The Current State of Things

The State Pattern is used far and wide throughout games. Two common uses for it apply to:

1. The state of the game

– Opening/Introduction
– Main Menu
– Loading
– Running
– Paused
– Closing/Exiting

2. The state of the units/characters

– Damaged
– Full
– Upgraded

This is what I plan to implement into my game as well. I currently have a Game class, so I will add in a few States, particularly an OpeningState, a RunningState, and a ClosingState. As for my Ships, I will have the EnemyShips contain a DamagedState and a FullState, while the PlayerShip will contain a DamagedState, FullState, and UpgradedState.

So far I’ve not run into any problems. I’ve implemented the Ship states already and they’re working properly, but I haven’t started on the Game states. Although I’ve got the Ship states added, I don’t have any of the AI created in these states yet.

As for graphics, I’ve got them up and running, but I currently don’t have all the animations (frames) that I want implemented yet, and I haven’t found the BlasterBeam and Torpedo images that I want to use yet, so I have some images just for building purposes. I’ve got the PlayerShip movement and primary weapon fire methods added. They can be seen here:

Notice the jet on the Ship blasts out the back when it accelerates forward/up the screen, and goes away when not accelerating forward/up. I plan to add this same type of animation for the PlayerShip; when it flies to the left the ship leans left, and when it flies to the right the ship leans right.