I'm going to have a new version come out by Sunday night (12/14/2008). It still doesn't have sprite collision yet or AI for the characters, but the background code is shaping up. Here's a nice feature in the new version:
User designed boards:
People can create their own Punkman mazes using a simple imaging software like "i.Mage" You need to draw the maze as an image using that program and save it as a BMP file. For example, for a 52x30 maze, you make an image of 52x30 first.
Basic syntax:
- The dot at (0,0) is the color of the maze when it's drawn. If you want the maze walls to be orange, this dot should be orange.
- The rest of the maze is drawn with color (00,00,FF) which is solid blue.
- Dot holes are solid white (FF,FF,FF)
- Blank areas are solid black (00,00,00)
- Ghost Door is aqua (00,FF,FF)
- Main Character (1UP) starting position is (FF,FF,00)
- The enemies' starting position is green (00,FF,00)
- Energizers will be solid red (FF,00,00)
The above colors are in RGB format (Red, Green, Blue) with values ranging from Hex 00 = 0 to Hex FF = 255
You can draw tunnels from the top or the bottom as long as they connect to each other when the board is wrapped around.
Workaround for the Zune:
Now, as the Zune apparently only syncs JPG files, use the Scale feature in I.Mage to scale it to 200% and then to 200%. Save the image as a JPG file at 100% quality (move the quality bar all the way to the right). This will make the image be 4x larger in both width and height. I had to do this to work around the JPEG image compression that creates artifacts in the pixels.
Setup Maze folder on Zune:
- The program looks for these images in your Zune's picture folder called "Punkman III"
- To get this folder, put a sub-folder in your "My Pictures" folder called "Punkman III" and then put your mazes in there.
My vision for this is that people can send mazes to each other if they want or share them over the internet. This is simple enough to allow most people to design a maze with any imaging program that you like. You would be able to use any imaging program that allows pixel editing.
This version won't let you specify an order yet as they will randomly be chosen , but it's functional for now and that maze selection feature will be available in later versions. This alpha release will have two custom mazes included that will show what I mean by the above text.
Lauren
Loved my Zune 30, but I just picked up a Zune 32 HD from Amazon.com for $167 with a 1 year subscription to Audible.com
