PGDmC: 2-bit Racer

[Ingemar]

I don't see a link. You mention an FTP site but where do I find that?

That was to the competition FTP site, but I also uploaded it here:

http://www.ragnemalm.se/lightweight/...submission.zip

[Ingemar]

A little project summary:

- Writing games in FPC is great fun, and can be done quite efficiently if you are focused.
- Use the modern features of FPC to your advantage! We have the best programming language but only if we use it properly.
- Game physics is hard. If you try faking it, the shortcuts get highly noticable.
- Game AI can be tricky too. It can often be hacked, but then it gets pretty dumb.
- 3D requires a lot of tools, but once you have a decent set of tools (3D modeler like Wings 3D or Blender, paint program like Pixelmator, model loading code, texture loading, linear algebra code, collision detection) then 3D is managable.
- One reason for me to write this was to make a project like the ones my students do. I don't want to get stuck teaching but never doing, only telling people to do fun things but never doing them myself. You always learn by doing.
- Trenkti y g??rble!

[Ingemar]

A little project summary:

- Writing games in FPC is great fun, and can be done quite efficiently if you are focused.
- Use the modern features of FPC to your advantage! We have the best programming language but only if we use it properly.
- Game physics is hard. If you try faking it, the shortcuts get highly noticable.
- Game AI can be tricky too. It can often be hacked, but then it gets pretty dumb.
- 3D requires a lot of tools, but once you have a decent set of tools (3D modeler like Wings 3D or Blender, paint program like Pixelmator, model loading code, texture loading, linear algebra code, collision detection) then 3D is managable.
- One reason for me to write this was to make a project like the ones my students do. I don't want to get stuck teaching but never doing, only telling people to do fun things but never doing them myself. You always learn by doing.
- Trenkti y g??rble!

Oh yes, two more conclusions:
- I got up to speed with Wings3D again and learned how to do texture mapping with it (which wasn't supported in the past).
- I learned about Cfxr, nice little utility.

[Traveler]

Sadly I cant play your game either. I wanted to make it a point to try and play the games you all made, but in this case I cant. Perhaps you or someone else is able to create a video so we can at least see your game in action?

[Ingemar]

Sadly I cant play your game either. I wanted to make it a point to try and play the games you all made, but in this case I cant. Perhaps you or someone else is able to create a video so we can at least see your game in action?

I'll try to make a video. However, it should be piece of cake to port it to Linux or Window with a computer with FPC installed. I might do that myself, but there is a startup time on that for me. (And I am also a bit busy trying to add the music.)

[Ingemar]

Now with music: http://www.ragnemalm.se/lightweight/...with-music.zip

and a video: http://www.ragnemalm.se/lightweight/twobitclip.mov
(A bit weak sound, short part of a race.)

[Ingemar]

I tried making a Windows port today. Big surprise, it is always harder than you expect. I use Unix file handling calls (FpOpen, FpRead etc) for TGA loading and OBJ loading, and replacing them with standard Pascal calls turned out to be pretty hopeless. FpRead just doesn't map well on Read, not even BlockRead. I might have done something wrong but BlockRead messed up my data badly.

So I should probably give up the portability ambitions for now. Really a pity since that is a major reason for using OpenGL. A Linux port would be much easier though.