Mario Vs. Donkey Kong

[TheOneTrueGod]

Hey, this is my first post here, and i'd just like to get some feedback from people other than my friends. This is basically a remake of mario vs donkey kong. Its still a work in progress, and you kinda have to guess where the exit is, but in most cases its pretty obvious. (Point farthest away from you.) Example, in the first level, you have to rise above the top of the screen to exit the level. Anyways, please give any feedback you have.

P's out, TOTG

*EDIT*
New version near bottom of this page.

[Neo]

Its a good start. Try using view.update to get rid of the flicker.

[Cervantes]

Welcome to the forum.
Very nice game. The best part about it is the level design. The second and third levels were quite challenging.
To make things less flikery, you need to use View.Update and View.Set ("offscreenonly"). Check the help file, or check the turing tutorials section.
Also, GlobeTrotter made a platformer kind of like this. You can see the thread here. I like your level design better, because he only had mice that walked back and forth and there wasn't all that much potential to the difficulty. The barrels are great though.
Anyways, I mentioned his platformer because a.) it's open source so you could check it over if you want and b.) he had some code that produced an absolutely incredible main character. It changed when you jumped and everything: you must check it out. Use the search function.
Your collision detection is a bit off. Sometimes I can go into a wall from the side, and once I jumped and kind of went into the wall above me then slowly fell out.
Because you are using whatdotcolour, you could make your levels in paint (or whatever drawing application you want) and just load the picture as a background image and everything will work off that. It would make level design easier. You just have to make sure you get the colours right!
Also, on that collision detection note, you might want to go through a for loop that checks every pixel directly below the character, for example, rather than just checking one pixel. You would go through a for loop from one pixel below the circle to the value of the yspeed (rounded up) number of pixels below the circle. This would prevent you from EVER falling through something, provided you are directly over it.
Long ago I was helping Flea on jumping and whatdotcolour collision detection. You can find that discussion thread here. In it, a few posts down, I posted a module for whatdotcolour detection. You may wish to study it. I seem to recall finding a flaw in the logic of that code, and I remember fixing it, though I'm not sure if what I've got posted there is the fixed code or not. Nonetheless, that error would, essentially, never come into play, iirc. It was more of a, "once I fix this, it will be perfect (and probably overkill)" error. And when I say perfect, I mean that no collisions would go unnoticed; I'm sure it could be made more efficient.
One last thing. I noticed for your collisions between the character nd the barrels you used the distance formula. Since you've got Turing 4.0.5, you could use the built in Math.Distance function, and it would be a bit more readable.

Best of luck!
Cervantes

[Delos]

Not too bad...

A few suggestions:
Your code is pretty bad so far. You've got a *lot* of good stuff going on, you just need to tidy it up. Look up tutorials on types and records. Learn to use procedures and functions more often.

Work towards creating more dynamic code. Instead of manually hardcoding values for the positions of objects in your levels, create procedures to handle that. Then make some form of input (eg. files) that the procs will read from and create out of.
Think about it like this: if you have a series of variables (of even just one) that undergo changes several times during your proggie, or potentially could, then why not make a function to expidite it all?

Learn "offscreenonly" and View.Update. It will fix your animation glitches.

Right now it'd be pretty difficult to implement a working exit condition. Instead of having seperate loops for each level, once you've implemented much of the above you'll just need one loop and you can 'exit when lives < 0'.

A generally more practised method of input is to have it in your 'main loop', that comes at the end of you proggie. It makes a little bit of sense since you're input should take some amount of priority. It seems to work with what you have now...but your collision detection and everything else could be designated into seperate procedures instead.

You need to check your arrays of 'barrels'. When I went from one level (Lvl 2 I think) to the next, it had not cleared all their attributes and thus I started out with a bunch of dots all over the screen that shouldn't have even been created yet.

Don't think that variables are the only way to go. Use constants if you want, such as for your gravity settings (assuming these don't change).

It's a good start. Keep at it, it's got a lot going for it.
+ bits.

[MysticVegeta]

Its pretty good, highly addictive. Except sometimes the lives go in negatives

[TheOneTrueGod]

Hey, thanks for your input. I designed the levels as it was so that it would be really easy to design new levels (in fact, i have some guy in my class designing levels, and he's never used turing before), but the paint idea is a good one.

I'll work on it, repost it some time later.

P's out

[jamonathin]

Yeah pretty cool game, Good setup. I have't read through cervantes and delos' comments, but I'm sure they said the same thing im gonna say. Just use cls and View.Update, dont draw overtop of the player with a white ball. Speed up the game a little bit, I never thought I make it to the top of level 3 today. And check when you restart levels, that you reset all ablls to the very top.

Good Game

+ 10 Bits

[[Gandalf]]

Wow, good game. I spent a long, long time trying to beat level 2 yesterday, and finally did it today. Level 3 is pretty hard too...

If you had used procedures, the code would be a lot A LOT easier to read for anyone other than yourself.

I give it a 9/10, although its not coded perfectly, it's fun, and replayable. And what are games about? being fun and replayable .

Try improving it a bit, I would play it some more.

[gohan]

Nice Job TheOneTrueGod!!! It took me two time to beat the whole thing.
I thought that it was awesome, especailly the last level...lol...that was pretty fast barrell's rolling upwards(nice)

GOOD JOB MAN!!!

[c0bra54]

WOW!

by far a geat entry, i won't bother saying the samething as everyone else about View.Update and stuff, but yeh great game.. and omg lvl 3 got sohard... lol

this is what i meen ppl, these little games are soo addictive great job !!!

+8 Bits

[TheOneTrueGod]

Heres the new version, w/ about 6 levels total. I utilized the View.Update idea, but to redesign the code, I would basically have to redo the whole thing. Rather than do that, I'm just gonna work on some of my better programs, my ISU, and possibly study for exams next week. To give credit where its due, my friend designed the new three levels. I tried getting a nice char in there, but i failed miserably . It increased lag about twofold, and it didn't look that spiffy either, because my circle size is too small to support details. As for CLS, I don't use that because the whole thing slows down to rediculous limits.

@Delos, i'm not really sure what you mean by most of that first paragraph. I fixed the barrel not going away problem (i think), and I prefer variables, because it gives me the ability to change it any time that I want. (I like control )

@Cervantes, Main character revamp failed. Some levels allow you to have a shortcut if you know about the "Climbing up side of platform feature", and I implemented a MUCH easier way to stop the char from going through a platform (Made a max fall speed). Finally, I never knew about that Math.Distance, and now i'm kicking myself for not knowing about it. It would have come in CRAZY handy in my other progs.

Anyways, have fun w/ it. If anyone designs a level, feel free to submit it or some'n.

P's Out

*Edit -> son of a... this should fix the problem (re DL it)

[c0bra54]

ummm.. ok.. for some reason i seem to just float..

[[Gandalf]]

Wow, umm... sorry to say so but eh, its sortof messed up now. Just play it, the speeds are messed up, and reaction is delayed... You can't jump as high either Actually, I see how you added all that on purpose. Hmm. It's a bit hard now though.

[c0bra54]

ok waht just happened to it lol.. it was sooo goood!!!

[gohan]

wow, its a nice job on the your newest version!!! I haven't beat the first level yet...lol...its really hard man

Hey c0bra54, I think, but im not sure, but you have a typo..I don't think you spell "birds"; like brids...but im not sure tho..lol...

Quote:

When brids fly in the correct formation, they need only exhert half the effort.
Even in nature, teamwork builds collective laziness. - my motto