First off, apologies for the lack of updates recently. Real Life got in the way somewhat, with the eldest daughter home from University for the Easter Break - so family time took a priority. I'm also suffering a bit health wise currently, which is limiting my inclination to do stuff. It's pretty tough to code when youve got a constant headache and start falling asleep when you sit down at the PC.
That said, where are we at? Last update goals and progress as follows:
1) Finish level switching - The mechanics are completed, and everything seems to load / reset etc correctly, so this is done.
2) Add lives / life removal / death effect - Not started
3) Add a level transition effect - Pretty much done - Ive added 3 different transition / fadein / fadeout effects, just have some cosmetic text stuff to tweak and thats finished.
So, what have I been up to / what's the next set of goals?
Well, although I finished the collision system, I still wasn't happy with it. To some degree I "cheated" on it for the ball / block reflections, so I've gone back to basics and getting my head around the vector math required.
Now, bear in mind Ive not done any serious math since about 1986, so this has been straining my old brain. That said, Ive been reading / learning and modelling stuff in Excel, and Im now at the point where I'm actually understanding vectors, dot products and projection. Given the amount of resources out there, Im really surprised no one seems to have done a step by step "This is how it actually works" - evrything is so wrapped up in the math / terminology it can be difficult to unravel. So I may take some time out and do such a tutorial on vector reflection for 2D.
The side effect of this is that I should be able to implement ball / ball collisions as well, which is an idea I've been toying with.
Next Goals
1) Add lives
2) Rework collisions
3) Anything else that I think of as time allows.
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