Week 3

Today I start the research type up.

This is the biggest part of the project and will make up the bulk of the final project.
It is slightly dissapointing that the game itself will be put onto the back burners as I enjoy that part the most. My re-write is gonna be a big task, but I look forward to it.

For the research I am going to do some research into existing games in my chosen genre, 2d sidescrolling platformer.

One of the main influences I wish to draw inspiration from is the original Mario series.

Progress...

Last year I started a game design project and found extreme difficulty sorting the clipping information (making it so the player and enemies etc don't just fall forever).
I still need to work on a way to sort this efficiently, I worked on an algorithm to reduce the time each check of the map would take by compounding rectangles of similar sizes together into slightly larger rectangles. That was quite entertaining.

Here's this snippet: code

"rectangles" are the array of rectangles which are in a set position and are of a set size, they get drawn elsewhere in the code. Changes a map of around 850 odd rectangles to around 20-30.

Found some of my old tools I had been using, a map editor; incredibly buggy and it doesn't load and save exactly how i would like it to, and a tile sheet clipping editor; this saves and loads the clipping information from/to my tile set info files.

So this is what I will be working from to create my game, re-writing the game code itself though.

I will release some of the software if people would like a play etc.

See you soon :)

First!

I am going to be using this blog to dump all of my research/progress on a game I am working on.

This is sort of my project diary...

This is my extended project, an artifact, for this I am going to be making a game with a written manual.. Gulp.

Check back if your interested.