Set this is the current output font
   setfont 2

        ; draw some stuff
   print "01234567879xxx"   
   
        text 200,200,"345234562"

   Sync
   waitkey
   

[BlinkOk]

so i left it this simple way as it was one of the better ones , what do you think will this way do ?

looks fine to me

the black circle thing where it starts big and goes right in to where mario is and then they switch level and open black circle up again , whould this be ok ? or something else , ?

that sounds really nifty

is it me or was that last demo a bit choppy?

[micky4fun]

Hi all

is it me or was that last demo a bit choppy?

in what way , scrolling ? platforms ? it seems fine for me

mick :)

[BlinkOk]

ok it's prolly me but i can't check right now. will prolly muck about with it tomorrow

[micky4fun]

Hi all

ok heres where i am now , kinda got a levels in 6 screens width , want to keep them not to long per part level , as you can see there are plenty of coins in this first level
so what i may do as other levels will have platforms in sky , is have maybe only 50 coins on some and have the counters for coins and flowers and carrots and fence count backwards so how mant left rather than got.
this is the first level so only coins and fences , will start to add others in other levels , no gamekeep in this first level
once you get to end of level nothing happens , but will do level pt1 complete and then carry on

BlinkOk no rush on end of level boss , i have got extra front layer in game now and can use capturedepth as well

Kevin thanks for helping with black circle thing i would have no idea how to do this , now in game but just black

hope this plays ok
mick :)

[BlinkOk]

sounds cool mick.
should we do something at the end of the level? a house or something?
maybe when you get all the coins a key appears somewhere and you collect the key and it lets you in the house.

anyway i got distracted working up another tilemap for a spooky level;


gotta do something about that far background. the platforms don't pop out enough.

ps: tried to demo again and it's fine. i must have had something running in the background

[Vee]

This project looks really amazing!
Good work guys :)
On my Computer there are issues with the graphics though. I see the pink parts that should be transparent and when i cross the first bridge, the level disappears but i can still see the background and the enemies.
I'm using Version V1.64i. Any ideas?

Looking forward to seeing how this comes along!

[kevin]

I'm using Version V1.64i. Any ideas?

  Yep.. here's a few  (Scroll down)



Mick,

   The new versions good, spent a while jumping from the platform to platform only to find there's nothing to actually get to.     I'd still look at detaching  the camera from the player.   Like so,  curvevalue edges one value towards another.  The bigger the divider the smaller the step.  Gives it a cheap inertia feel, could do the same for the player.

PlayBASIC Code: [Select]

      if player_dead=false 
          CameraX#=curvevalue(playerx#,camerax#,20)                  
          PositionCamera 1,CameraX#-(GetScreenWidth()/2)-40,0
      endif

[micky4fun]

Hi all

should we do something at the end of the level? a house or something?
maybe when you get all the coins a key appears somewhere and you collect the key and it lets you in the house.

yep that sounds the ticket ,

spooky level looks great , so level one as is , with normal kinda house at end of level ,
then level 2 spooky level with spooky house at end , or something like that

Thanks knieb , yep you need to upgrade to get it to run properly

spent a while jumping from the platform to platform only to find there's nothing to actually get to.

i take it you mean at end of level , yep still goto do a bit on that

I'd still look at detaching  the camera from the player

yep your code lmakes it look better thanks

mick :)