I hate coding the "Game Framework"!

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Entry posted by Cybergoth · February 17, 2007

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Colony 7

Hi there!

I really do. Of all the jobs required for creating a game, this seems to be the most boring and dreadful part. I actually even prefer writing the manual. It's the one part that requires the most bite-through in the whole process.

Coding all the state logic and thinking through all its numerous side effects, like what happens when you get killed while your last shot actually completes a level and other stuff like what RAM bytes reset to what content in which situation (game start/game over/live lost/next level/intro)

Ahhhhh. Add into this stuff like intermission screens. In Colony 7, half the game screen is still displayed (the bottom), while in the middle I display messages. You'd be surprised, what effects can happen then. Like for example, when you loose a live, I show the enemies still for a while, as they're continue wrecking your colony, then display an intermission screen. Now, at first I hadn't disabled the enemies, so they were still shooting, while the intermission screen was on - you could still see their shots hitting the ground :lol:

Another aspect, adding numerous "state conditional" branches throughout your code will use up your ROM reserves faster than you can say "blueberry pie"...

Well, I've gotten around this once again. The trick seems to be: Just start this task and don't stop until you're done. For Colony 7 that meant working almost 2 days non-stop. The problem is, when you stop somehwere during this work, you will most likely never manage to ever pick it up again :ponder: