Now I promised that we were going to have multiple space aliens, and now we have the tools to do it.
So load up the space alien game from the first tutorial (or cut and paste it from the tutorial if necessary).
We're going to use the same techniques from above to create
multiple space aliens.
But first we have to think a little bit about how this will
affect the game rules. Because the game rules for the 1 alien
version aren't quite suited for a multiple space alien version.
In the current version, whenever we shoot the alien it reappears
on the left side of the screen. But now we would really prefer
them to dissapear and stay gone, so that the player can clear the
screen of all aliens and win the game (or move on to the next
level etc).
So the computer also needs to remember which aliens are still on screen, and which aren't, so it knows which ones to move around and draw.
We'll start by changing the variables declared to arrays. That is we will replace (at the top of the program):
dim score, lives, turretx, alienx, alieny
With :
const alienCount = 10 dim score, lives, turretx dim alienx (alienCount), alieny (alienCount), alienOnScreen (alienCount) dim bulletx, bullety, bulletOnScreen, i
This will stop the program from working for now, but that
doesn't matter (we still have some more changes to make before it
is ready).
Notice that we've used a constant for the number of
aliens, instead of simply writing 10 everywhere.
This will make it easy to change the number of aliens later (e.g.
if we want to make the game easier or harder.)
We've added the alienOnScreen array to store
whether or not each alien is still on the screen.
Next we have to change the code that puts the aliens in their starting position. Now that we have more than one, we can't have them both start from the same position, so we will use random numbers to set their starting position.
Replace the lines (near the top):
alienx = 0 alieny = 12
With:
for i = 1 to alienCount alienx(i) = rnd () % 37 alieny(i) = rnd () % 22 + 1 alienOnScreen(i) = true next
This should put the aliens in random start positions (rnd
() % 37 makes a random number between 0 and 36, and rnd
() % 22 + 1 makes a random number between 1 and 22). We
obviously couldn't set them all to column 0, row 12, as otherwise
they would all be drawn over the top of each other, and it would
look like there is only one alien!
We still have a couple of changes to make before the program will
compile and run though.
Next we will change the alien movement code.
Find the section of the program that reads:
alienx = alienx + 1 if alienx > 37 then alienx = 0 alieny = rnd () % 22 + 1 endif
And replace it with:
for i = 1 to alienCount if alienOnScreen (i) then alienx (i) = alienx (i) + 1 if alienx (i) > 37 then alienx (i) = 0 alieny (i) = rnd () % 22 + 1 endif endif next
Notice that we've used our for..next loop to make sure the instructions get repeated multiple times - once to move each alien. We've also used an if..then..endif statement to tell the computer to only run the instructions between then and endif if the alien is on the screen. (There's no reason to move the alien if it isn't.)
We're almost there. Next we're going to update the code that
draws the alien on the screen.
Find this line in the program
locate alienx, alieny: print ">O<"
And replace it with this:
for i = 1 to alienCount if alienOnScreen (i) then locate alienx (i), alieny (i): print ">O<" endif next
Again we tell the computer to run the same lines of code once
for each alien.
And again we tell the computer only to draw the alien if
it's still on the screen.
We've made quite a few changes, and the program still won't
run. It's normally a good idea to try and keep the program
working as we make the changes. This means that we can test each
of the steps as we go along, and keeps us from getting
disheartened.
So what we're going to do now is completely remove the
collision detection code so that we can test the program! (Don't
worry, we will add it back in again very soon.)
So find the section of the program that reads:
if bulletOnScreen and bullety = alieny and bulletx >= alienx and bulletx <= alienx + 2 then color (255, 255, 100) for i = 1 to 10 locate alienx, alieny: print "///" DrawText () Sleep (50) locate alienx, alieny: print "\\\" DrawText () Sleep (50) next bulletOnScreen = false alienx = 0 alieny = rnd () % 22 + 1 score = score + 100 Sleep (1000) endif
And delete it!
Now run the program, and you should see a whole screenful of space aliens flying up above the turret.
If it doesn't work, then you will need to check over the
program for mistakes.
To make it easier, here's the complete program at this point,
with the changes in red
as usual.
const alienCount = 10 dim score, lives, turretx dim alienx (alienCount), alieny (alienCount), alienOnScreen (alienCount) dim bulletx, bullety, bulletOnScreen, i lives = 3 turretx = 19 for i = 1 to alienCount alienx(i) = rnd () % 37 alieny(i) = rnd () % 22 + 1 alienOnScreen(i) = true next bulletOnScreen = false TextMode (TEXT_BUFFERED) while true if ScanKeyDown (VK_LEFT) and turretx > 0 then turretx = turretx - 1 endif if ScanKeyDown (VK_RIGHT) and turretx < 37 then turretx = turretx + 1 endif for i = 1 to alienCount if alienOnScreen (i) then alienx (i) = alienx (i) + 1 if alienx (i) > 37 then alienx (i) = 0 alieny (i) = rnd () % 22 + 1 endif endif next if bulletOnScreen then bullety = bullety - 1 if bullety < 1 then bulletOnScreen = false endif else if ScanKeyDown (VK_SPACE) then bulletOnScreen = true bullety = 22 bulletx = turretx + 1 endif endif cls color (255, 255, 255) locate 0, 0: print "Score=" + score locate 30, 0: print "Lives=" + lives color (255, 50, 50) for i = 1 to alienCount if alienOnScreen (i) then locate alienx (i), alieny (i): print ">O<" endif next color (150, 150, 150) locate turretx, 23: print "<!>" if bulletOnScreen then color (255, 255, 50) locate bulletx, bullety: print "!" endif DrawText () Sleep (75) wend |