fprintf

It always starts simple

For my platformer game All Fucked Up I have different kind of weapons in place, which should feel good.

My code for the weapons started simple. When the trigger is pulled launch a bullet, eject a shell, put a flash in front of the gun and make a sound. I thought well yes how complicated can that possibly go? I started to think about reloading, just wait a bit and reload it. Still very simple. But then a double barrel shotgun came along the way...

https://zackbellgames.com/2014/10/27/how-to-make-a-platformer-feel-good/

https://www.redblobgames.com/ is very cool colction about pathfinding and other topics.

I read and watched a lot about game feeling beyond many I liked these best
- Jan Willem Nijman - Vlambeer - "The art of screenshake"
- The art of screenshake
- Juice it or lose it - a talk by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho

Game feeling is how you experience your interaction with in a game. Does jumping feel good? Does the gun have a powerful feeling when using it? Is it satisfying when you destroy or kill something? Does it have a snappy control? Was it exiting to solve that puzzle?

I found this gem of game development articles Gaffer On Games, I guess wort reading it.

I found this amazing talk with Rick Lesley about level desing about that awsome looking game Hob.
I write this article solely to not lose the link.

I wrote an effect to shake the camera on explosion or any other high impact. I found a nice article about that here, this article does nicely explain the road you will have to go.

Nevertheless my own implementation is much simpler and straight forward and it gives quite a badass feeling on explosions.

http://natureofcode.com/

If you ever want to write your own simple physics or any other natural looking movements like swarms or oscilating stuff or scratch the surface of evolutionary code and neuronal networks for game development purpose then this book is a perfect starter. You can buy the book or simply read it online.

There are so many things in game which have some kind of a life time. A bullet, an effect, vanishing tiles in a can't stop running game, dying enemies and many more things which have a life time.

In the past I would have done it seperately depending in which situation something hast to vanish. With the ECS you can solve all of them with one component and one system.

To understand and try out entity component system approach the visual system was the first hurdle I had to take. Without that system you see nothing on the screen. Further more this system makes you understand how you should separate game logic from the visual stuff.

Anti Pattern

Don't store your spatial, the visual thing, in a component. Never ever. It is as if you would save Java classes in databases. It is backward. When ever you face your self to store a real thing in component it is a sign of wrong design.
Also think a bit bigger, if you start with a simple drawn character and you want later improve it all your saved game states are garbage then, because they still held the old crappy character. So a good decoupling helps you also to exchange your model at any time.