I played around some more and made a little program to generate circles which do not overlap. This is a little different than the one that just generates totally random circles. I should combine several of these in to one app instead.
I think a space shoot em up game using the touchscreen with 2+ fingers might be fun and different than most normal twin stick shooter.
I’ve worked up a super WIP game using love2d where you use one finger to move the ship, and a second to move the target around. As long as both fingers are down, your ship will shoot and constantly rotates to point at the crosshair. Check out the project on github.
After I got the bullets working, I added some basic plane graphics as placeholders for bad guys. They don’t do anything yet, but everything is using the love2d physics system for collisions and motion, so the planes can be bounced around and it’s kind of fun.
The graphics are placeholder images from OpenGameArt.org, the spaceship, the planes, and the crosshair.
I couldn’t get the bullets to shoot right at first, but with physics enabled the result was funny. They came out the wrong end of the ship and didn’t move very fast but could be pushed around.
I was playing with love2d some more and made a simple random walk implementation. It starts with a random spot in a grid, and moves a single square in a random direction for many iterations. This type of algorithm can be used to generate caves and other things for games where continuity is needed.
I’ve been playing around some more with the Love2d game framework and made a little 2 player vs air hockey game using the touchscreen. It was neat to experiment with the physics engine using some simple shapes.
It was pretty easy to jump in to using, but creating more complex shapes seems difficult. I haven’t found any better ways than to build them from primitives, like circles and rectangles.
You can download the .love or an Android apk on github.
Simon likes to grab at my cellphone. I saw there a few baby touch games on the playstore, like Frankie’s Baby Fireworks! which he enjoys, so I thought it would be fun to make one of my own using Love2d.
This game makes sounds as long as you touch the screen and shows a random shape in random colors with a unique pattern, which follow your fingers around. The shapes are animated using the particle effects api that comes with the Love2d framework.
You can run the .love file if you have love framework installed on Linux/Windows/Mac/Android or use the Android apk I created. I don’t know if I will put it up on the Play store, but you can download it and view the source on Github. It’s more fun on my touchscreen laptop since there is more space to touch.
Love2d is fun and easy to learn for making 2d games. The particle system is neat, but it also includes a physics engine I want to play with some more.