The NEW Build Your Own Arcade Controls
Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: Hurray Banana on October 21, 2006, 12:06:22 pm
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I run the ICT courses at my college and the 2nd year students are creating (crappy - but they'll be an achievement for them) arcade games for their 2nd year programming portfolio. I'm currently writing a GDI based sprite engine in VB.Net for them to use (got a week left to finish it). These games are going to run in a bartop I'm creating.
Anyway I've been messing with Visio to work out control panel layouts and knocked up a load of button layout stencils for various setups.
I've linked to it here, feel free to use them. (it's zipped up)
http://www.geocities.com/hurraybanana/arcadecontrols.zip
I'll probably add more to the stencil as I go on as I am also working on a cocktail cab and plan another stand up cab to go with my now butchered (now 2 player control test rig) 4 player stand up (it's impossible to stop once you start this damn hobby).
I've included a pic with the stencils in it.
Click belowfor a full set (so far)
http://www.geocities.com/hurraybanana/ArcadeControlsFullpic.gif
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love it, still trying to finalize the exact layout of my buttons (7)
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What games are your students writting?
You might check into Rip-off. It has fairly simple graphics and lots of opportunity of bad-guy homing / decision tree logic. There is a good write-up on it at KLOV.com. There is also a long interview with the author that goes into it in detail.
I took a stab at Star Castle in c# a few years ago. I basically got the players ship (fly, navigate, decelerate, shoot, blow-up) , the center ship (including tracking logic, pulsating gun, and large fire ball). It still needs the rings and small bad-guys. I screwed up and did not think about the high level game harness (multi-player, credits, etc.) To restructure what I've got will take more time than I want to put into it. I basically learned what I needed then quit.
If your students do a decent job at the object model, you'll be able to build up quite a collection of games in a few years. Good luck with your projects.
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What games are your students writting?
There brief was 1 or 2 player game using a single trackball and no more than 3 buttons per player.
We played a range of games through mame and some of my PCB's (hooked up to my homemade supergun). So he games are versions of the following types:
Laguna Racer/Turbo racers
Bomberman (although I'm regretting this one)
Pac-man vs Ghosts (one player is pac-man another is a ghost - too difficult to do even rudimentary AI with the students)
CrossBow/Skeet shooters types
Pong
Arkanoid
Frogger
Maze Race
Space Zap style
Space Invaders
Galaxian swooping attack patterns
Gradius clones with tracking/path following sprites (I've already outlined to them how to do this)
The students are mostly weak ability in the Maths department and we don't explicitly go into classess, most of 'em struggle with assignment and most of them are hopeless at maths. They only need to pass 4 subjects at secondary school to be allowed to do the course.
I'm basically trying to keep them only having to worry about logic. Which means my sprite engine has to do a lot of work that you'd normally do in the game logic. Some of 'em will be able to learn but most are gonna need hand holding (I have to work out how to write all the games to help them) which is difficult when I have 36 students all doing different games, but I like the challenge. It suprises me every year when students you wouldn't expect click with coding.
They all managed to adapt my Xml reading/writing code so they could store and load their game settings from Xml files.
It will be interesting, they only have 4 3/4 hours a week from now until Jan/Feb to get them working. They have practically done all they need to already to meet the specification requirements for the exam board but I always find students need something interesting to do and games has worked for me the last few years.
I'm gonna have a close look at XNA express kit for next year, but I'm also gonna convert the sprite engine over to DirectX during the year (didn't have time this year) so this will make it a bit more real for them next time.
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I read the book "Beginning .NET Game Programming in C#". It has a cool sprite engine, and a working copy of an asteroids game. It is all in DirectX. The code is C#, but the translation to C# is not that hard and the code can be used across both languages. It might save you some time.
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I've seen some books like this. But I like building stuff myself. I don't get a lot of time to code and I get guilty if I spend time programming when I should be developing materials for my course, so if I can sort of justify to myself that I'm programming for my course then I don't mind spending hours on end working on stuff.
The students knowledge when they start their game is pretty basic so I will still need to build a sprite engine that simplifies as much stuff for them as possible.
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I run the ICT courses at my college and the 2nd year students are creating (crappy - but they'll be an achievement for them) arcade games for their 2nd year programming portfolio. I'm currently writing a GDI based sprite engine in VB.Net for them to use (got a week left to finish it). These games are going to run in a bartop I'm creating.
Anyway I've been messing with Visio to work out control panel layouts and knocked up a load of button layout stencils for various setups.
I've linked to it here, feel free to use them. (it's zipped up)
http://www.geocities.com/hurraybanana/arcadecontrols.zip
I'll probably add more to the stencil as I go on as I am also working on a cocktail cab and plan another stand up cab to go with my now butchered (now 2 player control test rig) 4 player stand up (it's impossible to stop once you start this damn hobby).
I've included a pic with the stencils in it.
Click belowfor a full set (so far)
http://www.geocities.com/hurraybanana/ArcadeControlsFullpic.gif
Thanks alot for the stencils, these will come in handy!
I'll am really interested in this bartop with the student games you have in the works. Make sure you post some pics here for us! Will you be able to post the games here for us too? Crappy is in only the eye of the beholder ya know ;)
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I'm working out the dimensions at the mo'
I was going to build a full size cab, but my wife (and also my co-curriculum manager) told me I probably wouldn't be able to justify that to the finance department.
(seems to be a problem posting the rest of message)!
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Start a SourceForge project with your code. You'll be amazed at how many people are willing to contribute to your engine.
dot
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What program do I use to view that template?
.VSS?
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What program do I use to view that template?
.VSS?
Microsoft VisioStart a SourceForge project with your code. You'll be amazed at how many people are willing to contribute to your engine.
dot
Almost finished the engine, just added gravity on multiple axes this morning.
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Nice work, any way that this can be converted to something more readable for other programs/systems (TIFF/PDF) ?
That woud be great !
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Level 42, I've put together a doc with all the button layouts in them. They are in either PDF or MDI (microsoft document Imaging) formats.
MDI version
http://www.geocities.com/hurraybanana/visiocontrolsmdi.zip
PDF version
http://www.geocities.com/hurraybanana/visiocontrolspdf.zip
I'll look into seeing if I can convert them to anything else, I did try (briefly) but Visio started generating internal errors. I haven't got time to try and sort this at the mo but I'll look into it.
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Level 42, I've put together a doc with all the button layouts in them. They are in either PDF or MDI (microsoft document Imaging) formats.
MDI version
http://www.geocities.com/hurraybanana/visiocontrolsmdi.zip
PDF version
http://www.geocities.com/hurraybanana/visiocontrolspdf.zip
I'll look into seeing if I can convert them to anything else, I did try (briefly) but Visio started generating internal errors. I haven't got time to try and sort this at the mo but I'll look into it.
Nice work on those files. Can someone get this added to the downloads section of the website?