What I like about RB+ so far is the rapid prototyping possibilities with little or no effort (or even code - I'll come to that!). An idea + assets + filling in a few blanks = things begin to take shape quickly. It almost feels like cheating and that's why I'm enjoying it so much.

So the first build is complete and I've included it with this post. Actually it's the second build, but the first one wasn't much to look at or talk about.

Take a look and I'll explain a little about what you'll find, there's a few elements already in place as you'll see...

First of all, a description of what you'll see on screen should you take a look. The play area is a central 340ishx112 box, that's around 3:1 aspect ratio if you're viewing with the correct TV settings. Long and narrow. You'll find a repeating scrolling floor graphic in the lower section, and above that a gradient sky box. Over the box are a number of parallax scrolling clouds. The distant clouds are higher and travel slower, closer clouds larger and faster. Simple stuff. The clouds are moving using Raptor's automagic tracking object routines. All I had to do was define each object, give it a start x and y value and a sub-pixel scroll value to set it on its merry way. They will continue to do just that until told otherwise. The potential for judder with sub-pixel scrolling is real. I've tried to minimise it with careful use of adjacent colours between clouds that overlap and the backdrop. Hopefully it's not an issue - the player will be concentrating on their character, the floor and approaching obstacle/enemy graphics, the rest should all be peripheral, so it should be fine.

Speaking of the floor, that was just a little different to the clouds. RB+ exposes Raptor functionality that allows for handling looping objects as wide as or wider than the screen. The floor object is the only part that required any actual code at this point. In order to make the graphic loop, a tiny routine was created to scroll the image a set distance, then reset back to the start point, but jump through the object's graphic data to an offset of that same distance. Then it flips right back to the beginning once it's displayed a full screen's worth. For this to work, it just needs a graphic twice as wide as the screen, the 2nd half being a direct copy of the first. The result is a continuous looping floor for the horse to run over.

The horse - yes, it's amazing! Well, no, it's just 8 frames of monochrome running horsey, but it gives me a sense of movement through the game and a chance to judge how it might be shaping up.

The idea for the game:

Around 5 years ago, GGN showed me a work-in-progress of a flash game he found that played similarly to Moon Patrol but featured a cute little knight on a horse. That game was never finished and when we decided to make our own version of the same, neither was ours. Third time lucky, maybe.

What might come next and some things I need to think about:

• Some game play of a sort - that might be handy. Rocks, holes and high obstacles to duck under. Also, an enemy with a sword for the player to stab, maybe one firing projectiles to jump?
  
• Floor - might be fun to splice it up and have a number of scrolling zones. It currently scrolls every 2 frames and seems suited to the speed at which I'd like the enemies and obstacles to approach, so anything increasingly faster than that might give a decent-looking effect. It could also end up looking juddery... there's more important stuff to get to, but this really is just copypasta and altering a few numbers, so I should give it a go.
  
• The player sprite - need the knight to take his seat. I'll also need to experiment with the jumping horse animation and find a nice way to handle the horse-knight interaction, it'll all have to sit nicely, not just his bum on the saddle.
  
• Assets - knight needs a lot of work, there are no obstacles bar a single placeholder rock.
  
• More background graphics - stuff on the horizon such as bushes and other fun things. Nothing essential here just yet.
  
• Music - that's the track from Beebris, it needs to go.
  
• The game is going to be scripted, rather than involve any kind of random elements each time. That's much more in my control and will offer better game play through gradual difficulty ramping. Have to think through a tidy way to design the levels.
  

I think that's enough for now. I won't get much free time over the next week (tax return to complete, bills to pay, walls to build, lofts to empty, many, many,many consoles, games and computers to dispose of, and the list goes on...) but if I do get something done I'll post it here.

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