Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas! And even though I'm an atheist, I couldn't think of a better title.

So, Merry Christmas.

I just took a decision. I decided to start making a game. I had the idea for this game for a few months now, about a month ago I started working on it with flash and php only to find out that making a game in flash and php is way more difficult that developing a game in C++. Many weeks later, I still think the game - if ever completed - would be fun. Really fun! So today, 2 days since my holidays started I decided to start working on it again. This time I'll use C++ and SFML. Obviously I'm talking about a 2D game (I still don't feel very comfortable with using OpenGL and I'd hate using anything not cross-platform).

It's a strategy game. No, not a very complicated one (I hope!). It's nothing too ambitious, completing this project seems generally realistic :P. I'll propably do the development on windows, but I'll be testing it on my linux machine every now and then. Platform Independence is very important to me. So, for the next 2 weeks I'll be working on it full time (ok, almost full time).

In my first 2 hours of working on the project, I made a Logging class and generally designed the Object-Oriented code of the game. Basic classes, files etc. Now I have a pretty good idea of how the game and the code will look like. At them moment, the game starts, displays a black window, writes something to the logfile and quits. Not too bad.

Next topic of the day: It's Chrstmas. I told you, didn't I? I could cut & paste this to the beginning of the post, but who cares about organized speech? Organized code is all that matters. Ok almost. ANYWAY, as I said, it's Christmas and I got a really, really, really really really great present. An Iphone 4! Yep! I might even start developing apps for it, one day. The annoying thing is you need a Mac and Objective-C knowledge to write apps for the Iphone, unless you buy expensive 3rd party windows software or spend days trying to find a workaround. Of course I have MacOSX in a virtual machine and I don't need to bother, really :). I downloaded X-code it runs great, only problem is I don't know Objective-C. But one can code only one thing at time, right? So I will dedicate myself into my game.

And I should remind myself to write about my opinion on youtube and especially its comments and rating system. They suck. Wow I just expressed my opinion! I'll expand on it once I am less eager to start coding again.

A short 20 minute break and back to work again. Till next time!

Game developing, A* and a compiler error

Good day :)

Have I told you that I am still a student? Fortunatly, it's easter holidays now :) So I have time to do anything I want, and that's usually programing and starting (unfortunatly not finishing) ambitious projects. During the last weeks I spent my time trying to make simple 2D games, studying new data structures and algorithms and learning assembly. I am not making much progress with assembly, I am more fond of high-level programing. As for game developing, until now I have done a Tic-Tac-Toe and a Pacman game using SDL. I might upload them later so you can take a look. Now I am in the process of making a Real Time Strategy game. Yes! And it's way more complex than I thought, but it has a lot of AI and that keeps me motivated.

Yesterday while implementing the A* algorithm, it took me ~30 minutes to figure out why the following line of C++ code was not working (I don't remember the exact compiler error) :

std::list<*Node> OpenList;

Node is a class and OpenList should be a list of pointers to Node classes.
Have you noticed the mistake yet? DON'T GOOGLE IT, DON'T CHEAT! (you won't find anything anyway, I tried) Come on, it's 1 line of code!

Changing the line to

std::list<Node* > OpenList;

was enough :)
Of course I knew that the * should come after the type specifier, but why didn't I think of it the first time? Pah, who cares. I've fixed it now and I won't make the same mistake again.