also,
while i'm there, you seem to have put in #include "allegro.h" now. I don't know about anyone else, but this doesn't work for me, I have to change it to #include <allegro.h>

Neil.

ah well thats just me, MSVC lets you add search paths if you wish, i don't have allegro in my search path. I always include libraries i use all the time in the MSVC include directory, that way i don't get mixed up with using the wrong version of anything.

and remember, when you run 'make install' that is exactly what it does, so all i was saying is #include<allegro.h> will always work for an allegro build.

but what about strtof not being in the standard string library?

Neil.

fine. i changed it to strtod. and there's a bug,naught Thomas

:no initialisation for Finished:

struct Level *LoadLevel(char *name)
{
  int Finished;
...
  while(!Finished)

anyway, attached is a screenshot.

Neil.

No problem, you can take it. Along with the grass texture, I assume?

Also, I could do the other textures you mentioned (marble, ice), and those coins and fruit. I have a few questions though.

• I figure 128x128 for textures is OK?

• What size are the coins/fruit supposed to be? 16x16, 32x32?

Also, the clouds for the background, and the water seem an easy task. I'll take a stab at it and attach the results.

I'll have to think about the grass texture. All polygons are drawn using the polygon function and non-solid fill mode, which means at present that using any sort of grass texture with a deliberate fringe wouldn't work.

Do any textures you can think of that are interesting! The level isn't designed yet so I can work around whatever you come up with.

Any (power of two) by (power of two) is fine.

They don't have to be power of two, so just pick anything that you think would look good alongside a 32x32 sprite!

I thought this might become an issue. I've tried very hard to come up with the simplest thing I can think of that uses a good range of the Allegro drawing functions (including vectors and sprites). The choice of vector levels was also intended to reduce data size so that the thing wouldn't be too much of a burden for the Allegro distribution.

Perhaps it might be smart to see what people actually finish as potential demo games and then pick the most appropriate of those? I'll consider throwing in a simple Pong clone or something on the main menu, ala Commander Keen.

Well I read his code and couldn't understand a single line of it.

Neil.

Oh right, I've done the water, one type of cloud and some cherries. Attached it, just let me know if you like it.

The water is a 192x192 (128x128 and 256x256 were either too tall or too... um, short for a 640x480 screen) tile, repeated horizontally. The cloud is antialiased and would pose a problem if the color of the background was unknown/variable/non-uniform. I can probably do pixelled clouds, but that is bound to take loads of time.

The cherry is 24x24, and other bonuses/items would be of the same size.

I don't really know. The previous demo game wasn't much of a reference. You could tell someone to look at it to learn the very basics, but if you wanted to explain most aspects of framework design, diving functionality between functions, structuring your data - it was useless. This one would allow us to say: "See, that's how you want to structure your code in a game".

If it was a pong game, it wouldn't even be worth splitting it into several files, not to mention resource management and that sort of stuff.

[EDIT]
Well, you can't do texturing (even in 2d) without maths, now can you? But I agree it might be a little too complex for real newbies... I don't really know.

Oh and about the grass - I probably could do a solid texture that would just appear to have a rough edge, while really being an 8x8 (16x16) block. I'll try that now...

Bear in mind, all submitted games will be made available for download anyway. Even if it would be too complex, it would still be available as an extra `advanced' demo game.

Last I looked, it still needed a lot of comments anyway. That's also part of the problem with the current demo game: poor commenting.

Correction: `that's how you not want to structure your code'
The problem was that although it did things like timers, seperating logic and drawing and handling multiple update methods, it didn't do so in a clearly readable and intelligable way.

By the way, do you have a main character sprite yet? Would it be a bad idea to ask Johan Peitz for an Alex sprite for that? Afterall, Alex is Allegro's mascot...

Well it isn't commented yet! All you really need to understand mathematically is the dot product so once it is all commented up and some of the struct members given slightly less arcane names it should be very straight forward. I consider making the code readable an integral part of producing a meaningful Allegro Demo Game, so I was hoping to get some people to specifically check it for readability and to spend time editing it from that point of view.

A quick show of hands - did anybody here ever actually look at the old demo game? When I was starting out I considered the ex* sources to be helpful and once I'd conquered them I didn't find the demo program at all helpful.

That's why it was intended that the background would be composed of a tilemap.

And Sonic used a tilemap for display only. Collisions/etc were done on vector versions of all the tilemap pieces. Which is even more 'complicated'.

EDIT:

If Alex the Alligator has at some point been accepted as the Allegro mascot then nobody bothered telling me about it. I've never played the thing and Google image search just reveals some ugly looking Gameboy style graphics. From where would I learn about the thing?

NB: Firefox acting oddly & won't let me use the clipboard. Or the cursor keys. Need to post & edit.

It's an Allegro demo. Hence, it should use Allegro and only that.

Thomas: No comments on the art?

Sure, attached is a picture containing:

- soil texture and ice texture, along with "floor textures" for them. The latter are useless though if there is no aligning/rotation, so disregard them.
- five bonus objects (random yummy foodstuffs)
- water tile
- antialiased cloud

Pretty much everything I've done so far. BTW, have you contacted amarillion about the character sprite?

Well, I could try and do that, but... I can handle pixelling objects, but people are above my head. Every character I tried to pixel and animate ended up in the trashcan.

After all, I think I'll try. I'll let you know when and if I manage to produce something worthwhile.

http://behappy.boo.pl/temp/running.gif

Alright, this is an 8-color sketch of the running animation. If you're happy with the quality of animation I'm capable of, I can pixel over this sketch to make a real character. If you're not happy with that quality (I know I'm not entirely happy with it ), we'll have to wait until Amarillion will be available.

By the way - the sprite is 36x36, not 32x32... hope that doesn't spoil everything .