Hi again!
after the last update I wanted to try implementing something I was a bit anxious about: Powerups. They were quite a wildcard until then, sonce i didn’t know how to implement neither the interaction with them nor how effects would be communicated or even passed on to the player.
Turns out my worries have been ungrounded. Implementing everything was quite a breeze. Picking them up uses the collision detection system already present, I only needed to alter the collision reaction. Powerups are their own type using an enum to define the stored effect. very straightforward. Upon collision with the player the effect is passed unto the player with a given amount of time how long the effect lasts. Finally even the powerups present on the map have a time to live and despawn when their time runs out.
I also started to make some minor tweaks, like the player character looking in the direction they move. but see for yourself:
The first smaller pituicat is a powerup granting more speed for 5 seconds. The other one is just a test with collision objects which are not part of the map definition. I am quite pleased with these results, but I see, that I now need to work more on visuals to make things on screen more understandable.
At this point I want to stress, how powerful ffmpeg is. The above video was generated from an OpenGL API trace. If I had known this before, it would have saved me tons of worries trying setting up a finicky recording system, which was the cause for the lack of a nice showcase video in the last update.
All the progress on the code is, as always, for you to see in the gitea repository
With all that said, I wish you all happy hacking!
Keep calm and wash hands.
