The YUNG's Blog

RTS games are not made as such in Scratch because it was not build for it. However, I wanted to attempt and see what Scratch can do with RTS games. I did new experiments for this game including scrolling for the screen. As I see other people do scrolling before, I knew it was possible so I attempt to scroll around an area just like what Warcraft did.

The code says that the background will stay at each position and when one of the key is pressed, it changes the terrainX and terrainY values in the main Stage so that it will have a scrolling effect. This applies to all the background.

I have a code inside that cannot be shown on screen because it involves using a pen and this collides with the effect of the scrolling so I cannot use it anymore. Basically, this code is to select the peons by click and drag to select a bunch of sprite instead of clicking each individually. However, this version of Scratch doesn’t support having pen drawn on top of sprites so it can never be done. I heard that Scratch 2.0 will feature a scrolling effect so the code to move the screen which I have stated earlier will become history.

I spend most of my time trying to make the move effect, the move work which I am satisfied with. Even though it is just one button and one action it takes a lot of time just figuring out the logic. If it wasn’t about the scrolling effect, I can just use glide to my mouseX and mouseY area. This will not work because the mouseX and mouseY are only limited to the areas of the screen and it does not calculate the total area of the scrolling. Which means the maximum size will be x = 360, y = 460, the size of the screen. But with a scrolling effect, the size can go up to more than 1000 for x and y since the area becomes larger.

I use 3 sprites to create the desired effect. One sprite captures the mouse and clickable area. While one sprite captures the location, meaning a variable that stores the larger mouseX and mouseY values.The last sprite stores the unmovable mouseX and mouseY value so the character will walk to that area.

I had always like to play Warcraft and I find making a RTS game a lot harder than any games I have made. This is mainly because of the scrolling effect which limits how the characters and objects are places regarding the screen.

This will be my first attempt of making a text-based RPG using C++. This game is very interesting to me because I have included a lot of features. There are quests that the character needs to complete in order to proceed and engage in a battle. A while statement was used to determine the running of the game. There are npcs the character needs to talk to as well. First, the player will be introduced by a selection of questions to determine the type of character. Then the character enters the world with different areas which I use if statements to determine.

I created a lot of function and call it whenever I encounter a situation in the main game. The most difficult function is the dialogue where I can select topics and display it when I talk to npcs. I created an array to store the selected topics so when the player talk to the npc, it will display only those that are called. I used arguments in the function which will be called in my main and while the player doesn’t type 0 (which only end the conversation) it will loop on the topics and tell to display it.

There is an area where the player encounters an animal. It calls a quest for the player to complete by defeating 4 of them.  The battling is the same as running and it will run until the condition is over. There are variables that store the number of animals the player need to defeat, player and enemy’s health and attack which is stored in an array and called in different conditions.

When pressing ‘0’ in all the different areas, it triggers the inventory so the player can look at their status and item where they can use. I use functions again and for loop where it goes over the list and trigger the array to display the item.

I have always loved to play music games in my life. So I decided to make a version of dance dance revolution. The song will feature the most popular music in these years: Gangnam Style! I have been experimenting with a lot of new features from this game and found out more what about what Scratch is capable and not capable.

This time I used comments when I was writing my code which helps organize my thoughts and understand which code is performing such action. I also cleaned up all my sprites which make my code more organized so if programmers wanted to borrow my code, they can understand my functions easily.

I found some problems in Scratch that is a disadvantage for this game. A good music game all depends on the accuracy of the beat so that players can follow the music easily and press the corresponding buttons. There are two main operators that determines the time, the wait () sec and the timer. However, if I use wait () sec, there is definitely a delay but a timer will never have a delay. The timer under sensing is always good for counting, but it can never give you an accurate time. Say if you need perform something for every 3 second, it calculates between the ranges of 3.000 – 4.000 resulting in numbers like 3.412 or 3.579 for example. Another problem is layering as the sprites will always go in front of other layers that I don’t want. Last is the variables which I cannot set the location in the screen so that every time when I open the game, variables that I show is not in the position I want it to be.

Since I haven’t played with opening scenes, this is the first attempt on making one.

I used the ghost to make a flashing effect on my opening so it shows the company and the game that is played. I also made doors using two sprites where one slides to the right and one slides to the left creating an opening and closing door effect.

When the door opens, the music starts and arrows will slow come up from the bottom of the screen. I put detection on the grey arrows and if it is touching the arrows and calculate the distance between the coming arrows and the hit (grey) arrows. Then show a result like a perfect or miss depending on it. I created two sprites for each arrow so I could have more varieties on arrows showing on the screen.

This is probably the longest code I have ever written. These contain the main part of the game, the steps and wait time for the arrows to appear. As stated earlier, timer doesn’t give a delay but I gave up using it because I cannot extract a number from the timer to perform something. It is not possible with those decimal numbers. So the only solutions are by manually counting the steps and have a delay after.

Life is the key determining if the player win or lose. For every game, it will set at a position and correspond on the ratings the player receives. When the life is below a certain number, it will flash red warning the player. Then the game loses when there is no life. If the bar exceeds the maximum life, the bar will run a colorful rainbow.

The scoring system is based on DDR 3^rd series. It calculates the score by the total amount of steps and the least amount of score for each step. By having a combo, it also adds extra to the score. Lastly, the ranking depends on the overall score.

The lemmings will automatically walk along the paths when it touches grey or orange. When it touches anything else like the background, it will automatically fly where it will fall down until a grey or orange object is touched again. I created a gravity method that it will walk along the ridged lines of any surface and not just flat plains. Then the mouse comes and it will change when it points to the lemming. I found that the detection of a walking object is very hard to detect and click on if I use the “when lemming clicked” option so I created a function that will allow at least one second of detection of the character so I have enough time to click and do a skill. I created six skill sets. One of them is to climb on the object when it reaches the end. Another is it will fall with an umbrella with it and slowly land on ground. The next is a bomb where it will stop walking and disappear, leaving a hole on the ground. Then there is a block skill where it will turn away any lemmings walking towards it. Next, it will build stairs and also dig holes.

The stairs and the dig hole have to be separated from the original sprite.

The describes the menu selection where it will show the yellow selection under the menus.

When the button of the “Kill All” is clicked, all the lemmings that are active will use the skill bomb to end the game.

Reflective Statement

This gave me a lot of time to do trail and errors. I found that the most difficult is to do the skills because I have to experiment each of them individually before I can put it as an if statement. Sometimes even though it is working, there were times that it didn’t work at all and I have to experiment it all and test it. The testing part gave me a headache because every time I change even a tiny bit, it will affect the skills I made and it will stop when it have previously was working.

The Adventure of Lolo – developed by Hal Laboratory

This game is a puzzle game where the player needs to kill monster and open the chest in order for the door to open.

This is level one and the objective for the player is to collect the hearts.

This controls the movement of the player. It animates the look of the player, so when a down arrow is pressed, the player’s costume change forever until it is not pressed. A shadow is created for the player because it can hide the constant actions when it is overlapping with other objects.

The snake will constantly follow the player. It will look at the player whenever it goes. I set a boundary so whenever area the player is, the picture of the snake changes. I set a snakeLife to 1 so the animation of the snake following the player will only be when a weapon is not hit. When the player collect a heart, where it contains two moves to hit the snake, the players hit the snake. When it touches the snake, the snake becomes a ball and the player can move it around the map. It is defined when it is touching the player and pressing the arrow buttons.

Finally, when the player collects two heart, it can proceed to open the chest and get the pearl inside it. It is a key to open the door. Once the player got the pearl, all the monster will disappear from the screen and the door will open. The player needs to walk to the door to end the level.

Reflective Statement

This game is heavily about the animation of the objects so I put forth a lot of effort into making the animation as close to the real game as possible. I learn to set variables that represent true and false statement because there is no Boolean values that I can choose from. The hardest part is figuring out the snake because it has a lot of functions when the player proceeds to different step of the level. I have to figure out in what position will the snake look at the player. Then when it will become a ball where the player can make it around so they can get the last heart to open chest and open the door to complete the level.

Game Summary

Asteroid is an Atari 2800 game. The objective is to stay alive and destroy as many asteroids as possible. The user can move up, left and right while rotating at the same time. The user cannot go beyond the border of the screen and they will bounce back as they approach the edge. Tapping on the space bar will shoot multiple bullets. There are different sizes of asteroids moving randomly horizontally. If a bullet hits an asteroid, it will split into two smaller asteroids. When all asteroids are cleared, the game will end.

Reflective Statement

I choose a game from the Atari 2800 game list and I feel Asteroids will be fun to make because it is one of the classic games that I haven’t played before. I try to mimic the old version as much as possible and add my own features inside the game. It took me the most amount of time when figuring out how and when the asteroids become smaller. Secondly, every time when I press space to shoot, only one bullet is out so I have to duplicate it into four. I also try to minimize the amount of code so it will be easier to figure what can go wrong when I am debugging the game. This game is very intriguing and I enjoyed creating and playing this game a lot.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/minimimi/3227274