Space Shooter Game Editor

**robert83** · 11-01-2013, 09:48 PM

I DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Code:

procedure TMain.TestExecute(Sender: TObject);
var x,y : integer;
    new_line : boolean;
begin
  if Offset < Map.map_length-14 then    // -14 , Number of Tile Lines Drawn on Screen
    begin
    inc(Counter,1);         // I'm using this to check if I've scrolled down one tile Height (32), if I did
    if Counter = 32 then    // then I'm increasing Offset by 1 and reseting Counter to 0, Offset is used to tell the new line of sprites which Line of TileData
      begin                 // to read from the array
        Inc(offset,1);
        Counter:=0;
      end;

    for y:=0 to 15 do
      begin
        for x :=0 to 19 do
          begin
            BackGround[x,y].Y:=BackGround[x,y].Y-1;
            BackGround[x,y].AnimPos:=AnimTable[y+Offset,x];
            Edit2.Text:=formatfloat('####.##',AnimTable[y+Offset,x]);
            if BackGround[x,y].Y = -32 then
              begin
                BackGround[x,y].Dead;
                new_line := true;
              end;
            if new_line = true then
              begin
                BackGround[x,y]:= TBackGround.Create(SpriteEngine);
                Edit9.Text:=inttostr(offset);
                BackGround[x,y].ImageName:= Images.Item[map.Lines[offset+15,x].ImageIndex].Name;
               if BackGround[x,y].PatternCount = 1 then
                  begin
                    BackGround[x,y].DoAnimate:=false;
                  end
                else
                  begin
                   BackGround[x,y].AnimStart:=0;
                   BackGround[x,y].AnimCount:=map.Lines[offset+15,x].AnimCount;
                   BackGround[x,y].AnimSpeed:=map.Lines[offset+15,x].AnimSpeed;
                   BackGround[x,y].AnimPos:=AnimTable[y+Offset,x];
                   BackGround[x,y].DoAnimate:=true;
                   BackGround[x,y].AnimLooped:=true;
                  end;
                BackGround[x,y].X:=x*32;
                BackGround[x,y].Y:=480;
                BackGround[x,y].Z:=1;
                new_line:=false;
               end;
          end;
      end;

  end;
end;

Had it reversed on AnimTable[x,y]... [y+Offset,x] is correct... damn I'm getting lost on my arrays... anyway I'll clean up the code a bit... and post the full source with the exe here... I've tried it again just to make sure...it works...no matter what I do
I scroll down a bit ...wait....scroll again....or scroll completely to the end... the result...perfectly synced sprites the way I like em...

EDIT : something is still off... I'll need to check the code ...I'm getting lost in my arrays.... I'm not reading the animpos correctly from the array for the vertical line... will recheck

Greetings
Robert

**robert83** · 17-01-2013, 12:27 PM

Hi,

finally did it, it works now. Animation is synced, I'm using another array to keep track of the animations, I've modified the program a bit
if you decide to run it, you select FILE , OPEN MAP, select demolevel2.map from the directory of the program, then you click on TEST button
and it will start scrolling trough the map, when it reaches the end of it, it starts again.

Next I'm planing to add layer2 , any tips for me how to do it properly ? (SilverWarrior)

Also... I wonder , how I could do with this editor that so called "Paralax" scrolling . I was thinking that maybe I would create layer 1 that would be shorter, and layer 2 that would be longer . For example if Layer1 would be 30 lines long, Layer2 which would go at twice the speed would be 60. But now comes the problem, I would need to define map length for layer1 and layer 2 as well right ? How would you do it ?

I would like to know how I could create the following for example.

I saw the following in games which I liked . ( I'll try to describe how that seemed to me ) (JamesTown pc game)

Layer 1 was a very slow moving (far) background
Layer 2 was a normal moving background for example flying mountains, or other objects
Layer 3 was clouds which moved the fastest

Rright now I'm having problems even trying to figure out how to do it properly , how to start thinking about it. A few hints would be much appriciated.

Greetings
Robert

**SilverWarior** · 17-01-2013, 08:42 PM

Found a bug

In your demo map at the ofset 75 those fast blinking Landing Lights are actually causing water animation to animate faster. I haven't yet looked through your code to figure out why this is happening. Will do as soon as I find some more time.
Another bug which probably isn't important for editor itself. During map testing the colision procedure doesn't take into account smoth sprite movment and if you do click to try placing tile at specific location during test phase it is placed in wrong line and whole map jumps either up or down can't tell exactly.

As for Paralax scrolling I personally have no expirience with this but I will take a look at this approach to learn more about it.

**robert83** · 17-01-2013, 09:42 PM

Hello Thank you, but that is not a bug, I did that on purpose to see how it would look, I tried to create a river sorta thing with faster water...moving , and since the river goes into that smaller one the first two tiles are working at the same speed the rest are slower. That is a bug in my drawing , that is being lazy and not creating proper tiles... gona have to start it sooner or later. I think I will probably start working on my layer1 tiles , making em a lot more better...but it sure takes a hell of a lot of time to make em look good....I think I will do a different kind of water... don't like this... I was thinking about some cooler tilesest where the water is moving up and down on the shore... I think I don't need to make the water actually move everywhere...

As for the Editor thing, I did not intend to use it that way. I need to disable controls during the scrolling, but since it's intended for personal use to be used by only me...I'm not sure if it's worth it.

I was having a hell of a time with making the scrolling work, could not figure out why it would not work with my DrawSprites routine... so I needed to delete all the sprite lines before I recreated them again for scrolling... otherwise I was getting errors.
My original scrolling was from bottom to top and stop. And If I used DrawSprites procedure to draw the initial 15 bottom sprites and then create one in top of it... and then move it down, and add one at top till I reach the end. If I clicked on anything no matter
where on the drawing surface I got an error... I could not figure out why, then I started playing with the scolling trough the map and start again and then I noticed why, or I think why... the lines the way I recreated them were not in order...

Example I started like this : (for simplicity 4 lines only)
0
1
2
3

And depending on my map length but when I reached the end it was like this (probably)
2
3
0
1 -> this was destroyed because in our example the screen can use say 3 lines

Anyway this is something that I probably should not bother with, because I don't intend to use the editor and the scrolling at the same time...

So then let's postpone the paralax thing for now. If you can give me a few hints on how would you do the aditional layers ? Should I just simply add another TMapLine2 ... TMapLine3 ... TMapLine[n] ?

Also was thinking about the following (think it's doable...and I think it would look kinda cool...) I was thinking of adding speed to each line of the map. Meaning I could set the speed if I wanted to at line level, kinda like scripting the map a bit...
For example lines 1..12 would go at 8x... then til 75 I would go at 2x.... then at line 100 would go at 8x etc... So I could change the speed of the level depending on the situation, more enemies less enemies , escape etc...

Was thinking that I could implement it like this :

To the right side of my Panel1 (Asphyre surface) I would ad 15 edit boxes... , when i create the map I would specify the default speed and would fill up the array with it till end
Going down and up on the map I would fill the edit boxes with the apropriate speeds from the array ... and I could also change them.

Right now looks like this :

Code:

  TTileData=record
         ImageIndex: integer; // Tile Number
         AnimStart: integer; // Tile Animation Start Position
         AnimSpeed: Single; // Tile Animation Speed
         AnimCount: Integer; // Tile Animation Count
        end;

Would change it to this :

Code:

  TTileData=record
         Speed:integer // Scrolling Speed  (2,4,6,8,16)
         ImageIndex: integer; // Tile Number
         AnimStart: integer; // Tile Animation Start Position
         AnimSpeed: Single; // Tile Animation Speed
         AnimCount: Integer; // Tile Animation Count
        end;

I think I would use another 2 layers for background (that is just background nothing else) ... so I could place grass for example, and trees above grass...

The frouth layer would be by the current plan the layer that would tell the map for example that at 19,4 spawn enemey ship , type, life, speed, direction type, firing type etc... or spawn cloud , birds , etc... which means this last layer would have a lot of variables , I would like to do the magic at the map editor level . So I can create the "randomness" by hand... one ship here other ship there... or a stationary turret here there , but right now I only mentioned it so you can point me to the right direction with your helpfull tips / hints . Only thingking about it right now kinda overwhelms me. Gona do it by baby steps.

Anyway think I'll watch a movie now

Nighty night!

**SilverWarior** · 18-01-2013, 12:40 AM

GOOD news! I have finally managed to prepare development enviroment so I'm finally able to Compile and Debug your program. So expect more practical solutions (code samples) in future.

BAD news! After quick debug tracing through your code I see that there are several DANGEROUS sections (even if Asphyre engine doesn't manages to initialize you still try to initialize SpriteEngine which then fails as it needs already initialized Asphyre engine) which might lead to many bugs.

So what I'm gonna do first is study your code, try to find this sections and also try to fix them. Might take some time.
Then I'm gonna make some quick test to check SpriteEngine capability so I get some idea what we might be able to get out of it. This would probably largely affect my futurte suggestions.

As for the layers I was thinking about making a system which would alow you to use as many layers as you need (in editor you simply add new layers when needed). And if SpriteEngine is capable of working with thextures which also support Alpha chanell we might use so caled texture layering where you combine two textures to gain desired end effect. For instance:
Layer1: Contains simple texture which basically defines the overal colour of the water.
Layer2: Contains texture which has some parts semitransparent. This texture also controls water animation.
Layer3: Contains land texture. Part of this texture is transparent so water texture from below can be seen (shoreline).
So now we only need to figure out how much will each layer drop the overal performance (more layers more work for Graphics engine).

As for controlling the scroll speed I was thinking about storing the information about scroll speed in the TLine itself so that when you create specific line of sprites you also check if scroll speed should be adjusted.
Actually I was thinking about proposing you to implement some ingame event system with which you could contoll enemy spawning, maybe even change in enemy AI, scroll speed, and even controll sprites animations.
And when I'm talking about controlling sprite animations I have idea of implementing system which would alow you to easily synchronize animation between varios tiles and alow full controll on theese animations (stop them at any time, set them to specific position, change their speed, etc).
So you could have something like this in your game: Destroying a power statkion on an island causes all the lights to go blank, radars to stop turning, defensive turets to stop fireing at you etc. Posibilities are almost endles.

Yes yes implementing all theese ideas won't be an easy task but I'm sure it would be woth the efford in the end. And yes I'm preapred to give you a hand in all this now that I have development platform ready.

Wait when I'm gonna work my own projects

**robert83** · 18-01-2013, 10:12 PM

Yeaaaa!!!

, THANK YOU VERY VERY VERY MUCH!!!

I've modified my TEST button a bit

Code:

procedure TMain.Button7Click(Sender: TObject);
var i: integer;
begin
  for i:=0 to SpriteEngine.Count-1 do
    begin
      if SpriteEngine.Items[i].ImageName <> 'selection.image' then
        begin
          SpriteEngine.Items[i].Dead;
        end;
    end;
  if StartDemo = false then
    begin
      StartDemo:=true;
    end
  else
    begin
      StartDemo:=false;
      RanOnce:=false;
      CreateSprites;
      DrawSprites;
    end;
end;

Also modified the Scollmap procedure :

Code:

        if offset in [0..15] then offset:=Map.map_length-15;  // set offset to map end - one screen of tiles (0..14)

This way if I press the test button and I'm not on the first screen +1 line... I can start and stop the scrolling, then start it again from same position... think this is more usefull for the editor, say I feel something is off does not go well with the rest of the map I can stop it right there edit...and then continue the scrollmap .

For the BAD news , where to I do that ? on Form.Create ?
Is this that DANGEROUS thing ?

Code:

  AsphyreDevice1.Height:=480;     // Asphyre Height
  AsphyreDevice1.Width:=640;      // Asphyre Width

  AsphyreDevice1.WindowHandle:=Panel1.Handle;    // Asphyre uses Panel1 as rendering surface
  AsphyreDevice1.Initialize;                    // Initialization
  if AsphyreDevice1.Initialized = false then      // if failes displays message and terminates program
    begin
     ShowMessage('Error initializing Asphyre!');
     Close;  // <---- if the the initialization fails , program closes
    end;


  ASDB1.FileName:=ExtractFilePath(Application.ExeName)+'TileSet.asdb';  // path to databse ( tilesets )
  SpriteEngine := TSpriteEngine.Create;                                 // Creates the SpriteEngine
  SpriteEngine.Image:= Images;                                          // Sets SpriteEngine to use Image source
  SpriteEngine.Canvas:= AsphyreCanvas1;                                 // Sets SpriteEngine to use AsphyreCanvas
  Selection := TSelection.Create(SpriteEngine);                         // Creates the Selection Squire

For the speed I'm not quiet sure how should I add it to this ? Quote: "As for controlling the scroll speed I was thinking about storing the information about scroll speed in the TLine itself so that when you create specific line of sprites you also check if scroll speed should be adjusted."

Code:

  TMap=record
         name:string[20];  // Name of the Map
         map_length:integer; // Length of the Map
         Lines: array of TMapLine;  <--- I should add here somehow the Speed , but how?
       end;

As for the Layers ... the one you mentioned makes sense... but I don't even know where to begin . Texture layering sounds good, only problem is I have no idea how to implement.

I would probably have to change my Map record a bit...

Code:

  TTileData=record
         ImageIndex: integer; // Tile Number
         AnimStart: integer; // Tile Animation Start Position
         AnimSpeed: Single; // Tile Animation Speed
         AnimCount: Integer; // Tile Animation Count
        end;
  TMapLine=array [0..19] of TTileData; // Stores one line of tile data
  TLayers=array of TMapline; // stores all layers of Mapline
  TAnimTable=array of array [0..19] of single;
  TMap=record
         name:string[20];  // Name of the Map
         map_length:integer; // Length of the Map
         Layers: array of TLayers; // stores each layer of the Entire map [0,0..19] , first value is 0 till map_length (vertical), second value is 0..19 (horizontal)
       end;

Now I'm really starting to get lost in them Arrays, will have to start drawing I guess ....

Now if I understood you correctly , we might get away with somehow only using 320 sprite's and adding to them all the layers? (1,2,3,4,5,6...n) (instead of creating 320 sprites for each layer ) .
Unfortunately I don't know how to begin, how can I later say edit only layer2 sprites even if I have layer3,layer4 or layern on "top" of it . Was trying to google (damn Asphyre ... always brings up ACER laptops, and only a few valuable hits...)

Greetings
Robert

**SilverWarior** · 19-01-2013, 01:37 AM