Dawn of the Geeks

The next game I decided to go with from the original Elmo game is the Feed Dorothy game. The object of this game is to move Dorothy so she catches the food. In my version you feed her cookies. In the original version the object is to feed Dorothy fish food. Bleck.

From a technical standpoint this demonstrates some additional game programming concepts. The cookie comes from the fish food container. The fish food container moves around and shakes. Dorothy is actually animated to look like her tail is waving. A 2D image of a goldfish was progressively modified with the “bulge” filter in Paint.Net (a free and excellent image editing tool for Windows). The fish object then progressively rotates through the frames of animation. “States” are used extensively to keep everything in sync. Also, both the fish food and Dorothy face the direction they are moving.

We’re no longer simply moving around static images like the Soccer Game.

The next game to be implemented is the Alphabet Game where Elmo must dodge obstacles and collect one letter at a time. I found a couple examples of Elmo saying the alphabet on YouTube. One is a rap song. The other is a skit with Grover where Elmo says every letter except one. I’ll see how I can best use those in the Alphabet Game.