[airstrike] Anyone tried `Clonk' (larger than screen levels)?

[Eero Tamminen]

>> Bigger playfields is certainly coming in airstrike, but I am not sure
>> if the level should be a single bitmap (easy to edit and modify) or be
>> made out of separate building blocks (not neccessarily square, or of
>> the same shape).
>
> Is it necessary to use a bitmap as background? Sorry to keep referring to
> my game but I use an array with the size of the screenwidth to store my
> 'landscape height' and the landscape is a simple fill algorithm that
> interpolates between two colours which gives a nice effect. The only
> thing for me to do would be to resize the array and keep track of which
> part of the array is in sight. I don't know if this is an option for
> airstrike but I thought I should mention it.

As I understand it, both the tile based and heightmap approaches will need
extensive changes to the sprite engine collision checks.  Currently sprite
collisions are "pixel-perfect" *and* if objects are rotatable, they get
angular velocity when one end of a sprite hits something.

The land generation should not do sharp angles so that object
rotation on collisions with ground works sensibly. This should not
be trouble though.

I think the biggest problem is that with heightmap you can't have
caves, land islands in the air etc., which is a serious drawback
to otherwise nice method (I used it myself in Mortar although not
with scrolling :-)).


	- Eero