So I decided to toy with a new idea for a simple game. In about an hour and without a single line of code, I managed to create this:
OK, so it’s not much, but I’m amazed I was able to create this is practically no time (I had to learn how to use a new tool, create the tunnel model, and create the animations) and without any code work.
Tunnel Racer v0 (pre-alpha!)
(Use the A/D keys to turn left or right.)
I used a product called PlayMaker that I bought on sale a while back. PlayMaker makes it easy to create finite state machines (FSMs) that react to almost anything, and what little I did here didn’t require any code. All I had to do was create a few events that were triggered by key presses, then a few other events that were triggered when animations ended. There are only three states – Idle, MoveLeft, and MoveRight, and two objects responding to the commands – the ship (the bomber model from BattleGrid), and the tunnel itself.
Creating this was fun and a good change of pace, so I might try to flesh it out into a real game. It’s a lot simpler than BattleGrid, so maybe I can get it done in a much shorter time frame.