July 2nd, 2011
Finally, jesus. Whenever I read about any sort of TIGJam or anything where someone just “threw together” a game in a day or so, I always wonder how they did collision detection. Historically, that has always been my biggest problem. Every time I’ve had to give up, or something has taken me days to fix, it’s had something to do with physics and collision detection. Am I really making it so much harder than it needs to be? Or is it just the ridiculous combination of tile-based and pixel animation that I’m trying to use? Will I ever get a method working that’s simple enough to remember and reproduce in the future, should I ever need to do this again? Or will every time require two or three days of pulling my hair out and shouting at my code and making sacrifice unto the gods of programming before it will all work as it should?
Anyways, the player’s collisions are back to normal. It does seem a lot easier than what I had going on before, and I haven’t seen any odd bugs or other problems. I think I can go back to coding the behavior of the Japan mini-boss now. After I’m done with him and the final boss, I need to start working on weapons, which is the last big addition to the side-scrolling sequences. After that, everything will be just tweaks and coding the individual enemies, though I need to force myself to make a top-down engine first. Since there’s no gravity, acceleration, friction, etc. I should be able to make a ridiculously simple collision detection engine for that part. As long as the mini-boss is taking me, due to his unique behaviors, I’m starting to think that I’ll need the rest of the next 5 months to get everything down pat.
Also, Amanda Palmer = awesome. If I ever get around to ordering that amazon.com care package for myself, I’m going to look and see if she has any other CDs out.