Vector Library and WideScreen Asteroids

[FellippeHeitor]

Fixed. New dev build now contains a fix for it: https://www.qb64.org/portal/development-build/ (from git 03ba53e)

[Pete]

...Always rich times when you’re around Terry! Welcome back.

Puns? I hates puns! I wish people would knock it the Fell off!

I can't recall if the Atari 2600 version used joysticks or paddle controls for the ship. I'm assuming yours is keyboard controlled, but I'm in the middle of so much open stuff right now, I can't get to trying it out just yet. I know some QB64 game programs can do all right with a mouse option. What I haven't tried are the STICK and STRIG commands in any programs. To that end, I visited one of the few threads we have here for game controllers...

https://www.qb64.org/forum/index.php?topic=452.msg3241#msg3241

I think it would be great to get some classic arcade games coded in QB64 with game controllers. I would just hope such an option would be responsive enough to produce the Nintended results. (Damn those puns again!!!) I see in my linked thread SirCrow was working on a similar space shooter game, with game controllers, but like his tag reads.... He doesn't always finish what he starts. On the good news side, he stated he got the controllers working properly, and in another link in that post, I see Fell also produced a game controller spaceship app, too.

Pete

[TerryRitchie]

Fixed. New dev build now contains a fix for it: https://www.qb64.org/portal/development-build/ (from git 03ba53e)

Excellent. That was fast. There's a special place in heaven for those who can navigate the source code.

[FellippeHeitor]

Excellent. That was fast. There's a special place in heaven for those who can navigate the source code.

Amen!
😂🙏

[TempodiBasic]

Hi Terry
fine to meet you again!

It is wonderful to see the remake of your Asteroid with this new your library!

A vector library WOW!
All these news together is a good news!

Info about Asteroids
wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroids_(video_game)

youtube 1979
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYSupJ5r2zo

AI learn to play Asteroids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o4naC4P8-M

Great arcade vintage games!
Thanks Terry and Welcome back to QB64, where you bring me some time ago!

[TempodiBasic]

about

I think I found another bug but this time with $EXEICON

for who has no time to download now the fixed version of QB64 1.4

Fixed. New dev build now contains a fix for it: https://www.qb64.org/portal/development-build/ (from git 03ba53e)

and he / she wants to try now the Asteroid Widescreen of Terry, well He/she can do this adding at start of namefile the path .\
as the following screenshot shows
 

[TempodiBasic]

PS
using the .EXE in the  zipped file I get some trouble running it... windows doesn't recognize it as a sure file to run... and while I'm playing I get a very huge effect of slowing the gameplay...
but compiling the .BAS with QB64 version 1.4 after using the ".\" in the path of icon file I get a very fast and wonderful WideScreen Asteroids!

Because I like break all asteroids very fast I am not able to go over 3 wave! :-) to fun to shoot fastly to all is moving!

[TerryRitchie]

I too have noticed faster game play when compiling with QB 1.4 x86 and x64. I can also confirm that $CHECKING:OFF and $EXEICON work as expected in version 1.4.

[TerryRitchie]

I just updated the ZIP file with what I believe is a bug fix for the bug mentioned earlier as well as the collision routines rewritten a bit to handle some inefficiencies I discovered while searching for the bug.

I also plan to rewrite the drop-down menu routine. I noticed that it slows down the screen in the background when lots of asteroids are flying around after a game (_PRINTSTRING is a CPU hog ). I'm going to use the OBJPrint vector printing routine instead that is implemented in the vector library.

[johnno56]

Just now tried your game. Had a minor issue on line #2505 with the font name. As I run with Linux it complained about the case sensitivity of the font name. Other than that, it ran like a charm, got killed off more times than I liked, but ran like a charm none the less... Great game!!

[TerryRitchie]

Just now tried your game. Had a minor issue on line #2505 with the font name. As I run with Linux it complained about the case sensitivity of the font name. Other than that, it ran like a charm, got killed off more times than I liked, but ran like a charm none the less... Great game!!

Thank you for trying the game. I need to keep case sensitivity in mind from now on for our Linux users. Great to hear that it runs on Linux smoothly as well.

[Richard Frost]

That's a very impressive program.  I expect to learn a lot from the code.

[OldMoses]

I loved this game when I was a kid, but I couldn't afford all the quarters I had to pump into the damn machines. Thanks for coding this, it will be highly instructive and entertaining.

[Pete]

And don't worry about the quarters... Terry and I are combining our efforts to SHELL it out to a PayPal gateway. In the next release, you'll be coughing up Bitcoins like there's no tomorrow! Brewwooohahaaaaa!!!

Pete :D

[SMcNeill]

I figured I'd do a quick copy/paste of the little demo which I wrote up for Cobalt to have a look at, as you might find interesting as well:

A little snippet of code for you to study, which you might want to incorporate into your game:

Code: QB64: [Select]

1. D = _DEVICES
2. Buttons = _LASTBUTTON(3) ' number of buttons on the joystick
3. Axis = _LASTAXIS(3) 'number of axis on the joystick
4.  
5. DO
6.     IF _DEVICEINPUT = 3 THEN 'joystick
7.         FOR i = 1 TO Buttons
8.             IF _BUTTON(i) THEN PRINT "Button "; i; "Down"
9.         NEXT
10.         FOR i = 1 TO Axis
11.             IF ABS(_AXIS(i)) = 1 THEN PRINT "Axis "; i; "Pushed"; _AXIS(i)
12.         NEXT
13.     END IF
14.  
15.     _LIMIT 30
16. LOOP UNTIL _KEYHIT = 27

I've got one of the XBox style joysticks hooked up to my computer, with 12 buttons and 6 axis on it, and this little routine reads every input just fine.  Each button is an independent value of _BUTTON(1) to _BUTTON(12), and the 3 directional pads are represented by the axis.

Button values of -1 means the button was pressed down.
Axis values of -1 mean the axis was pushed fully left (or up), while values of 1 mean it was pushed fully right (or down), which is why I have this little demo checking for ABS() = 1.

_DEVICES is simple enough to add into an existing program, and you should be able to add it to your game with very little effort and offer joystick input for your users.  ;)

I'd also like to suggest adding a little config set-up option later, so an user can customize which of their keys relate to BUTTON A, BUTTON B, SELECT, START, and movement keys.