As a challenge I thought I’d try to implement the Minimum Spanning Tree algorithm, and have a play with it. My code is based off the excellent Coding Train video on the same topic which you can watch here. It’s where I got the code from, and then mixed in some code from the Arrays of Objects video too.
This week I took part in the One Lone Coder 2019 game jam. The theme of this was “destruction”… My entry was started Friday, a mere 48 hours before the deadline. Yes, a week long jam where I had a whole seven days to come up with an idea was started 48h before the end…
The main issue I had this time was thinking up an idea that felt good enough to be a game. I had a bunch of half-ideas, but none of them seemed that great. Since the theme was quite broad, I could have knocked out any kind of generic shooting game, stuck on some pretty explosions and called it done. It didn’t feel like a particularly exciting game idea though so I ditched those kinds of ideas and looked around for some better inspiration.
Between the 9th and 16th August 2019 I took part in the Godot Wild Jam #12. Let’s go through what it was like, and the things I learned this time.
It’s been a long time since I entered a game jam, the last ones being the One Game a Month jams back in 2014. This one was the GMTK Game Jam 2019
Last time I explained in detail how the whole system worked. This time I will focus on the component system, as it is quite complex. Using it isn’t complex, but I’m trying to mimic Unity’s functionality that was written in C#. Functionality that is partially implemented within the editor and doesn’t relate directly to typing in code. I have no idea how Unity really does this, but the solution I have come up with seems tidy enough and fits neatly within a single C++ header.
Game controllers on computers are somewhat irritating to manage compared to a console. Has the user plugged in an XBox controller? A PS4 controller, or have they obtained some random USB controller they found on eBay?
Coping with this in SDL was difficult, with SDL just telling you “button 13 pressed” or “joystick axis 4 moved”, which is great except all your code really wants to know is “did the user just press the A button?”.
SDL_GameController fixes all this, and it needs better documentation, so this is my attempt at providing some useful information.
Straight forward instructions on how to rearrange algebraic equations, all wrapped up in a nice free PDF to download. Don’t fear maths or algebra again!
This is going to be the first part in a continuing series where I try to explain how and why I’m creating my own game engine using C++ and the SDL library. My engine isn’t going to do anything amazing, but will borrow ideas from other engines I’ve used before such as Unity.
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Back in the mists of history, sometime around the 90s it was quite common for games and demos to display text on the screen. Since we’re talking about old computers with barely any usable RAM, the text was stored as images. A giant single image with every character placed within it. To display words programmers had to be a bit inventive. That’s the topic of today’s post.
