Game Development Tutorials

26. Pythagoras, Firefighers and Math

Published on 2009-07-01 05:02:00

The last and, in my oppinion, the coolest part of this tutorial is making our doggy splash water from his fire-hose. There are a lot of ways to do this… My first idea was to make him splash a stream of water in a horizontal line… But I wasn't satisfied. Then, i figured out how to make him splash wather at an angle… But that didn't make me satisfied either. Then I decided to renew my high school math knowlege, and to force this dog to splash water to the exact point where the player would c

25. Bubble bath

Published on 2009-06-09 01:44:00

Up to now, we displayed the blocks as squares filled with color. From now on, we'll display little icon images instead. If you remember, we used rectangles to define the size, and the position for each field. And that suits us just fine! So, here's a part of our code that we wrote in chapter 7:(This is a part of the code from chapter 7, method DrawField())switch (Field[v, s]){  case 0:    // Draw empty field...    break;  case 1:    // I've decided that color #1 is Blue. So, if    // t

24. Preparing the show-off

Published on 2009-05-22 04:37:00

Right, before we add all that fancy graphics, we have to prepare our form first. We'll add some additional picture boxes to hold our images. Like the one to hold the firefighter dalmatian doggy, etc… So, add the controls, and modify their properties as shown in the following tables.PictureBox(name):picDoggyBackColor:  Web > TransparentImage:  [Load firefighter doggy image]Location: 477; 186Size: 131; 201PictureBox(name):picSplashAnchor:RightBackColor:  Web > TransparentImage:  [Load water

23. Graphics!

Published on 2009-05-18 08:24:00

So, we're finally here! You had enough time to design your own graphics. Hehe... I know, I know... Your dog ate the memory stick on wich you saved the files... :P Just kidding! Feel free to download the graphics i used for the game. Here's the link:Link! (*.rar)Everything is in there!Take a look at them, and we'll continue in a couple of days!I'm really sorry that I can't write posts more frequentley. I hope things will improve soon.Enjoy!

22. Hall of fame

Published on 2009-05-06 05:07:00

There's nothing better than prooving to everybody that you're the best! And you certanly can't do that if your score isn't saved. We are now going to make a high score list. For it to work, we'll need a file, that we'll write the scores into. The scores will be consisted of the following: Score, Level, and Player Name. We'll need a new command button to show the list, and a new label to display the results in it. Add them to your game's form, and apply the next properties to them: Button(name):

21. Time for a coffe break

Published on 2009-04-30 03:22:00

Ok, we programmed almost everything that I wanted to see in our gameplay. But this tutorial is far from over. You remember the game screenshot from the first chapter? Our game doesn't look anything like that... In the next few chapters we'll add some practical functions to our game, like 'Pause' button, 'High Score' list, and then we'll move on to the decoration!Almos every game has a 'Pause' button. It's almost normal that you can't play any game without interuption. Maybe your wife sends you t

20. How about a raise?

Published on 2009-04-24 02:30:00

To make things a little interesting, we'll give the player bonuses after he completes each level. I've thought of two bonuses: One that is awarded for empty columns, and one that is awarded on top, if there are no blocks left on the game field. To calculate the 'Empty Column Bonus' I used this formula: Level * # of Empty Columns * 100. For the second bonus, I used this formula: Level * 1000. So, If a player manages to clear all block in level 4, he would recieve (4*15*100) 6000 points from the E

19. How to get a promotion

Published on 2009-04-22 02:30:00

Almost all games have levels. As the player advances, the game becomes more and more difficult. We'll do just that. We'll speed up our gameplay from level to level, and add a new color to the blocks every three or four levels... That should spice things up nicely... Uh! Oh! Another idea: let's increase the number of columns from level to level! So, that would mean that the player needs to survive 15 columns in the first level to move on, 16 in the second, and so on... Our game will not have a fi

18. Keeping score

Published on 2009-04-21 03:00:00

Every game has a way to put a value to the player's effort. In racing games that's done with time (in most cases). In tycoon games, that would be done with money. In our game, we'll just use numbers. So how should we evaluate our players effort? First of all, we have to give him points for every block he destroys. We could make our game give him more points with every new level, and some extra points for the number of different block colors for that level. And some extra scoring math: We could m

17. To help, or not to help

Published on 2009-04-20 02:12:00

So, our game is almost playable… Well, it is, but there's a lot of stuff to add… Like, random blocks appearing on the game field. The game I 'borrowed' the idea from, had these blocks apearing at radnom time intervals and random places on the game field… And those fields were cool, because, sometimes, they helped to clear you some additional blocks, and sometimes, they filled that valuable empty columns… Ok, back to the drawing board. Litteraly. Here are two examples, first one that show