Contrary to all appearances. Since starting my new job I do have a substantial amount of time work on games. I’ve just been doing other things.
Currently I’ve decided to let Malwrath stay on hiatus, and work on something new over the next couple of months. I have three reasons for doing this
- I’m out of practice reading and writing code. And since it’s always easier to start at the beginning than remember what’s going on in the middle. new project!
- I wanted to experiment with level loading which is something that will be necessary for Malwrath.
- I wanted to experiment with Box2d since it popped up on the list of libgdx options. And the idea of using a complete physics engine sounded neat.
So I’ve set about making a platformer (what better way to try out a physics engine?) about a small robot who jumps over aliens who are on fire.
I’ve been working on this for a couple of weeks and what have I learned so far. Maybe Box2d is not the best back end for a platformer. To start with this guy at GDC points out that jumping in platformers rarely if ever follows a consistent physical model. There are also some other articles around the web discussing other issues with using physics engines modeled on the real world as back ends for platformers. Frequently sighted is how to implement platforms that move without having them fall. Box2d, fortunately, has a work around for this by having an object (body) type that doesn’t respond to external forces. However after implementing all this I have a new issue which is the player sprite/physics object doesn’t want to stay on or ride platforms that move horizontally. And the solutions I’ve read for that all seem kind of kludgey.
There is no name yet, and maybe we’ll have some screenshots next week.