Yeah, main() is necessary, that makes total sense. What I meant is that from that main() you’re then free to call other functions and separate your code that way. main() itself usually stays pretty small. Looks like that’s how you’ve done it now. 🙂
I’m trying to figure out why your code doesn’t work now, but there’s a lot of variables with unclear names or purposes. I’m going to have to read through the code bit by bit to try and understand the general flow before I can really help with that. I’m going to have questions, and I’m also going to point out things, which hopefully make the code much more compact and easier to understand over time.
I can tell you one thing, though. You definitely seem to be using more variables than you need, and checking certain specific states more often than you really need. This really adds up to the clutter.
What are GoToStart and StartGame for? (Keep reading before replying 🙂 )
I see you use these variables a lot, and they seem to have a lot of values (StartGame even goes as high as 6!), but I’m not sure why. What does each of the values (0-6) represent? Why is it 4 at the start?
I see that you generally use it to break out of specific loops. Here’s a tip: you can use break; not just to quit out of switch..case statements, but also to quit out of loops! Thanks to this you suddenly don’t need a lot of the variables you’re using.
For example, if I look at a bit of code in your intro (from which I understand it’s supposed to make the game wait until you press start), this:
while((GoToStart==0) && (StartGame>3)) {
if((vbReadPad()&K_STA) && (StartGame==4)) {
StartGame=6;
FadeOut();
}
if((!(vbReadPad()&K_STA)) && (StartGame==6)) {
StartGame=3;
}
}
will turn into this:
while (GoToStart==0) {
if((vbReadPad()&K_STA)) {
FadeOut();
break; //Start was pressed, quit out of it
}
}
…Or you could even bring it down to its very core and just make it wait and do nothing for as long as the “start pressed” condition has not been met:
while(GoToStart==0 !vbReadPad()&K_STA) { }
FadeOut(); //It's been pressed, so continue as normal.
That’s going from 8 lines to 2 lines for code that essentially still does the same thing. And I’m sure even (GoToStart==0) can be removed from the equation here, as I’ll show in the next post. 🙂
Oh, I also recommend you do this:
int main() {
intropart();
while (true) {
//while(true) is an infinite loop. Whenever you return; out of a function
//that was called from this loop, the game will just continue running the
//code in this loop and thus end up back at the title screen.
switch(game_state) {
default: case STATE_TITLE_SCREEN:
titlescreenpart();
break;
case STATE_STARTNEWGAME:
charselect();
prefight();
fightscreen();
break;
case STATE_OPTIONS_SCREEN:
optionsscreen();
break;
case STATE_CREDITS_SCREEN:
creditsscreen();
break;
case STATE_SOMETHING_ELSE:
//do that
break;
}
}
}
That’ll ensure several things:
– Whenever you completely exit out of any functions, it’ll just return to the main screen.
– You’ll have a game_state variable from which you can exactly tell where the game is now.
– The main game/screen switching logic is in one place, and one place only. That’s the only place you’ll be able to mess up going to the wrong screen from there on.
– It’ll clean up your RAM a lot: since you exit out of functions, the game can now unload those functions from RAM! That gives you better overall performance.
You’ll have to declare the appropriate variables, of course (game_state, and all those STATE_ variables, which can just have unique int numbers that are useful for you, the coder, to understand what state it’s in).
EDIT:
Oh! And by using functions, you can start moving a lot of the global variables into the functions they are used in. This saves some RAM you can use for other purposes too. 😉
Looks like header files are still missing… I also had to rename vb\notes.h to just notes.h.
Edit: also, about this in your main():
while (game_state>-1) {
Actually, you can just keep that as while(true). There isn’t a single moment in the game you’d ever want to completely quit out of it, right? Heck, I’m not even sure how the VB would react to that! Not to mention your game_state never even becomes -1, so (game_state>-1) is already always equal to true. 😉
Attachments:
I hope you don’t mind if I make some additions/changes to the code (mainly cleanup and separating things into functions, and adding many helpful notes for you) and then upload the new file.
Edit: by the way, it seems like the game moves at such an inconsistent pace because the frames aren’t limited, causing them to move at the max possible speed. That would explain why it’s too fast sometimes, but it doesn’t explain the slowness in some situations. Especially the standard “wait for drawing to finish” code from the demo games makes the intro slow down to a crawl.
The only possible clue I have for that is that the VB is getting worked too hard, but in that case it should’ve been slow regardless… so that’s probably not it.
All right. I did it. I edited a bunch of code, and I left tons and tons of comments and information on what I did and why I did it.
To be honest, I think it would be so much better for you if you brush up on a few basic coding concepts. Things like:
– Functions and function arguments (http://www.learncpp.com/cpp-tutorial/14-a-first-look-at-functions/, http://www.learncpp.com/cpp-tutorial/71-function-parameters-and-arguments/)
– The importance of avoiding duplicate code (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplicate_code)
– The usefulness of arrays (http://www.tutorialspoint.com/cprogramming/c_arrays.htm)
– Tips for naming variables (http://www.makinggoodsoftware.com/2009/05/04/71-tips-for-naming-variables/)
– Global and local variables (http://www.codingunit.com/c-tutorial-functions-and-global-local-variables)
– Why indentation is important (http://www.cs.arizona.edu/~mccann/indent_c.html#One)
– Separate your code! Instead of one huge function where everything happens, chop it up into pieces that do their own job. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_concerns)
– Commenting your code (http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/source-code-comment-styling-tips/)
I’ve done this a few times to add little descriptive bits above the code of which it’s not immediately straightforward what it does. Helps people who see it for the first time a TON.
As well as:
– avoiding to check the same condition over and over. Check it once, nest the rest in there.
– How to prevent a loop from simply running as quickly and as much as it can. This is what causing almost *all* of the timing issues in your game (besides the bottlenecks).
This is common in game programming: you WANT to limit the amount of loops run to 50 per second. Luckily, the VB has vbWaitFrame() and WaitForVIP() to do that for you! (I used WaitForVIP() in the code)
It’s a lot of reading and learning, but it will help immensely. Plus you’re already halfway there – you’ve managed to write a working program. Even if that program is an unmanageable mess that breaks if you touch it too much. 😉
Next up, the code.
I zipped up my version of the source code, along with a modified sounddat.h.
Do a ctrl+F for “DaVince note”. You’ll find a lot of results that I hope will be really helpful for you improving your coding skills! 😀
:vb: Notes of interest :vb:
The font never compiled/looked the way it should for me. (See attached screenshot.) (Edit: I was told it’s because the game is compiled with gccvb 1.0 and since I use VBDE with a newer gccvb it expects the font to be slightly different. So that’s that I guess.)
The timing of some things is off, but that’s because I completely fixed the timing in most screens. Except for the second character selection screen, because that’s a huge 250 line chunk of duplicated code (I’m not fixing things twice and there’s no point to having the same 250 lines twice in your source. Check my code comments to learn more on that!).
I hope none of this actually offends you in any way. I spent hours upon hours going through the source, thinking of any tips and helpful additions/changes I could make. In the end, this is all so you can become a better coder, so you can make a better program that’s easier for you to change and add things to in the future. Which means we get to see increasingly better versions of it more quickly. :thumpup: 😀
Attachments:
Thank you for all the tips and stuff about stuff I never knew about, especially WaitForVIP. But I have a problem, though: This new code won’t compile right. I tried compiling the code which you made for me, and I tried halfing the character select code, and I get the following messages.
