Yesterday morning I was able to work on Billiards a bit more. 16 directional movement for the balls is now complete. Also importantly, though with some bug crunching, I managed to get the 2 player ball working as well. I still need to switch it to the second controller, but for testing I'm just using the same one.
Both player balls now move correctly, and bounce appropriately. They take turns to have a shot, and power of the shot is displayed as it builds up. I've allowed it to overflow for now as I think that is fair. The important thing to now work on is collision detection and rebounds, as that's kind of needed to finish the game.
In preparation for points, I have also now displayed the score, though that needs implementing after the collisions is in. It should be fairly easy to implement all four planned game modes (see previous post) at the same time.
As you can see, its getting a bit cramped in the corner. The power bar is currently displayed on the left of the green score, which I forgot to show off when I did a screen shot, but it builds up and then wipes when it overflows. I'm thinking the right hand side can be used for rules or displaying hit detection.
One of the things that e5frog always mentions is to be mindful of the resolution, and that some tvs at the time aren't designed to show the full resolution that the Channel F displayed, and to have a small buffer along each edge. I think once I can test this on a real tv, perhaps a CRT as well - then I might be able to judge what I can get away with, but more than likely I will adjust the play area a bit anyway (I don't think I got it quite right anyway, might have to pixel count and make some changes).
Part of me thinks collision detection and angles will be a doddle, the other part of me thinks it will be insanely hard and break the game. We'll see how it goes!
Comments