Gotta rush, gotta rush! Just 7 days left! Thank goodness the deadline for the contest is at 11:59PM on June 30th, thus giving me virtually an extra 24 hours!
Refactoring
What project is complete without its own share of tedious refactoring? Today I realized a few follies in my code design, and shifted some logic around. For one, sprites (sprites==entities=='things') are now created from a set of 'sprite templates', rather than generated from a hard-coded list every time one is created. This set contains things like: the player, enemies, fruit, and doors. The 'Sprites.txt' file in my Data\ folder resembles:
04,16,16,Blue Bounder
04,16,16,Red Bounder
00,16,32,Boxman
00,16,16,Roller
00,16,16,Spikes
00,32,32,Croc-Man
The first field is the ID of the sprite template (zero being a non-template, generic sprite), and the next two are the width/height of each frame in the animation. The last being both the sprite's name and filename; coincidentally paying homage to Java's equally restricting naming style. :P
I also formed an AddList and DeadList, for adding and removing sprites from the game. Since I can't directly modify a list while I'm in a foreach() loop, I toss to-be-destroyed and to-be-added sprites in their respective lists, and they get added in the next iteration of the game loop. Is this elegant enough? I'm no optimzation buff. Feedback is good. :)
Foes!
I added the (arguably) most basic foe there is: The Bounder! This little fellow jumps up and down in whatever direction it's facing, and reverses directions upon hitting a wall. These squirts come in three flavours: green (jumps a medium amount and moves at a medium speed), blue (jumps really far at a fast speed), and red (jumps really high very frequently). I figured I'd take the multiple enemies per-AI approach, since time is in low supply. Not only is it easier, but it still looks pretty cool! Here's a shot from the map editor whilst making my little test-map:
(The editor's viewport is 50% the actual game screen, for ease of use)
Points! (and HUD)
I implemented the "points" system today, which is essentially a trivial accumulation of values by collecting fruit sprites and other tasks. As trivial as it might seem, when I grab an apple and I see some flashing numbers appear and fade up into the air...well, it just feels good!
(Points++)
Also shown here is the HUD/status-bar, which currently shows points (functional), lives (non-functional), and tomato(e)s left (non-functional) in a cool semi-graphical fashion.
Overall
Overall I'm very pleased with how the game is coming together. Granted I only have one week left until I need to finish it -- so stress is a factor -- but I'm surprised how easy it's been to toss together a game in C# -- a language I've never made a game with before -- and SDL.NET -- a library I've never used before. The other cool thing is that there's been
zero speed issues. The game runs wonderfully, and I haven't even optimized that much of the drawing!
Visual C# Express Raving: I *really really* like the auto-complete feature on overriding virtual functions. Right after you hit the spacebar after typing the 'override' keyword on a function declaration, it pops up a beautiful listing of all virtual functions open to overriding. Awesome. And of course it'll fill it in for you after hitting enter, and even includes a "base.Foo()" call as well! Sweet. I was eyeing the "Refactoring" tab on the top menu as well today. Smells like a good topic for my next VC#-talk. (Am I the only one logging my VC# experiences, here? I thought this was on the rules page :P)