Here we are, working our ass of to release the single player missions … but! We cant forget about the multi-player as well! That’s why we did create some snowy plains and slippery cubes. Four new levels have been added to the multi-player mode all in a new snowy theme. Their not available for download YET. The new beta version will be released on-line soon though. Stay tuned and check out the sneak preview of the new decors.

Slib 'n Slide

Pie Pit

Boulder Dash

This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

To fix this, you’ll need the Visual C++ 2005 SP1 runtime components, which are free to download and install.

It really give’s an extra dimension in the multi player. Just give it a try Further on, we got really stuck on designing enemy’s for the single player mode. As announced a few posts back, the little chicken is already in place. We decided to stay with the chicks and therefor we made some improvements and additions. The first level boss is there and soon we will be able to play the first 10 missions. A new release will be out soon so stay tuned!

I’ll give you guys a sneak preview in the from of two screenshots: One of the test mission and one of the mission selection screen. Both are still in alpha and are bound to change over time.

Check them out after the jump!

A preview of what perhaps could be a mission in the game

The current mission selection screen

Furthermore we updated the item sprite so they have a unique color which helps you identify them in battle when your in your eagle eye mode. Best of all is we added a new item as well. You might find a little purple box labeled with an A. Yeah  I know it’s quite rare but you’ll probably gonna like it anyway.

So for all the people who hate large pieces of text but love information and Smash Battle Here’s the changelog:

- Added application icon
- Redone keyboard and joystick input
- Added Berry, Kim, Peter and Ton characters
- Added airstrike powerup
- Added stereo sound
- Redone all player sprites
- Added four levels
- Press start to join the game!
- Some minor bug fixes

Now where can I get it? What do you think, maybe at our downloads page?

Hope you like it.

This morning we found a website called Pixel Prospector which reviews free game’s. They even took the time to create some nice screen-shots and capture a video Thanks for that! Plus we were really honored to see our work featured there! We hope a lot of people will enjoy playing Smash Battle. We’ve put a lot effort and time in the game so anything you can do to support it is more then welcome! Thanks for the attention so far, a new release will be available soon!

EDIT: Germany website Superlevel also found out about Smash Battle

EDIT: Also the Gamers Database recommended our game!

Keyboard keys, joystick buttons and axis movements should generate actions. And with actions I mean stuff like: move left, jump, fire and start.

Let’s say we’ve defined the following actions: ACT_LEFT, ACT_RIGHT, ACT_UP, ACT_DOWN, ACT_FIRE and ACT_START. The next thing we need to do is instantiate the GameInput class and enable the keyboard and joystick. And after that we need to bind keys, joystick buttons, axes or hat presses to certain actions:

GameInput * input = new GameInput();
input->enable_keyboard(true);
input->enable_joystick(true);
input->open_joystick(0); // Open the first available joystick
input->bind_key(SDLK_LEFT, ACT_LEFT); // Bind keyboard left to action left
input->bind_joyaxis(0, false, ACT_LEFT); // Bind the first axis in the negative
                                         // direction to action left
input->bind_key(SDLK_RIGHT, ACT_RIGHT); // Bind keyboard right to action right
input->bind_joyaxis(0, true, ACT_RIGHT); // Bind the first axis in the positive
                                         // direction to action right
input->bind_key(SDLK_SPACE, ACT_FIRE); // Bind spacebar to action fire
input->bind_joybutton(1, ACT_FIRE); // Bind the joystick button 2 to action fire
// ...and so on...

Now we’ve set up the input class, but still it doesn’t work when we do not pass the events to it. We need to pass every input event SDL generates to the input class, to check if any action is triggered by the player. This may look something like this:

SDL_Event event;
while(is_running) {
  while(SDL_PollEvent(&event) {
    input->handle_event(&event);
  }
  // ... do game logic, draw the game
  // flip the frame buffer, handle fps rate, etc
}

And that’s it, really. Now you can use the following function to check if the player has triggered some action:

if(input->is_pressed(ACT_FIRE)) do_fire();

While this may work great for the gameplay, we also want to use the same input handler for the menu’s. And since games run at a fast rate (Smash Battle runs at 60 fps), pressing the down-button would cause the menu cursor to move down 60 items per second, which is way too fast. That is why I’ve added the function to set a delay:

input->set_delay(); // Sets the delay, with the default parameters
input->set_delay(30, 15); // Sets the delay, with different parameters
input->unset_delay(); // Unsets the delay, is the same as set_delay(0, 0)

The delay exists out of two parameters: delay and interval. When you press a button, it immediately acts. Then it waits x frames, defined by the delay parameter, before it acts again. After that it always waits with an interval of y frames, which is defined by the second parameter: interval, until you release the button. The default setting of delay=18 and interval=6 works fine and feels natural. It works the same way as pressing and holding a key on your keyboard, when you’re typing text.

Another problem is that we don’t want input which was destined to act with a previous menu screen or game session to act in a new menu or game session. This can be prevented with the reset-function:

input->reset();

This resets all actions to false, as if nothing was pressed. So you’ll need to repress the button, before it acts, preventing unwanted actions in a following screen or game session.

By now, I’ve told you everything there is to my GameInput class. If you’d like to know how it works in Smash Battle, you can check it out on my WebSVN.

Smash Battle trunk (WebSVN)
Some relevant files: GameInput.cpp GameInput.h Gameplay.cpp Player.cpp (check out the move-function)

while(SDL_PollEvent(&event)) {

smashbattle_wallpaper.bmp