Laser Hockey DS - May 2008

Filed under: Laser Hockey DS, Nintendo DS, homebrew

I have put the latest build of Laser Hockey DS online tonight. This version finally has a real physics engine courtesy of Box2D. Again, it looks identical to the last two builds but this one finally plays like a real game. Next month is all about the looks...gotta shrink those paddles.

Build 0.4.0

• Using Box2D for physics, still needs a lot of tweaking and bug fixing; it took almost two months but it's a huge improvement
• Re-initializing memory between screen changes to avoid a memory leak
• Remove remnants of old placeholder engine
• Using Box2D's body rotation for the sprite rotation
• Player two takes control of physics updates when ball is in his or her court, a vast improvement in responsiveness of game play for player two
• Select button now exits practice and multiplayer games

You can download it by clicking this link: LHDS_2008_05_31.zip

I am not going to provide any new screenshots as they are exactly the same.

Laser Hockey DS thumbnail appears on Joystiq

Filed under: Joystiq, Laser Hockey DS

DS Fanboy interviewed me during their Week of Homebrew and like all good Fanboy features, a recap was posted to Joystiq!

• Joystiq:
  DS Fanboy's week of homebrew
• My DS Fanboy interview:
  Homebrew dev dishes on the DS scene

Forward to the Past

Filed under: Laser Hockey DS, Box2D, physics

After re-re-re-thinking how we are going to replace the physics engine, we have finally settled with Box2D. We have an early preview version of the integration effort working and will release it at the end of the month. However, the release will likely be buggy (e.g., game freezing and strange collision behavior) while we iron out the bugs.

No Box2D

Filed under: Laser Hockey DS

We've been looking into using Box2D as our physics engine for the last half of the month but at this point it seems like overkill. This means two things:

1. We will be implementing our own simple physics engine to replace the placeholder one that's in there now
2. We will not have a release this month

We may integrate Box2D by the end of the project but for now it's time to start putting our own one together.

Laser Hockey DS - March 2008

Filed under: Laser Hockey DS, Nintendo DS, homebrew

We are a little early with this build but I don't think much will change in the next week so we are releasing version 0.3.4 today. This one looks almost identical to the last one. The only difference is that wireless multiplayer actually works! Here are all of the changes since the last public release.

Internal build: 0.3.4

• First DS-DS WiFi communication
• Moved paddle visibility flag into sprite for WiFi transfer
• Paddles can send their position
• Host must press Start to begin multiplayer game
• Ball position is now sent over from host
• Host will do all the game play processing
• Fixed paddle and ball positioning across wireless
• Pressing start will exit Practice...correctly
• Any player pressing start will exit multiplayer
• Cleaning up after each screen
• Sending score over
• Added "Press Start" message for Host, "Waiting" message for Player 2

You can download it by clicking this link: LHDS_2008_03_31.zip

Starting a second multiplayer game can be a little tricky but overall, the build works pretty well.

More multiplayer

Filed under: Nintendo DS, liblobby

You may have guessed already that we think DS-DS multiplayer is very important to the homebrew scene. Well, we are not the only ones promoting it. Since the beginning of last month, you can download liblobby directly off of the PAlib website: http://palib.info/forum/modules/PDdownloads/singlefile.php?cid=3&lid=39 (when it comes back up :P). We don't use PAlib but the spread a multiplayer library is always good news.

Also, the game Tetattds claims multiplayer support with liblobby. We haven't checked it out ourselves but go have a look: http://code.google.com/p/tetattds/.

Things are moving along faster than expected here. We will most certainly make our March deadline.

In the works

Filed under: Laser Hockey DS

We took a month off to play with other projects. However, we now have two CycloDS Evolutions and one M3 DS Real between us. The plan is to get Wi-Fi multiplayer working and tested by the end of the month.