iPhing “View Based” Jumpstart

A series of tutorials that will allow old-style coders to quickly grasp the bits and pieces they need, to develop games for iPod/iPhone/iPad (iPhings)

Part One : Tilemap
Part Two : Touching

I’ve written this in near-realtime, so where I look like I’m freaking out about the language, I am actually freaking out about the language.
Feel free to nitpick all the many faults that probably appear within this week’s little adventure!! Together, we can make my phings better!

Beginning

I’m going to assume you know the first thing about programming. If you don’t, probably a good idea to learn that first! Otherwise, my “Jumpstart” tutorials are meant to let you take a leap from your usual language, to something that doesn’t quite conform to the rules that you’re used to.

I’m a “Basic” guy, and it probably shows in almost all of my work. As such, regular iPhing developers might look at my code and run away scared.
Don’t be scared, it’s only an array!!! At least there’s no Goto! Yet!!

Part one focuses on building a simple onscreen grid that flickers.
It’s not a lot, but if you’re building a game that’ll use a tilemap, it’s pretty much step one!

You can read the html file here (since WordPress apparently doesn’t like it!) and then download the mass of gubbins here for a good nosey.

Hopefully that helps a couple of folk.

Next step, getting stuff on top of it all, and making it tappable.

That brings us to April, and with my head spinning with ideas about “The BIG JNKPlat game”, I’m not sure if I really want to attempt that.

The “Big” idea is way way way too big for me, artistically. I mean, it’s a really really huge idea!
Plus it’d need levels.
Really big levels!

It’s a very big idea!

I’d probably be better off sitting down and doing a nice new annual simple JNKPlat game, instead.
Scrap the 3D, keep it in 2D, and see what lovely new tiles I can come up with.

I’d probably want to make it a more progress-based game, this time around, but I’m not 100% sure how well that’ll work.
See, the thing with JNKPlat is..

It’s fun to make levels.
Levels are great!

And, if I make things 100% progressive, then I have to do all sorts of silly lock-outs within the editor.
I’ve never been entirely certain how to do that sort of thing.

The game should give you a need to complete things, but it should also let you play around with the editor.

Always awkward.

The best implementation so far has been DS08. With each different pack having a “Play through or die” limitation, you could make a level pack of 5 or 10 levels, and the player would have to go through 1 to 10 to play them all.
JNKPlat 07 also has that, but if you died, you could hop right back to where you were.
I think DS08 played it a little better than that.

3 Lives, do or die..

So, JNKPlat10 checklist
More movement
Probably doing the scrolling from 07
Neat Lighting effects from the start
More tiles
New moves
Multiple Tilesets/Worlds
Timer?

Any other thoughts?

Go play Angry Birds!

2. Music settings are now in a .ini file.
Download
This is the theme from Pipeline (Superior Software) which you might also recognise from a few of my games.
Thing is, this is full of little loops, and can easily be taken apart and reconstructed in multiple ways. Because of this, I’ve got a half-a-dozen versions of it, and it’s great for ingame music.
Now it’ll carry on looping about indefinitely.
Cool!

And as a test, it works great.
Still playing with those instruments, mind, trying to find just the right selection.
And I really oughta get rid of that tempo-reliant drumloop, so’s I can start playing around with the tempo some more..

Pipeline.ini
—
[Chords]
“qqqqqqqqjjjjjjjj”
“qqqqqqqq”
“jjjjjjjj”
[Bass]
“r 6 r 6 e t e t r 6 r 6 e t 2 q r 6 r 6 e t e t r 6 r e r 6 ”
[Melody]
“r t6 9 i 76 t r t6 r t e2 q r t6 9 i 76 t r t6 e r [ "
[Accompany]
“q erm q ermqqq”
—
woot!

Download

It should be noted that this is very early stages, and that I really oughta try and find some nice instruments, but this is the first proper test of my new Framework Music Engine.
That is, I shove in a few bits of melody, chord, bass and drums, and the framework fiddles about, and plays with the tune, creating a constantly evolving background tune that’ll continue to sound nice and playful throughout the entire game.
Neat!

But still needs work.

And additional randomness, methinks!

Step 1. (3/4 hours)
After about 3 or 4 hours spent prodding Ubuntu to actually get it to install properly, I finally managed to get it up and running by downloading a different Ubuntu, and installing it onto a thumbstick instead..

Step 2. (10 seconds)
I downloaded BlitzMax and followed these instructions.
Basically I just copy+pasted that topmost line of code into the Terminal, got that to update things, and then made sure the proper drivers were installed. Very swift and easy to do.
BlitzMax didn’t even need an install. Downloaded it, popped it on the thumbstick, un”gz”‘d it, and clicked the MaxIDE icon.
Blinkin’ eck, I really wasn’t expecting it to be that easy!!

Step 3. (10 additional seconds)
I ran my test engine, and was surprised by the results.

It actually worked! (screenshot’s a bit fooked, mind!!)
Although it will need a few tweaks to keep the speed up and running, and I did have to comment out the DirectX references (2 whole entire lines of code!!!!!) but otherwise it all seems to be quite happy, including the audio which I really didn’t expect to actually work at all!

*phew*

Total length : about 3 hours, mostly the fault of what I’m assuming was a slightly dodgy install DVD.

This isn’t the most entertaining shot I’ve ever posted, but it does show that work has now actually begun on the sequel.

Things to notice from the above screenshot.
1. The grid’s tiny!
Previously I drew the world onto a 1024×1024 texture, then resized the world to 2048×2048. This gave us a nice big world, but it also made all the tiles twice as big. This time everything’s the size it’s drawn, so.. The tiles aren’t as big.
I’m not sure if I’ll tweak that, to be honest. I’ll have to wait and see how tricky corridors get..

2. Blood!
I’m currently just testing things, but the blood splattering is at the very least working! The blood is being left whenever a bullet times-out.. (which right now is stupidly short, due to me wanting to be able to SEE it!!)
This is, right now, leaving a nice big circle of splatters around the player..
Once things are up and running, I’ll try to get this emanating from bullets, not when they timeout, but instead when they hit an alien.. Get a nice angle going, and things should look pretty messy pretty quickly!

3. Same!
I’m using the same sprites.. No need to mess about, they did the job just fine.

4. I left in the mouse pointer. Silly me!

What you can’t see is how much bigger the arena is. Although the tiles are smaller, the overall size of the level has shot up from 2048×2048 to 5120×5120. That’s a teensy bit of a difference! And given the tiles are now 16×16, it means the level will have a “tile” resolution of 320×320 tiles.. As opposed to the original 64×64 tiles! Yowsers!
Basically, this means that levels will be able to be much more complex. You’ll be able to have twisting winding corridors all over the place, and.. maybe even set up your own smallish missions within the arena. (maybe!)
To put that into perspective, if you walk the full length of an arena, top to bottom, at the same speed as the previous game.. It’ll take you about 30 seconds.. The old one took around 10..

Fixes are due, too, of course, and first off I’m planning on adding some arrows into the game, that should help guide you to the next pickups. Nothing big and daring, but something to help you find the nearest Multiplier before your timer runs out, and maybe one for the super-weapon.
..
I might also be generous, and allow more than one of those at a time, this time around!

As always, we’ll see what happens as we go..

In the meantime, I think I’ll be keeping a dev diary going.. Might as well give it a whirl, although it usually doesn’t last more than a couple of days when I try!!

I should also point out that this week’s probably going to be “A game a week” free, due to this game being a bit more than a week’s worth! Although, if all goes well, I might post a quicky beta version on Tuesday to keep you going!