Snaxe: Hour 3

Submitted by davidc on Mon, 12/09/2011 - 22:58

OK, so I got bored after dinner and decided to plunge on tonight regardless. Mostly graphical changes this hour: now using the Nokia font; made the images larger and redrew them; gave the snakes a different head depending on which way they're facing; added screen glare (to be redrawn later); ensure a certain number of rabbits are available "most" of the time (depending on number of players); and a few minor technical changes.

Snaxe: Hour 2

Submitted by davidc on Mon, 12/09/2011 - 20:16

Hour 2 went well, after a minor technical glitch. The game is now "fully playable", though I've slowed it down to test. Each snake is independently controlled, and has its own colour, name and score. Snakes no longer grow infinitely, they now only grow when they eat a rabbit (which also increases their score). Powerups and skulls decay after a while. When a snake dies, it turns into skulls for a while too. Rabbits are randomly placed every so often. Maybe skulls should be too.

Snaxe: Hour 1

Submitted by davidc on Mon, 12/09/2011 - 19:02

So, apparently you can write Snake in about an hour. I wonder if I've set myself enough of a challenge. Here it is, playing fine. Done so far: snake movement, snakes hitting snakes, snakes hitting themselves, snakes hitting walls, snakes hitting powerups, snakes hitting obstacles, snakes headbutting each other. Next up: scoring and control of multiple snakes.

Snaxe: Hour 0

Submitted by davidc on Mon, 12/09/2011 - 17:38

This Friday there's a video games party at my atelier, celebrating and sharing video games, old and new. I've been meaning to write a new game for people to try out on the day, but of course I've been too busy to think about it and didn't remember until the weekend. Then I got drunk and didn't remember until today.

It's not a Kinect, damnit

Submitted by davidc on Sun, 14/08/2011 - 02:46

It's not a Kinect, damnit. But what is it? What are these strange pictures davidc keeps posting, where is it leading, and will he even receive the parts in time?

I'll be presenting my "magic wall" art project next Thursday evening at the next SCOPE session. I'm not even going to try and describe it in text - it seems to defy definition - so come along to Atelier Überall to check it out, or tune in to watch it live.

Teensy USB and DL2416 display

Submitted by davidc on Thu, 14/07/2011 - 03:42

It's been a long time since I've played with any microelectronics - the last time was about 15 years ago for my A/S level Electronics project with a venerable 1802 processor, already 20 years old at the time. I wired up a massive array of LED matrix displays and had it controlled by an 1802, one SRAM with program code, another with display data, and around 10 breadboards worth of demuxes, ripple counters and drivers. It was pretty dim, but it worked.

How to make Ctrl-Tab switch tabs in a JTabbedPane

Submitted by davidc on Sun, 03/07/2011 - 17:19

When using tabbed panes, the user expects Ctrl-TAB to move to the next tab, and Ctrl-Shift-TAB to move to the previous tab. This is not the default behaviour in Java, which uses Ctrl-TAB to move to the next focusable component. This allows you to escape from a text box, where pressing TAB alone would insert a tab character into the box, but it is not what most users would expect to happen in most instances.

Experimental Gameplay: Wise Up!

Submitted by davidc on Sun, 27/02/2011 - 18:17

The Challenge

This game was written in seven days for the Experimental Gameplay Project February challenge.

The challenge was to design a game using only ASCII characters (letters, numbers, punctuation). I've held true to the spirit of this theme, and although I've spruced it up with some background graphics and a user interface, this doesn't affect the fundamental gameplay which is pure text.