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Author Topic: My Practice Beginner Games  (Read 20690 times)

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Hapax

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Re: My Practice Beginner Games
« Reply #15 on: September 06, 2015, 12:04:26 am »
Puzza has been completed!

Here's a video:
http://youtu.be/Hp1IyuBLyRE

(click to show/hide)

The link at the top of this post takes you to the release on GitHub, which also includes a Windows build of the game.
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Brax

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Re: My Practice Beginner Games
« Reply #16 on: September 06, 2015, 12:39:09 am »
Looks good., especially the effects when the ball hits the paddle.  :D
« Last Edit: September 06, 2015, 12:41:16 am by Brax »

Hapax

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Re: My Practice Beginner Games
« Reply #17 on: September 08, 2015, 12:23:52 am »
Thanks, Brax  :)

The recorded video unfortunately has a very low frame rate. It looks nicer for real  ;)
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Cryonic

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Re: My Practice Beginner Games
« Reply #18 on: September 08, 2015, 04:51:37 am »
Yeah, even though the paddles look like a Red vs. Blue (Halo) end of a broom battle, the animations when the ball hits them looks awesome. Did you do that solely with a bunch of images in SFML, or did you use some outside program?

Hapax

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Re: My Practice Beginner Games
« Reply #19 on: September 08, 2015, 01:23:43 pm »
Blue (allies) vs red (enemies) is a rather common standard amongst games. It can't be 'credited' to Halo  :P

The paddle animations are frame animations that were drawn manually in an image editor.
Here's the spritesheet (click for full size):


Glad you like the animations  :)


The 'idea' behind the graphics is that the ball is electrically charged and the current charge is passed to the paddle when it touches it. The paddles then directs that charge to the pole at the back which, I guess, would then remotely send a signal to the ball to speed up. Meanwhile, after the ball's charge is lost, it regenerates a new one from its centre.

Although this 'story' is not necessary here, especially since it's not explained in the game, I still felt it gave me some direction for how the animations should act.
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Cryonic

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Re: My Practice Beginner Games
« Reply #20 on: September 08, 2015, 09:18:38 pm »
Yeah, your right. The Allied/Soviet armies from Command & Conquer: Red Alert are more notable. lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxVIREh915A
« Last Edit: September 08, 2015, 09:22:37 pm by SFML_Guy »

Hapax

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Re: My Practice Beginner Games
« Reply #21 on: September 08, 2015, 11:48:50 pm »
Haha. Fair enough.
I've found that the blue/red de facto standard is even present in MMORPGs.

There's a technical reason for the colours, by the way. It's due to the fact that we generally see green as good/okay and red as bad/danger. However, due to the commonness of red-green colour blindness, blue (or blue-green) often replaces green.
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Otherian

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Re: My Practice Beginner Games
« Reply #22 on: September 09, 2015, 11:42:26 pm »
Mhm, looks nice! I like the elctro-theme and the fitting sounds.
How long did it take you to get the game finished?

Imo the reflecting of the ball is a little bit "easy". As it is right now its really hard to beat the NPC cause he just moves with the ball and you dont have the tools necessary to get a big direction change. It would be nice if you would reflect stronger in one direction if you hit the ball with a corner of the paddle or smth like this.

SpeCter

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Re: My Practice Beginner Games
« Reply #23 on: September 09, 2015, 11:54:36 pm »
To me it looks like the ball gets faster and its trajectory gets curvy if you cut it fast enough, could be my imagination though

Otherian

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Re: My Practice Beginner Games
« Reply #24 on: September 10, 2015, 12:19:57 am »
To me it looks like the ball gets faster and its trajectory gets curvy if you cut it fast enough, could be my imagination though
Nah, it is definitely this way but the overall effect is kinda small and negligible. You taking a huge risk of moving the paddle this fast only to get the ball slightly curvy and eventually score a point after 5 "moving-reflects". I think it would be nice to induce a bigger reflection-change independent of the speed you move the paddle but dependent on the area in which the paddle gets hit (center=ideal reflection | corners=steep reflection).

Hapax

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Re: My Practice Beginner Games
« Reply #25 on: September 14, 2015, 03:47:13 pm »
Thanks for the interesting feedback.

I always thought that the original pong-style of reflecting at a difference angle depending on where it hit it was odd considering that it's a completely flat surface.

The ball speeds up after each hit and the opponent is locked to a maximum speed. Use this to your advantage to overcome its skill.

you dont have the tools necessary to get a big direction change
Consider using spin on the ball to make the angle more vertical to increase its chance to pass the opponent.
Spin is affected more as the speed increases. It's often better to just stick to a short rally to get the speed up and then create some angles!

Spin is, as SpeCter mentioned, created by 'cutting' the ball.

There is a glitch, which I left in on purpose, that makes the opponent get confused and move to the bottom if the ball is spinning to anti-clockwise by a specific amount (it's -10). It's possible to do this on the first hit, which means that you win that point  ;)
(If you spin it anti-clockwise on the first hit and it bounces off the wall (top of the window) at around the opponent's score, you should get the point)

By the way, the opponent doesn't just "stick to the same position of the ball", it actually moves to a place in front of it, a little more like humans do  ;)

Mhm, looks nice! I like the elctro-theme and the fitting sounds.
Thank you :)

How long did it take you to get the game finished?
Modified the code a small amount each day. It took 13 days from
"Create Simple Ball"
to
"Finalize"

Here is the complete list of commits :)
« Last Edit: September 14, 2015, 04:04:14 pm by Hapax »
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Hapax

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Re: My Practice Beginner Games
« Reply #26 on: September 14, 2015, 04:05:03 pm »
Currently trying to decide on next game being Space Invaders or Asteroids  ;D
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shadowmouse

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Re: My Practice Beginner Games
« Reply #27 on: September 14, 2015, 06:15:05 pm »
1 vote for space invaders. I want to see what cool spin you can do on it.

SeriousITGuy

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Re: My Practice Beginner Games
« Reply #28 on: September 16, 2015, 09:16:07 am »
After Pong I would go for Breakout, one can add interesting features to Breakout ;)

Mortal

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Re: My Practice Beginner Games
« Reply #29 on: September 16, 2015, 01:05:23 pm »
me too i vote for space invaders, it is easy and fun,
btw, i really like your mini-libs it's awesome. i will use them in my next game ;)