Game

The development of the level generator is almost finished. I have uploaded some screenhots of the generated levels. After programming this small demonstration- and test-application (the first three pictures) i made a very versatile class out of it and hacked it into my existing game. The game was heavily optimized too. There is only one bug left in the level generator. And after that i will add some functions for adding doors, treasures, monsters and so on. On the last screenshot you can see how the generated level looks like in the game. Now some usefull links for building your own random maps:

http://steelgolem.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/random-level-generator/

http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Dungeon-Building_Algorithm

(http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Main_Page)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_%28computer_game%29

Enjoy! ^^

 

My game...

Because i had some free time last week, i started a small game project.
The game itself will be a mixture of "Castle of the winds" and "Diablo".
A project of my dreams. ;P
Round based Hack and slay, with tons of monsters, randomly generated maps, lots of weapons and armory...

Basic movement works, collision detection works, tile loading on two layers works, very basic map generation works.
Next on the list: a random map generator.
After that: interface tuning, adding monsters, adding weapons/armory/magic, adding sound ...

Gameport to PS/2 converter - the build

Some weeks ago i soldered my gameport 2 PS/2 converter on a breadboard.

Oh yeah - i am beginning to hate breadboards...

It took more time than thought, but i finished it and the circuit worked. At least with my trusty old 80286 computer. With my new one it did not - the circuit was blocking my keyboard as soon as i pressed a button on the gamepad. So it is only a 50% success.

Works on my old computer, but not on my new one.

With an logic analyzer it would be a piece of cake to make it work...

I modified the plan a bit. You should keep in mind that the connection to the connector pins on the male and the female ps/2 connector must to be mirrored.

For the female ps/2 connector i cannibalised an old industry pc motherboard.

For the male part i stripped away the cable from an old keyboard. It is good to have a lot of trash at home. ; )

The gameport connector was bought.

Gameport to PS/2 converter

Finally! My gameport project is finished!
With this little circuit it is possible to emulate a ps/2 keyboard with your gamepad.
I designed the circuit for a game that could not be played with that gamepad. But it worked well with a keyboard - so this evil mad idea was born. ;)
I used my old repaired gravis gamepad (repair report) for that project. Other gamepads could be wired internal in a different way.
The circuit is designed for digital gamepads only - no analog sticks or joysticks are supported (yet)!
But such a functionality could be implemented too. Because i used an old ATMEGA8, there are a lot of free pins for further experiments and hacks.
The buttons are "hard wired" in the code to keys. I used the ALT, SPACE, ENTER and CNTRL keys for the buttons. A function to define new key bindings without hacking them into the code and reporogram the controller could be implemented - but i was to lazy to write it. ^.^

Another impressive project that shows how easy and yet powerfull a µC circuit can be.

THX to the KISS guidelines.

The circuit in the red box does all the magic.












Feel free to use or improve this circuit.


The code can be found here:
http://sites.google.com/site/species0x2118/hive
http://sites.google.com/site/species0x2118/hive/gamepad.c?attredirects=0&d=1 (direct link)
I changed the fuses to run the controller with 8 MHz to have enough speed reserves. But a lower frequency could work as well.

As a goody i made a video of the gameplay with the gamepad connected to the converter:

Gamepad fixed

Last week i repaired my old Gravis gamepad. It had a broken cable. To fix it, i bought a joystick extension cable as replacement. Because the new cable was a bit thicker, i had to modify the casing of the gamepad. The modifications are not visible from the outside.