my first game , simple boatracing

[micky4fun]

Hi all ,

I'le keep this text short and will post in new members bit , as i have just joined forum and bought playbasic a few days ago

well this is my first effort a simple boatracing game , first boat across the screen is the winner , thats it
press any key to start and any key for new race ,
5 boats in total numbered 5 to 1 down the screen
took me 2 days to do learning playbasic from scatch , but i must admit i did do a few basic things years ago on a atari 400
using there basic cartridge , simple print "hello" and a for next loop , that was about it

i spent the first day or 2 just going through all the demo's and examples in playbasic trying to suss out whats happening
changing a few values here and there and running the example again to see what happens.

ok thats it for here , ile post in tell us about yourself bit , later

thanks
mick

[kevin]

     Only had a quick look, but it seem pretty well put together already.   Also,  I've added a screen shot to your post, just so others can see what they're downloading.

[micky4fun]

Thanks Kevin ,

i know i cheated a bit grabbing a boat image and river back seen , not doing them myself , but that would have took ages and i did not think it was worth it for this simple game ,
saying its simple is reffering it as simple in the eyes of some of the great programmers i can see on this forum , but i dont expect myself to progress that much further ,not with my brain power , hahha

dont know what to do next , but will think of soething to put up next , but for the moment just checking out some of the commands , some i can grasp other not at the moment , but i am a begginer , taken me 4 hours looking through old posts to relize when drawing a sprite on screen then moving it that it will leave a trail behing it unless i do cls or or redraw backscreen image ,
i did not come across this problem with my game as the tileimage took care of that problem

but im having great fun sussing all this out ,, so glad i stumbled across your program ,
so dont expect anything to great to soon ,

by the way how do you get a screenshot of game in play?

great stuff
mick

[Green7]

...i dont expect myself to progress that much further ,not with my brain power...

hey micky, dont underrate yourself in every post  ;), at last you found the "search" button and got your probs solved! Rome was not built in a day... Intelligency means to me, how a person acts or reacts in a certain situation. to know a lot is not intelligency, to use your knowledge and make the best out of it, thats what it is! So, you built a game with little knowledge, and it works, means: you're smart.
learn on and on, don't hold yourself back and don't give yourself limits: if you don't even try it, you'll never know (as i like to say).

...but im having great fun...

that's what i like to hear!

by the way how do you get a screenshot of game in play?

By pressing the "PrintScreen" button on your keyboard. after that, you open a gfx prog and insert the taken pic, save it as a jpg and up it. if you press "Alt+PrintScreen" then it gets only the active window, not the whole desktop.

[micky4fun]

Thanks Green 7 for your kind words , yes im not doing to bad at the moment , i gotta say this again i just love this program , i cant keep off my p.c in my spare time , really enjoying myself , only one problem is that time is flying by it goes so quick .
been downloading and trying out all kinds of stuff on here ,, notice that you programmed the NeverDawn game , well o'boy
great program as were the other entries to the compo , you know your stuff , one day maybe for me , but logic, maths and arrays i struggle with i use the word struggle as a positive word , beacause honestly im crap , haha ,
but i will try to get an idea from all the demo's and examples im trying out and see a path to go down that i feel comfortable with
and go from there ,

thanks for the screengrab info , tried it and works great .
thanks again for finding time to post as i can see you are busy on your own site

thanks
mick

[kevin]

i know i cheated a bit grabbing a boat image and river back seen , not doing them myself , but that would have took ages and i did not think it was worth it for this simple game ,

    I actually thought that it was smart design choice.   Saves time and effort and you get a nice looking result.  Seems like a good idea to me!

dont know what to do next , but will think of soething to put up next , but for the moment just checking out some of the commands , some i can grasp other not at the moment , but i am a begginer ,

    When in doubt, do a sequel ?  :)

    What about road racing type game.  Cars on a highway,  basically the same mechanics as you've got though. 

taken me 4 hours looking through old posts to relize when drawing a sprite on screen then moving it that it will leave a trail behing it unless i do cls or or redraw backscreen image ,
i did not come across this problem with my game as the tileimage took care of that problem

        yeah, this is something different from the old school 8bit/16bit platforms such as the C64/Amiga/Nes/SNes/ Coin ops etc.    A lot of old school systems had  true hardware sprites,  the PC doesn't.  It only has hardware acceleration.    In other words software driven sprites.    True hardware sprites are totally independent playfields.   While they conceptually produce the same result. 

       One analogy that comes to mind, would be editing an old movie in film.  Lets say on one real (a) we have a bunch of backgrounds and on the other. real (B) we have the foreground action. Perhaps  some people talking.   If we overlaid a frame of film B over A and looked through it,  it'd look like the foreground action is sitting in front of the backdrop.  Even though they're two separate streams of film.   This is basically how hardware sprites/playfield works on those old consoles.    A lot more efficient, but the catch was that you've only a limited number of hardware sprites.   Systems the C64 & Amiga had 8 on them.   So hardware acceleration is how it's done today.

[micky4fun]

hi all

Thanks for sprite info Kevin , did not relize that a p.c does not have hardware sprites , yes i do recall reading years ago now that the old school computers only had so many sprites , and that on i think the atari 400/800 if you wanted a sprite with more than one colour that you needed to use more than one sprite overlapping them , did not mean much to me then as i was still struggling with basic commands in basic then .
yep a sequel with cars or planes did spring to mind , but im still going through all the examples and demo's and other programs have put up in forums , trying to see how they did stuff , but i will start getting going on my second game very soon , may try something with sprite collision or along them lines ,

ok from this point i wont keep telling you im really having fun though as im begining to sound like an old record
ile will only tell you when im not ,, haha

thanks
mick

[kevin]

Thanks for sprite info Kevin , did not relize that a p.c does not have hardware sprites , yes i do recall reading years ago now that the old school computers only had so many sprites , and that on i think the atari 400/800 if you wanted a sprite with more than one colour that you needed to use more than one sprite overlapping them , did not mean much to me then as i was still struggling with basic commands in basic then .

   Yeah, those old clunkers had lots and lots of limitations like that.   The Amiga systems had 8 sprites.  However, In the original chipset, these could  only be 16 pixels wide but an unlimited height (subject to other restrictions).    Sounds not to bad, until you discover that you can only use 8,  if you only want 4 colour sprites. Good for a mouse pointer and not much else.    As sprite channels needed to be paired to make a 16colours.  So if you wanted 16 colours you only had 4 sprites.   erm..  Not many games with 4 or less characters.   In most Amiga games, sprites were used for the player character and score/status overlays.   

yep a sequel with cars or planes did spring to mind , but im still going through all the examples and demo's and other programs have put up in forums , trying to see how they did stuff , but i will start getting going on my second game very soon , may try something with sprite collision or along them lines

What about Frogger ? - Combines number of difference challenges all in one.  Although to be honest, I can barely remember it.

[micky4fun]

hi Kevin

yes i think frogger seems a good idea to me , i was tinkering around with a golf game , but ile put that on hold for a while ,
i will get to work on a frogger type game with a twist i think ,

i have a few things to do the rest of this week and on 1 week away on holiday next week , so will be a few weeks before i start

golf game i have put on hold until i get more ideas on finding out if ball hits bunker , water etc

thanks
mick

[kevin]

golf game i have put on hold until i get more ideas on finding out if ball hits bunker , water etc

  Golf is actually a good idea.   Something like mini golf is pretty straight forward.   The bounding edges would be vectors and the different textures (types of grass/sand/water etc) in the ground could be vector also.  Although it's probably easier to use a type of pixel map and simply peek the colour under the ball and use that as the level of friction.


   Collision Zones Using Image Example