Dynablade (Helicopter clone) - Experimental

[Habhome]

My second app is going to be a clone of the game Helicopter.
I've got it mostly finished, just doing the last adjustments to it. Should be released within a few days.

I'd like it if you could give me name suggestions. Also, I have a helicopter and so made for it, but I am thinking about if the clone should be with a flying bird instead. What do you think?

I am releasing V1.0 with helicopter sprites, bird sprites are in the works.

FEATURES:
V1.0 - Experimental
Helicopter sprites
Randomly placed obstacles
Highscore & distance meter
Simple crash animation with sound
Tap/hold the screen to make the helicopter go up
Speed increases in 3 steps

Known issues to address:
The helicopter is very shaky due to being adjusted 10 pixels up or down at any given time. I did this because I didn't manage to solve a good screen drawing to get a smooth fps. This is my first time trying to make moving things on the player, and I'm failing miserably.

I'd love it if someone could give me a few pointers where I go wrong in the code. And a word of warning, my code is comment heavy, but I'm not sure if my comments are specific enough to actually be of any help for anyone but me xD. Also, the code is experimental so a lot of lines are commented out to see what difference it'd make and so.

LATEST NEWS:

• V1.0 is deemed worthless, releasing an experimental version and requesting help from my elders ^^
• V1.0 Released! (Realized I never tried it on my player before release... stupid of me, realized it don't work well)

[CrowdAds]

[Tetrajak]

Anything that flies is fine so long as all the graphics are suitably themed. I have no problem with a helicopter being the main sprite.

As for names, Dynablade comes to mind. It's the word for a helicopter blade.

[jbob182]

I think that it should look like the original so use a helicopter or better yet put an option to switch between a bird and a helicopter on the main menu

[Habhome]

Originally Posted by Tetrajak

Anything that flies is fine so long as all the graphics are suitably themed. I have no problem with a helicopter being the main sprite.

As for names, Dynablade comes to mind. It's the word for a helicopter blade.

Name used, sounds great ^^

Originally Posted by jbob182

I think that it should look like the original so use a helicopter or better yet put an option to switch between a bird and a helicopter on the main menu

Thought about that. I'll probably do something like that if I get nice bird sprites.


V1.0 released with Helicopter sprites! See first post.

[Habhome]

V1.0 is a big failure, Apparently my way of doing it was waay too much for the player to handle. I'd be very grateful if someone with more knowledge could take a look at this. I'm in the phase of learning and I apparently didn't know enough to make anything move correctly O=)

[Bruno96]

It's Super!

[RobertsAccount]

This game is fantastic! Hopefully you can work out the problems in good time...

[Diddykong13]

I'm happy to help sort stuff out and teach you, with the knowledge i have gained from falling balls, just let me know

[Habhome]

Originally Posted by Diddykong13

I'm happy to help sort stuff out and teach you, with the knowledge i have gained from falling balls, just let me know

Well I've figured out how to make the obstacles appear and so, and also how to make the speed go up as you get further into it. The biggest issue left is the shaky helicopter movement. I need to optimize my screen updating so the game flows quicker and I don't have to move the 'copter 10 pixels at a time to get decent speed out of it.

[Diddykong13]

Originally Posted by Habhome

Well I've figured out how to make the obstacles appear and so, and also how to make the speed go up as you get further into it. The biggest issue left is the shaky helicopter movement. I need to optimize my screen updating so the game flows quicker and I don't have to move the 'copter 10 pixels at a time to get decent speed out of it.

Would you mind uploading the code and i'll take a look at it to see if there is a better way of doing it?

[Habhome]

The code is there in the Zip, just as when you code it yourself. I don't really have time this very minute to look at it, have an English composition to write. But I'll check into the code myself later.

[Diddykong13]

Originally Posted by Habhome

The code is there in the Zip, just as when you code it yourself. I don't really have time this very minute to look at it, have an English composition to write. But I'll check into the code myself later.

Yeah, i understand that, but i was just wondering if it was the most up to date code (with the obstacles working and stuff) dont worry about it tho, i'll look through the current code and check, have fun with the English composition

[Habhome]

Yes, it's the most up to date code I believe.

[Brett_val]

Originally Posted by Habhome

The helicopter is very shaky due to being adjusted 10 pixels up or down at any given time. I did this because I didn't manage to solve a good screen drawing to get a smooth fps.

I don't know why but I just found out about this thread. A few days ago I was thinking about making this game, but I didn't because I didn't know how to do the controls.
Pretty clever work with the touch.up and touch.down!

About the speed, I think you can ditch some variables. (For example fly: You can change heliY = heliY-10 to heliY = heliY-helimove, and under touch.up and touch.down do helimove = -helimove. That way you can ditch the whole if game == true elseif game == false story in function move() )
Also you can reduce the function calling and the amount of if game statements by combining some functions.
I'm not sure if these will provide noticable differences, but the less statements and functions, the better, I think.

But the biggest improvement will be ditching the

screen.fillrect(0,0,swidth,sheight,black) --Draw black background

Instead, only draw black over the parts that need to change. For a start, do this before you calculate the new positions of heli and object:

screen.fillrect(heliX,heliY,70,30,black) --erase previous place of helicopter
screen.fillrect(obstX,obstY,obstW,obstH,black) --erase previous place of object
screen.fillrect(71,5,40,18,black) --erase place where distance was written

Then calculate new positions, and draw them, as well as the distance.

I just tried it on my player and it works pretty well with a heliY=heliY+3.

While working on ZenDuck I found that a fillrect of 400x240 every frame is really heavy on the player. And then ThievingSix pointed out to me that it's totally unneccesary.
Only redrawing the parts that have changed requires some more programming and frustration , but really pays off in the long run. As in; you can do more on the screen without slowing down the player too much.

[Habhome]

Originally Posted by Brett_val

I don't know why but I just found out about this thread. A few days ago I was thinking about making this game, but I didn't because I didn't know how to do the controls.
Pretty clever work with the touch.up and touch.down!

About the speed, I think you can ditch some variables. (For example fly: You can change heliY = heliY-10 to heliY = heliY-helimove, and under touch.up and touch.down do helimove = -helimove. That way you can ditch the whole if game == true elseif game == false story in function move() )
Also you can reduce the function calling and the amount of if game statements by combining some functions.
I'm not sure if these will provide noticable differences, but the less statements and functions, the better, I think.

But the biggest improvement will be ditching the
Instead, only draw black over the parts that need to change. For a start, do this before you calculate the new positions of heli and object:
Then calculate new positions, and draw them, as well as the distance.

I just tried it on my player and it works pretty well with a heliY=heliY+3.

While working on ZenDuck I found that a fillrect of 400x240 every frame is really heavy on the player. And then ThievingSix pointed out to me that it's totally unneccesary.
Only redrawing the parts that have changed requires some more programming and frustration , but really pays off in the long run. As in; you can do more on the screen without slowing down the player too much.

This have been on ice for a while due to me working on Black Jack and having other school work to do, but I'll take heed to your words and see what I can do. I'm not sure if I really need to reduce the function calling that much, the big culprit is the screen redrawing.
I'm not entirely sure what yo mean with the game thing though, but I haven't looked at the code for long so I'll take a look and see if I get what you mean.

[Redwolfhome]

i think the helicopter is to fast
change the os.wait(10) in the while loop to os.wait(30)

[jbob182]

I agree with redwolf the helicopter should be slow but i think os.wait(30) is a bit too slow

[Brett_val]

Well I don't think it's too fast actually, the game has to be a little hard to play don't it But it would be nice if you could select the game speed in a menu.

What I do miss is levels, preconfigured levels so that when you fail, you'll know what to expect when you try it again.

But this game has been on ice for a while, and on top of that, I thought Habhome is away for a few months, and has a lot of other work on his mind anyway.
I guess that you both could improve this game if you ask Habhome for permission.. but I'm sure he doesn't mind as long as you give him the approporiate credits.

[Habhome]

Originally Posted by Brett_val

Well I don't think it's too fast actually, the game has to be a little hard to play don't it But it would be nice if you could select the game speed in a menu.

What I do miss is levels, preconfigured levels so that when you fail, you'll know what to expect when you try it again.

But this game has been on ice for a while, and on top of that, I thought Habhome is away for a few months, and has a lot of other work on his mind anyway.
I guess that you both could improve this game if you ask Habhome for permission.. but I'm sure he doesn't mind as long as you give him the approporiate credits.

I'm not sure how this old version runs, I've made lots of changes to the one on my PC, but mostly just broken the game so it's not working "smoothly" at all. I remember this one being a bit jerky though.
As it is now I will be busy all through July with no dev time whatsoever, after that I have a small opening only to get busy soon after with a trip and then University after that. But as Brett said, you can feel free to improve this game, I threw this out here as a Proof-Of-Concept to get the ball rolling. Now I've got hooked on another project which will take quite some time to finish.
I'd like to be a part of the dev team though when I have time, to give ideas/advice/critic/whatever, to help out. And that's it for my visit here. *runs to his other business*