Sparkles!

Just got the Robotron-style effect working in Shooty. Runs at a nice speed too I discovered that if I turn off the screen-erasing every frame the explosion looks rather cool. Once I work out how to clear the screen pixel-by-pixel, erasing only the ones I draw, the effect will have several different modes - vertical Robotron style, horizontal Robotron style, Defender ‘explode into an expanding shape’ style, and whatever you get when not bothering to remove pixels in the above. If I can control the erasing properly the sprite should ’smear’ across the screen then dissolve from the middle outwards.

Once I’ve got the game running at a playable speed (it goes wild when I turn on compiler optimisations!) and a few weirdo bits have been fixed, I’ll release a test version to the World

The baddie AI is complete, I have a system to create new levels, and there are some sound effects in there somewhere. The game is almost complete. All I’m doing now is adding flashy effects and checking there’s no gaping holes in the code. The mess that was the player’s control code has been rewritten, as has all the baddie AI.

The sprite library I’ve been writing at the same time is working very nicely. Since it just keeps track of what sprites exist and where they are, it doesn’t add much overhead to the running code.

Once the game is playable and there aren’t too many bugs left, I’ll start something new. Something tile-based I think. I can then repair Shooty and add extra polish as time goes on.

Tags: GBA, Programming