This is just a quick update, but I was working on my map class and it now will load a level from a JSON file and also render it to the screen. The json file was kindly provided by Keith Bauer from when he used some similar tiles. I do not have the shading working yet, however, you can scroll around the map by touching the direction you wish to scroll. There’s also no collision detection yet, however, that will be coming soon. I hope to have a player wandering around the screen by the end of the day. Here’s the screenshot!
Yesterday I was working on getting sprite sheets into my code. I used zwoptex to condense all my images together, and they output a nice plist file as the control file as well. From there I used my previous established Image class to chop up the image via the control file and set each sub-image into a dictionary by its original name as the key. This allows for easy and fast access. Now I just have to utilize this in making my tile-map scroll around, and for animating my character. I haven’t yet found a decent sprite for this, but I’ll see how it goes. I’ve been combing through all the free graphics sites without any success, maybe I’ll just doodle something up real quick. I may have to write another class for regular spritesheets. My class only really supports those with a control file, not ones that are all the same size without a control file. Hopefully I’ll have a more interesting screenshot to post later today, but with my homework load, probably not.
School has been crazy busy lately so haven’t had much of a chance to update. However, finally decided on my final project so I figured I would update this and maybe track my progress on it. The name of the game is Mystical Spatula Relic: The Narcoleptic Octopus Scandal. You play a young man called into an alternate dimension to rescue the mystical spatula from the narcoleptic octopus. Â It’s a sidescrolling adventure game that will be out for the iPad within 4 weeks (if I do well 😛 ). Hopefully it should be fun to do. I’m using graphics from the lostgarden, so it’ll look kind of cartoony, but that’s what I’m looking for. I’m a bit nervous about the amount of work required, but hopefully the whole grade issue will motivate me. I guess I’ll see how it goes.
So, this has been sitting in my non-edited posts for a little while. I’ve made some pretty good progress. Had the first in-class review on thursday and it went ok. Progress so far has been wrangling with OpenGL. I utilized  a version of Apple’s Texture2d class to load up UIImages into OpenGL textures, and made a wrapper Image class for it. I made my render loop and had it draw using the DisplayLink. Currently I simply have a couple tiles drawing. Looking to the future I want to have a map loaded and drawing, and a player who can move around and scroll the screen.
Also, screenshot!
