takunomi

2018–06–06

Above is a video from Craig Forresters Leilani’s Island. I’m pretty sure it’s made in SDL2 + C/C++. Even if it isn’t… look at that shit, it’s amazing.

Twitter: @ishisoft

YouTube Video: Gameplay

Stray Thoughts

After the tutorial part.

The Actual Article

SDL2 is the answer for someone reading a coding tutorial for C or C++ and thinking

“CLI output is cool, but I want to make programs that run inside Windows and have graphics.”

This beautiful tutorial by Sarah Edkins gives most of the info needed. She skips mentioning what “brew” actually is. (Home)brew is a way to install and keep tabs on command-line programs on OSX. If you don’t have it, you’ll need it, and in either case, you’ll want it.

Just follow her tutorial.

Now that that’s done, some other things I had to google and I want to spare you from:

• You’re gonna need more than bmp files in your program, so you’re gonna need SDL2_image.h. You install that like you installed SDL2: brew, then copy the files into the same folders as before.

   Brew install SDL2_image

• You’ll have to update the make-file to refer to the .h file. After

   -l SDL2-2.0.0

add

   -l SDL2_image

Notice that the hyphen-plus-l is added again. This is vital. Also remember that you can use \ to make new lines.

Aforementioned stray thoughts

With what little sparetime I have, it felt kinda good to sit down for a few hours the other night, just to spend time on a project that didn’t look like it would amount to anything but me feeling good about what I’d done.

I’d wanted to give SDL2 with plain C another go. Why? The usual reasons of wanting to feel like I’d made something myself, and gain some knowledge of C. After setting everything up, and doing a few parts of LazyFoos tutorials, it occured to me that if I shared this little evening, I could save some people some trouble.

2017–12–17

This summer I went to a small Greek island for vacation. I sat on my balcony in the afternoon and evening, drinking beer and iced tea, while 7th Dragon III.

The reason I’ve long want to say a few words about this game, is simply, that it’s so unapologetically a Japanese roleplaying game. The first game in the series was a Dragon Quest-like tradition honouring game of hiring a crew of fantasy fighters without personality, but sweet character design, and slaying lots of Dragons. Hundreds of them. The fourth game in the series (yes, the one titled “3”), is a perfection of this idea: Get your team, slay dragons, often big ones.

It’s a game for people who actually like playing JRPGs for the gameplay, not just the story. Like me. Look, I love the QoL stuff in the English release of Bravely Default, and I appreciate what AlphaDream did in the Mario RPG games to make battles more exciting. Oh and certainly the original Tales of Phantasia for the Super Famicom is technological marvel. Fuck, and the Star Ocean game for GameBoy Color. I mean, damn, that’s almost the same machine as NES. We could’ve been playing something like that on the fucking NES?

…

I digress.

What I mean to say is, I like to play Final Fantasy V simply because it’s fun. The basic interaction of navigating the menus, and seeing the effects of making selections is aesthetically and kinetically pleasing. The job system improves upon this, but at its core, a JRPG like FFV is still a pleasant thing to play for me.

For someone like me, 7th is a treat to play. Navigating menus, making a strategy, grinding a few levels. It’s fun to do. Sure, it has quality-of-life stuff like Bravely Default, and moves that instantly and automatically will kill random encounters, but these are not in there to make us not play a JRPG, it’s to improve the feeling of becoming more powerful with great determination.

And then there is the story. Such a trope-filled, generic thing. I should hate it, but really, the game is just so god damn ANIME. It doesn’t even include an English dub, just to force the correct experience.

I’m going to finish this random deluge of words, with an element of 7th that feels equally as random: Your interactions with the characters moves you towards being able to date every single story related NPC. And have sex with them. No matter the gender, species or age of either of you. While not explicitly stating it, every dating-route ends with a few lines of dialogue leaving pretty much nothing ambiguous, and rewards you with powerful exclusive equipment. I have no idea how this made it into the English language version, when you see what petty stuff gets removed or changed in other games (The potato characters of bravely Default couldn’t wear a skimpy bikini or a toga). Oh well. At least we got this.

2017–12–07 The improved Newt Hare made its bigger counterpart, the Motherhare, too small. Also, it could be cuter and more bunny-like. So I have you, the Motherhare 2.0, or whatever. Now, the trap to avoid is to not constantly try and improve every enemy, every time I get some spare time.