Pretty strong animation and sound effect combo. I am proud of my use of frame counting. There’s an even better way I can think of to do the chug sound, but I will leave that alone for now.
Tomorrow, I will plan out how to make my day commits playable. (Again.)
Found a simplification.
The code originally stored boxcar locations on two independent axes (x and y). This is too complicated and was causing bugs as I introduced acceleration and speed.
I was able to greatly simplify when I realized the train track is essentially a number line wrapped into a circle. I can store a car’s location with a single number on this line and then later “unwrap” the location based on where along the track it is.
This made for very clean code that leaves no room for bugs. The location is a single value, not some arbitrary pixel location.
Next: I want to look into making the “chug” sound match frequency with the train’s speed.
Added an accelerate/decelerate effect to the train. It accelerates once every 10 frames. I’ve heard about counting frames from speedrunners and fighting game players, but now I truly know what that means 🙂
I’ll sync sound and make acceleration more incremental tomorrow.
Sidenote: Had some blog presentation improvement ideas today.
Squeeze in a little post here. Added sound effect and refined sprites. I want to make the sound a little more train-like (chugga-chugga) next.
Got the map laid out and train running! Feels solid.
Tomorrow I iron out details. Some sprites are off-center. Also will add some sound effects (and look into automating deploy of commits).
Coughing up my lungs and feeling a bit of a headache, but if I can post at a time like this, then I can do it much more often than I am now. Let’s set that precedent.
Never try to learn something on your own from the get-go. That’s like learning how to box by watching highlight reels of boxing. It is much more efficient taught from master to student.
You learn so much faster if someone can point out the next thing you are misunderstanding.
The picozines are my game dev teacher right now. Working through the Toy Train example, which is graphically intense. Will continue parsing tomorrow.
Made a little sample song today.
There’s quite a bit of music capability in here. You can assemble notes in the SFX editor with control for volume and tone, and then when you are done with your pattern, you can organize them into patterns and make music.
Plans:
-Make my sample games quickly playable through a link
-Continue through tutorials
20 Minutes A Day 