Free Basic, FBSound, FBPng, FreeType2
Since I've been sick, I haven't been able to maintain my development pace. And yet, I've decided to make a series of games similar in programming and gameplay concepts. I've decided to work on games like Galaga and Space Invaders for now. And in theory, it shouldn't be difficult. I have some ideas.
I've already done some ideas. And I can improve them or change something. On the other hand, my illness has slowed my activity. I'm recovering now. I'm still feeling a bit weak, but my activity isn't quite where it should be. I also noticed a few things in my Free Basic projects that I wanted to change.
First, the graphics. Free Basic itself understands the BMP format via the BLoad command. I decided to try other graphics formats. Jpg, PNG. Anything along those lines. There are many libraries for these things, and I've tried them all. It's been a while. I made mistakes every time and couldn't quite get it right. But I settled on FbPng. It worked.
It's the
sound. Free Basic can play WAV files. But they're very large. My games are
simple. And things like a WAV track can be extremely large, much larger than
all the graphics and code. The sound was faster. That was the first thing I
started changing. And it worked quickly. It gave me hope that I could use
libraries to expand Free Basic's functionality, and do so with a simple
interface.
It's the
font. Again, I don't know if Free Basic can handle Russian text or UTF-8. I
haven't figured it out yet. I decided to use a library, too. It's FreeType2. I
use it to create text. I tested it. I've already gotten some results, but I
haven't figured it all out yet.
Right now,
I'm working on things like this: graphics, sound, and text using libraries in
Free Basic. In a simple version. I haven't figured everything out yet. So the
projects themselves are on hold for now. I'm working on these developments.
The sound worked right away. I quickly Googled it. The FBSound library popped up. I stumbled upon it right away. I tried it right away. It worked. There was a slight, extraneous, harsh sound, though. At first. But it just lost everything.
But I
struggled with graphics. I tried a bunch of libraries. It was basically like
studying. AI isn't exactly an implementation. I had to figure it out a lot. I
had to try them out. They were all different. I tried FBImage; it seemed like
it was a simple library. But I didn't get it. Then there was something about
JPG. But I didn't get it.
Then came more serious developments. Like OpenIL, now called DevIL. Everything there is originally in C. And there is documentation. But it's not that clear. I even configured something there. But I still couldn't get it. I realized I'd spend too much time trying to figure it out. Basically, I need to put it aside for studying. Learn how to use it. Then there was Cairo. Also a large library for graphics. I thought I was starting to get it working. But I spent a lot of time figuring out how to run it. It was starting to work. But only the beginning. In the end, it didn't work out.
And FBPng
was the last thing that saved me. And a separate program like ImageMagik. To
convert everything from jpg to png. Lots of sprite images. That's all I've
figured out so far. I can scale images. I can just output images. That's all
I've figured out so far. I still need to figure it out.
So, about sound. FbSound seems to work. But there's a sharp sound when playback starts. With FbPng, I still need to figure out how to make the background of an image transparent. And it looks like it'll be ready.
And Freetype2 for text. I've only just figured out how to write English text. It's also a pretty tricky output format. But I wrote a procedure that can print something. But I need to keep working on it. It's still a bit wonky.
That's the
progress I've made on developments and projects. All of this is for Free Basic.
Although there are options for other programming languages. I haven't figured
that out yet. A lot of it is for C. That's for sure. But for Free Basic, you
also use BI files that sort of link these libraries to the Free Basic environment.
It's tricky, of course. But it seems to be working. But it's still a bit
wonky, and not everything.
Basic Pascal version 1.21 "Sand Road" – most newest version. In this version there are 4 new games! Straight Road, Galixanar, Crest and Shooting Mod X, Fish Arcade Extreme Mod. And even more retro games! It is a pack of retro games with modern versions of Basic and Pascal.
Basic Pascal: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/games/basicpascal/index_eng.html
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