Parachute - Part 1

As i wrote in my previous post, me and my team(www.laumania.net <--- website may look funny or even be down, we are changing host ATM) are taking some steps back, and will make some 2D games before we start our MMORPG project up again.

So i brought the TGB have used this week to try to get more into the Torque scripting. As a part of trying to understand the scripting language, we have started the making of a "Parachute"-clone game, just to have a project to learn from.

I have used the source code from the TankBuster game, as inpiration for designing the code. Right now my code is bad looking, but it will be better as i understand how it all works, and can structure things better.

Features ingame:
Right now the game is very basic, so the only things you can do is:

- Controlling your tank. (A & D moves the tank, Left & Right moves the turret. Space fires a bullet)

- Enemy aircraft moves back and fourth on the screen, and are always moving forward ;) (setFlipX(true))

- Sounds and music added. Some of the sounds are from the TankBuster game, and some we made our self, see if you can guess which ones we made :P. Most, if not all, sound effekts will be replaced by our own sounds. The background music is made by us too.

- 2D art. All of the art are made by us. Some are from an old version of the game we have made earlier in C# .NET 2.0, and some we have made today. The parachuteman are from the old game, and is VERY bad looking in here. The animated aircraft and the tank are made for this game. More art will of cause be made, and a final graphic style will be determined by our graphic designer.

- You can hit the aircrafts, which will trigger a nice soundeffect from the TankBuster game, we have to come up with our own here...but it will be hard, it sounds really amazing :)

- We have also got some particle effect ingame. When you hit a aircraft, and when you hit a parachute man. These are only dummy effect you see if it was working as i expected, which it did.

Think that is all for now. The only "game play" ingame right now, is two aircrafts flying around dropping parachute men every 3 sec. You can hit the parachute man and he will die. You can hit the aircrafts but they cant die...yet ;)
So the gameplay is really bad at this moment.

Bugs / things to fix
- The turret doesn't move right when the tank change direction.

- If you hit a parachuteman more then once, the "aarrhhh" sound will not stop when he hits the ground.

- The bullet from the turret doesn't come out of the barrel/turret but from the center of the tank. This looks very stupid when you move the tank and shoot, then you can really see it.

Can't come up with any more bugs right now, but i will added them as i remember them.


Problems to solve

How to make a particle effect go in a specified direction?
Right now all the particles i made all spreads our from a center point. I know i can choose LineX og Area or what it is called, but it doesn't do as i want. For instance when a parachuteman crashes into the ground i would like the blood particle only to go UP, like if he was landing on a flat ground. Maybe add some gravity, if this is possible, so that the small "blood-drops" will first go up alittle, and then go to the ground as an effect of gravity. Dont know if anyone can see what im trying to say, english isn't my main language.

Flipping the tank
When i flip the tank, as a result of trying to go in the other direction, i would like the barrel/turret to follow. Right now the mounted point follows then i flip the tank, but the angle in which the turret is pointing is still the same. I need some math or something, to make the turret move correctly.

Wierd build problem
Yestoday i got this problem, which is very wierd. www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=54975
But as you can see in the buttom of this thread, it just disappeared...

Better design of code
As i say earlier, the code if far from pretty right now. Ill try to work on that one too.

Different speed on different CPU's?
The way i have made the game, with using the onSceneUpdate method to update all my "entities" in the game, maybe have given me some problems. I havent fully tested this yet, but it seems that this onSceneUpdated gets called as many times per sec that the clients PC can handle. THis means that the game runs faster on fast CPU and slow on slow CPU's = NOT GOOD!
Im i right here? Is'nt there any build in "game timer" in the core of the engine?
I think i can solve this problem pretty easy but making a timer, and then only run the game update when a specified amount of mili sec has passed, but i don't think i can see that being done in the TankBuster code, i have looked at. Adn TankBuster seems to run fine on every type of PC...
Please come with some input on this one, if you know anything about it, as i say i haven't tested it very much yet, and i hope im wrong on this one :)


A screenshot of the game as it is right now:


A link to the binary download: www.laumania.net/downloads/ParachuteAlpha1.zip

Upcomming features
In the next release we will try to work on the graphical aspect of the game, trying to make it look better. I should maybe tell you here, that we are aiming for a Amiga/Nintendo style of game :)

But the most work will be on the code, trying to learn how to use the scripting language properly and designing the code better.
And as a result of getting better code, we should be able to implement more game play, even with some kind of point system.

I havent posted any code in this blog post, because i didnt think i did anything in a smart way or anything. Where we are now, learning Torque scripting, it is more putting together what other people made, to make the game we want, and up until now it has worked as we would expect :)

I'll keep the blog posts coming as we process in making this game.
All feedback and comments are welcome.