The Last Dalek

[theZohnn]

The Last Dalek will be a platformer game where you play as a dalek, go through the levels, and kill all the cybermen. i have some good concepts about this, but i also have a lot of questions about this. i will try to figure out most of it, but whatever i get stuck on i will ask a question here. after i finish the first level i will poast a download link here.

question one: it will be a physics game, but im wondering how i can put a picture onto a body. i know how to do the controls and everything, i just need to know how to do this and then i will be good for a while. thanks!

[bmelts]

You can't, directly; physics and graphics are separate. You need to keep track of where the body is, and use love.graphics.draw to display the image at that point.

[theZohnn]

so ill have to control both the image and the body seperately? there has to be an easier way...

[Luiji]

Sadly, no. Unless of course you want to integrate Kikito's PASSION library, in which you create an "Actor" class which manages both a physics shape and a graphic for you, making them the same object (both the physics and graphics are optional components of the Actor).

[theZohnn]

i might do that, unless i could just make the game all graphics. but i still would need to simulate gravity...

[Robin]

It depends on the game. Sometimes it's easier not to use love.physics and write your own code for gravity and collisions.

[The Burrito]

Its really surprisingly hard to make a platformer with physics managing everything. It never "feels" right because we all grew up playing Mario and the like, and expect the characters to move like Mario.(basically moving up at a constant speed, hanging in the air, then falling at a constant speed)

That being said, physics is really fun, and keeping track of the physics body's location isn't really that bad. If there's no rotation, it can be as simple as love.graphics.draw( sprite, Body:getX( ), Body:getY( ))

[Jasoco]

Physics is better used for puzzlers like the dozens or so on the iPhone and other portable smartphones. Like Tiki Totems, Finger Physics, Implode! Angry Birds and JellyCar.

Side scrollers are better with their own engines. There are hundreds of side-scrollers with great engines and many indie scrollers like Cave Story that prove how easy it is relatively to make an engine that works great. Hell, someone literally just ported Super Mario Bros. to the Sega Genesis using the original Assembler code.

[Luiji]

Tiki Totems rocks! Now if only there was a LOVE version of it.... Well, I've another project on my to-do!

Making your own engine is really fun.

[Jasoco]

Hey, I was going to make a Tiki Totems clone.