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Justin Johnson: CodeMonkey
Whirlygig Player Health
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Tonight I got player health done. That short sentence sums up a lot of work in code, FRBDK, Illustrator and Photoshop!
First of all, if you have been following the progress you’ll immediately notice the helicopter changes. These colors are far from final. I revised some graphics to give the helis more contrast and made it so they could be easily colored in code. The helis also pass their color to their death explosion so it rains debris in the right color.
You also will notice a very faint healthbar in the image above. The healthbar has a default More >
Whirlygig Building Collision
0The post title here is a little misleading. I actually got a lot more done than just building collision. The full list of stuff I worked on tonight:
- 1280×720
- Moved horizon into separate scene
- Added sun
- Added multiple background layers
- Added test polygon for buildings
- Added shot collision vs buildings
- Added heli collision vs buildings
- Random tweaks
I don’t have a ton of time to post tonight so I’ll just post this video demonstrating some new level aesthetics and collision vs a test polygon. This video shows collision with debug view on and
Indie Game: Aurora
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I wanted to take a little break to post about an indie game I played that I really, really enjoyed. I saw this game mentioned on twitter by some others in the development community and gave it a shot, mostly because the video looked interesting. The game is called Aurora and is a realtime strategy game.
Gameplay
Aurora distills the RTS genre down to it’s most basic elements: produce units, attack, defeat the enemy. The player starts with More >
Whirlygig: Smooth Camera Movement
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The maps in Whirlygig are larger than what fits on a single screen. So, the camera needs to move (see Camera Averaging post) with the battling helicopters and zoom in or out depending on how far apart the combatants are. Moving the camera and even basic zooming was fairly easy. But the zoom was jarring. When a heli got within a certain distance from the screen it would zoom very quickly and interfere with the gameplay. So, I wanted to make the camera accelerate smoothly in More >
Whirlygig Camera Averaging
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Tonight I spent a lot more time working on content than on code. I took the mockup I worked on and translated into 64×64 chunks. Then I pulled them into the sprite editor and started playing with a semi-final level design. It is still rough. One thing I did to save time is create a level template. I pulled in all of the chunks I created and made a background skyline composed of black boxes with a low alpha value. I saved this template so I have a good starting place for More >
Whirlygig Impact Effects
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Alright, some major changes since the last progress update. Not all of them are super visible but I do have some stuff to show off that I think is pretty cool. First of all..the mock above. I’ve been meaning to redo the buildings because the first mock was super quick to just get a style ironed out. The buildings above are a little more final (though still not complete) and give you an idea of the post-invasion dystopia I’m going for.
Whirlygig Chaingun
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Tonight I got some cool things accomplished. The heli minigun is in working order complete with phosphor bullet trails, rumbling controller, smoking barrel and raining brass. I imagine blasting away with a minigun would feel pretty darn powerful and I hope to capture a little of that in my game. The exaggerated brass and rumbling controller get partway there but I won’t know if I’ve succeeded until I have sound and spraying sparks as the bullets tear into your buddy’s copter
Whirlygig Smoke Emitter
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It’s been hard lately to get good, dedicated coding nights in but I’m pressing forward. Tonight I wanted to get a couple of things done: I wanted to create and test a smoke emitter and I wanted to enable heli controls. I accomplished both so I guess that makes it a good programming night!
Whirlygig Level Development
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I’ve started working on a test level where I can fly a helicopter around, get collision working and all of that good stuff. The levels in Whirlygig will mostly be a city skyline with fighting in the skies above. But I want the environment to have a dynamic and sort of dirty industrial feel like people are living and working below while the battle rages overhead. So, the environment needs to have animation but I’m also a one-man show so I can’t mess around with tons of animation frames and content variations. So, I created the graphic above. It’s More >
FlatRedBall: View the New Glue
01 year ago
by jjohnson
in FlatRedBall
If you use FlatRedBall and you don’t use Glue you’ve lost your mind! Glue allows you to write about 90% less code, plan and organize your project better, and tweak or balance your game w/out hunting through code for the values you want to change. The next release features a brand new tool called GlueView. It allows you to see changes in Glue in realtime.
I have been discussing some common programming problems with Vic and he sent me the next version of the FRBDK (not released as of this posting) to check More >