Light Racer 2.0 - Day 9 - Adding Items

After working with the AI a bit, I realized that the game feels totally dull to me. I spent a little time thinking about game design and decided to go with levels and items. Items weren't designed in to the game at all so I have to add the whole concept in from scratch. The first item going in is the Speed Boost item. When a player picks it up, their racer will move a notch faster until the end of the round. I have a problem though, the game is coded to run at the speed of the current level, not of the current player.

Here's what I did today:

Built Project Plan
Designed Icon
Implemented basic non-working SpeedBoostItem that could just draw itself
Added SpeedBoostItem to the world
Changed the way motor sounds are handled so they will work at different speeds
Modified game to allow for different speed players
Added a method incrementSpeed() to Player
Added item collision detection
Added random item placement - needs refining
Animated SpeedBoostItem

The hardest thing was adding the concept of speed on to the Player class, which is necessary to have players run at independent speeds. The problem was that all of the AI code and collision detection was using the overall game's speed to calculate distances. I had to change several methods to use the specific player's speed in the calculations, which took about an hour. After that, it was fairly straight-forward.

I drew the images of the item in photoshop:

Speed Boost Item in Photoshop

3 Image Files

I created the item class and added it to the world. The main game is responsible for placing the item. After that, the item is responsible for detecting a collision and responding. When it's done, it will set a flag that it is finished and the game will remove it from the world. The collision detection is very simple. Here's how it works:

private void checkCollisions(World world) {
// check to see if a player is colliding with me, do something to that player
int top = y - (int) (height * .5) - PLAYER_ITEM_TOUCH_PADDING;
int bottom = y + (int) (height * .5) + PLAYER_ITEM_TOUCH_PADDING;
int left = x - (int) (width * .5) - PLAYER_ITEM_TOUCH_PADDING;
int right = x + (int) (width * .5) + PLAYER_ITEM_TOUCH_PADDING;
Player[] players = world.players;
Player player;
int lx, ly, cx, cy;
for (int playerIndex = 0; playerIndex < players.length; playerIndex++) {
player = players[playerIndex];
lx = player.lastX;
ly = player.lastY;
cx = player.curX;
cy = player.curY;
if (cx == lx && (cx >= left && cx <= right)) {
// moving vertical within horizontal bounds
if ((ly >= bottom && cy < bottom) || (cy > top && ly <= top)) {
// collision
doCollision(player);
}
} else if (cy == ly && (cy >= top && cy <= bottom)) {
// moving horizontal within vertical bounds
if ((lx >= right && cx < right) || (cx > left && lx <= left)) {
// collision
doCollision(player);
}
}
}
}

The animation code is the same code I always use for animations

For now the game is just randomly dropping the item all over but once I have all 3 items in, I'll work out the balance of the item drop. For now it really added a new dynamic element to the game. I can see the game getting much more fun in the next few weeks!

Here's a video of the new item working.