I love the smell of burning CPU in the evening, smells almost like... Victory

Oh yes ladies and gentlemen. I have now a playable version of my game, its not much. But it is the content of all I've been doing these past 2 weeks. You can browse the code here and download an executable from this page.

And I DID solve my Un-Escapable loop problem, I'm going to make a port on this one. 


Milestone 2


After hitting more walls in my previous version of the program I decided to create another form where I would put only the code I need. To make it cleaner and more manageable. It is currently at its third iteration. But while I was looking at my code ( which was muuuch easier to read in a clean environment not chuck full of properties and classes anywhere) I though of the following logistic: I have two matrices, two arrays and 3 methods to help me put those on the form. If I followed my plan to make another matrix for the game hero, I'd have even more. So why not make it only 2 methods, one to fill the matrices, and one to show them. Simple since they do pretty much the same. And to that conclustion I said, why not have a single matrix ? Why would I need 2 layers when I could easily do it with one, and actually make this a lot more simpler and easy. The final result is that I have a single matrix of pictureboxes and two arrays with two methods to fill and stamp it. 

This is the code I used. you can see this all the simpler. 


The loop problem was caused by this: from the moment I decided to use an matrix of pictureboxes instead of images I changed from a type to an object. Do when typing 


Dim tileMatrix(15, 15) as Picturebox


What it did was to create 256 pictureboxes that are actually the SAME picturebox. Because there is no New()   I will create a subsequent post explaining this particular error but for now do understand that the problem was that every picturebox in my matrix was the same picturebox. It was a single one with 256 references through the matrix. 

Update on the blog and an Upcoming Project !

Blog Update

I wanted to re-assure you that my blog won't be focused EXCLUSIVELY on programming, the vast majority of my posts are going to be around that subject but I might sometime write tidbits of text about this or that.

Upcoming Project

Since the last few days, I have been looking for a project in which I could submerge myself and work on in my spare time. I am still searching but I am getting closer to having an idea in mind. I've wanted to program a game for a long time now, not a good one or anything remotely revolutionizing but something that I could do that would strengthen my grip on my programming language. I tried a messing around with a console interface but I couldn't bring myself to making anything else than a very boring text scroller without any semblance of combat and adventure. 

So from this day on, I am leaving the world of console game programming and moving on to 2D graphical game programming. I was thinking along the lines of one of these two screens:

The big panel in the middle of the second image and covering the whole window is where the game will take place. 

My idea of the game is that it is going to be a 2D top down RPG, much like Lufia or Golden Sun and the likes. I would draw the sprites, make the music and the "animations". The biggest challenge to my mind right now will be to program the engine of the game and make it as easy to re-use as possible. With my little experience in the domain I expect this to be quite a challenge.

Feel free to check my gallery of pictures related to the project here. Not much right now but I will update it as I make progress.