Dr. Dobbs Challenge Family Mod (John and Chase Lathrop) |
 |
This Critic's Choice mod was developed by John and Chase Lathrop. John Lathrop explains:
"I've never programmed a game before. (Well, about 1990 I read about it and I did make a spinning cube.) My son, age 10, says he wants to be a game programmer. So, I thought this would be a great opportunity to do something together while I do something I’ve always wanted to try.
My son learned how a game is really a collection of images and sound files that are orchestrated by source code. I learned how easy this is to learn. So what did we do? The first was missiles that fire vertically (entityMissle.cpp). We used this to learn how the code works. Once that was done we decided that something that fires in any direction would be better. So we came up with the plasma missile (entityDirectionalWeapon.cpp). The game only uses the latter. You need to collect a few Tokens first. The plasma missile is fired with the left button of the mouse (if the mouse is not on a token). Then we create bombs that can be set in place (Bomb.cpp). Set the bomb and move away. Let the enemy run into it. Moving platforms was next. These go vertical or horizontal. When the player steps onto one of these the movement information of the platform is transferred to the player. So, you do have to keep using the movement keys to stay on the platform. We set the levels to be all locked at the start except for the first level. As you play the game and win a level the next level is unlocked and ready to be played. Finally, we changed some of the levels to add our new features." |
| Download |
