zgzg2020™ The blog. Building a 2D Fighter

Россия, Я тебя люблю!

zgzg2020 — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 09:57:52 +0000

Хиддик, благодарю вас!

OpenGL error

zgzg2020 — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:04:46 +0000

The other error is the following, when I tried to compile this message came up:

error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol _main referenced in function ___tmainCRTStartup

The way to AVOID this problem is at the time when you choose a project type. The project type should be of type Win32 Project and NOT Win32 Console Application. If Win32 is chosen the error should not bother you.

My first OpenGL error

zgzg2020 — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:54:24 +0000

I was trying to compile a source code that I downloaded from Nehe Productions on Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. But it returned the following error:

‘MessageBoxW’ : cannot convert parameter 2 from ‘const char [29]‘ to ‘LPCWSTR’

The way to fix the error is to go to the project properties-> under general->change the Character Set setting to “Use Multi-Byte Character Set”

Thank you GameDev.Net, and to kind person who posted the fix.

OpenGL

zgzg2020 — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:49:30 +0000

Today I shall start my learning of OpenGL, inshallah.

The first day of school

zgzg2020 — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:15:04 +0000

I am leaving now to my first day of school of the spring semester. I registered six courses and five hours of Japanese language classes. And I plan to work in my spare time on a new game project. I haven’t decided which or what game I want to work on next. But hopefully I will do that pretty soon, at least before the end of next week. I hope to finish this project, and at try to finish a second one before this semester ends, inshallah.

Good luck to everyone out there!

I am still here!

zgzg2020 — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:21:04 +0000

I have been quiet busy in another important errand. I will be busy for at least another week, until the start of the next semester at the university.

I will try and review all of my posts here soon, and make sure that all contexts are better written.

The Jumper ( spoilers )

zgzg2020 — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:53:00 +0000

I saw The Jumper ( the movie ) today. And I was really disappointed in the quality of the movie. It is the first movie I have seen that used powerful special effects, but they did not invest much in cinematic action. The “Jump”ing was a series of camera close-up followed by a sound of a thump, then the jumper in another location, as if they were trying to avoid to capitalize of the idea of Jumping. It was almost like a TV movie. The acting was horrid, except for the main character. The writing was exactly like a television screenplay. They explained nothing whatsoever behind the Jumping phenomenon, nor did they explain anything about any of the characters’ backgrounds. It is obvious that they are aiming for a Jumper II, but they need to at least make the current one a full Jumper I before they can introduce a sequel.

FINALLY! CONNECT FOUR IS ALIVE!

zgzg2020 — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:25:43 +0000

Alhamdolilah. All targets have been met. So, I will proudly move forward to the next game! It was quiet an experience. I would like to send all my thanks to the people whom I seeked aid from their open resources on the Internet and found great deals of information, THANK YOU ALL!

I will take a short break the next couple of days, and then I will set a new game with new concepts to try and learn from.

SDL_PollEvent()

zgzg2020 — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:05:37 +0000

There are two notes I would like mention in regards to SDL_PollEvent() :
First is that when using SDL_PollEvent() in our games we must use it with a “while( SDL_PollEvent() )” and NOT “if( SDL_PollEvent() )”. To explain the reason for this we must first understand what happens with SDL_PollEvent(), and if you understand the logic of what happens, it will soon come clear as if we why we must use a while loop instead of an if statement. The in SDL, the events are stored in a queue, and with every SDL_PollEvent() function call, an event is “pulled” out of the queue and placed into our SDL_Event structure. So, imagine if we are building a fighting game, and Player1 wants to execute a dodge that requires two buttons to be pushed at the same time. That means the input handle part of our game will check two events ( two presses of two buttons) that should occur at the same time in order to output a single game logic ( a dodge ). To achieve a healthy input handling body we must PULL out all the events before proceeding to the next step of game logic. And that can be done with a while loop, and not with an if statement.

I am mentioning this because I remember reading a source code somewhere that had the SDL_PollEvent() between an if statement braces.

Second, is we must place our input handler function call(s) inside the while( SDL_PollEvent() ) (or if( SDL_PollEvent() ) if you insist ). I concluded after some testings, that SDL_PollEvent() pulls an event out of the event queue and then places it inside our SDL_Event structure, and puts a NULL value if no events are there inside the queue. Since we only handle events ONLY when they occur, the while( SDL_PollEvent() ) can act as a security valve when we put our input handler(s) inside its loop. To make it clearer, imagine if we would place our input handler(s) outside the while( SDL_PollEvent() ) loop, it will mean that will be handling events that have already been handled before, but without seeing the SDL_Event structure get reseted to NULL, meaning the input handler(s) never knew that event was over.

AI implementation delayed

zgzg2020 — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:06:31 +0000

After finishing the development of Connect Four game, the last remaining unexplored part was playing against a CPU opponent, an AI. Minimax is dubbed to be the most suitable algorithm for this very task. But, I have no experience in this type of implementation. So I had to search on the internet on how to induce this algorithm into my game. But, unfortunately I couldn’t find anything that I can understand and use. So, I decided to delay it until everything else is over, and I feel I have time enough to struggle with it without jeopardizing the game development learning curve.
So until further notice, the AI part will stay still for now. As for the code of Connect Four I want to know how to display source code in good format here on WordPress, so it can be useful for others. I will try and find that out soon.