imported_peterigz
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Yeh I did think about something like that, could be quite interesting. I thought about doing it with a few sliders to affect/tweak how the random effect turns out. One for the wish list.
Yeh, it will be open source 🙂 Its very nearly there just 2 or 3 more things on the immediate to do list and we’re there I think.
Sounds like you be wanting a good “Shoot ’em up” emitter library which was one of the libraries I would like to create first. Shoot ’em ups seem like the obvious choice for lots of effects.
Laser beams would be done using line traversal of which there is an example in the example effects file, I still need experiment myself with this to get the best looking beams.
Fusion engine should be easy enough. Maybe a couple of single glow/flare particles that stay relative to the the effect, and a fire particle shooting out. You can use SetEmissionAngle in code to align it with your space ship’s direction of travel and also setvelocity and setsizex/y to tie it in with the current acceleration.
For the shield, maybe a good looking sphere particle of some kind that simply appears and fades out.
I’ll bear these in mind when creating the library.
Currently there’s no built in collision, I think its better that the user implements in whatever way suits their application. So if you have bullet particles, then create a bullet type and attach the bullet effect to that type as I did in the vaders game.
Very astute of you 😎
My gut feeling was the bullets not being tidied up properly, and I was right. This code:
'delete the bullet if it flies off of the screen
If y < - 10 Or y > GraphicsHeight() + 10
dead = True
effect.softkill()
End If
in the bullet update method accounts for bullets going off the top or bottom of the screen but not the sides…Thanks for spotting that one, will fix it.
Thanks, just fixed that meta data 🙂
I just uploaded the docmods of the module if you’re interested in knowing more about the internal workings: http://www.rigzsoft.co.uk/files/commands.html
Needs some fleshing out still, but may help you find out about some of the other things in there.
To be honest, the main thing you need to worry about when using the module is the particle manager and a few of the other things I’ve gone over in the tutorials but it could well be worth expanding on the Entity type to make it a general framework for other things, but I don’t want to move too far away from its main purpose – that of a particle engine.
It doesn’t no, it just returns self as in the code above. I guess there’s all sorts of ways/styles of doing it 🙂
Heh, I’m an idiot. I’ve worked a lot with wxWidgets and I liked how that created new instances using methods like so:
Method Create:tBullet(_x:Float, _y:Float, e:tlEffect, _bullettype:Int, _game:tVadersGame)
....
Return Self
End Method
But of course I somehow got mixed up between the function/method way of doing it and ended up somewhere between the 2. Anyway, thanks for pointing it out, I’m off to fix it on the tutorial as well lol.
Hi thomas, thanks for the interest, it’s great to hear feedback! 🙂
At the moment, I’m still not 100% certain how I’m going to sell the module. I think I’m either going to do it the way I have it laid out now, or I’m going to release the module as open source and just sell the editor on it’s own for maybe 19.95 instead. That appeals to me also.
Thanks for the comments about the web site. If you’re interested it was made using the CMS called Joomla! which made things a little easier.
As for more details about the module classes, primarily it’s for throwing particles about but all the classes are extensions of a base class called tlEntity which is a bog standard entity class for storing position, rotation scale etc., so that kind of lends itself to more generic uses on top of just particles. That’s why I make use of it in vaders, after all, why rewrite an entity class if you already have one!
Loadsprite is actually from something on the Blitzmax forums written by a guy called indiepath, link is here: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=51647#576571
Actually looking at that, loadsprite must be something I added myself. But basically it loads an image and makes a tAnimImage out of it as per that post. I should add my changes to the code archives I suppose!
I’ve already got a note on the to do list to write a tutorial or overview of the Entity class in more detail. The tutorial here on the site called Making a game from start to finish will give a little more insight also.
