Escape the Courtyard is Jared Moore's implementation of Make and Escape for game1 in 15-466-f17.
For this game, I built an asset pipeline with a NodeJS script. It would listen for changes to files for files in multiple directories (given as command line arguments).
When a .xcf file changes, it runs a command to make a .png of that file. When a .info file changes, it writes a binary file (.file) containing a header with the size of the binary file and then the data. The data is expected to be 6 comma separated float values per line and is supposed to be the texture atlas mapping (minx, miny, maxx, maxy, centerx, centery). The center was never used. Some fluff was also allowed on each line but is parsed out. This was somewhat cumbersome and something I would like to change in the future. When a .cpp file changes, the code is compiled and the current process is kill and started anew. This didn't work so well so I didn't use it much.
The .file was processed using std::ifstream.read all at once.
Keypresses were tracked using SDL's GetKeyboardState. Each frame they were copied into another array prevKeys so that one could easily see detect the first frame someone pressed or let go of a key (e.g. !prevKeys[...A] && keys[...A]).
My code used Circles for area's that player could interact with. BoundedBoxes were useful for doing collisions. Both these structs had a contains method that was convenient.
Objects contain sprites, position, bounding box, and size.
A major of the code is dealing with Items. Each of the three segments of the map have their own set of Items. An item has a Circle for interaction (picking up), a field tracking what is added to the crafting inventory at the workbench if the items is brought there, and an Object. The player may hold one item at a time.
The crafting inventory was implemented with a enum bitfield which was not necessary but kind of cool.
One thing that was difficult was managing all of the items/sprites. It was a lot of work to make them interactable and placed in the right places around the map. That was made even more difficult when it was necessary that the player carried them and could go from one part of the map to another. If I had more time, I could have made a cleaner system for how items were handled in general.
I would automate the placement of bounding box collision areas somehow, maybe using an black and white image. Additionally, as I said before, I would make the pipeline more automated (maybe have something that can find the minx,miny etc. based on alpha in the images) because specifying the textures positions was cumbersome, especially before I added pixel support.
The design document was pretty clear, except for the fact that it left out where to place the items used for the crafting workbench. I decided to scatter these throughout the various segments of the map. Additionally, there was no walking animation provided, so it didn't turn out looking great. Doing the outline for interaction as specified by the design was not something I found feasible so I left that out.
This game is based on Base1, starter code for game1 in the 15-466-f17 course. It was developed by Jim McCann, and is released into the public domain.
- modern C++ compiler
- glm
- libSDL2
- libpng
On Linux or OSX these requirements should be available from your package manager without too much hassle.
This code has been set up to be built with FT jam.
For more information on Jam, see the Jam Documentation page at Perforce, which includes both reference documentation and a getting started guide.
On unixish OSs, Jam is available from your package manager:
brew install ftjam #on OSX
apt get ftjam #on Debian-ish Linux
On Windows, you can get a binary from sourceforge,
and put it somewhere in your %PATH%.
(Possibly: also set the JAM_TOOLSET variable to VISUALC.)
Open a terminal (on windows, a Visual Studio Command Prompt), change to this directory, and type:
jam
Depending on your OSX, clone kit-libs-linux, kit-libs-osx, or kit-libs-win as a subdirectory of the current directory.
The Jamfile sets up library and header search paths such that local libraries will be preferred over system libraries.