The Illinois of Art, Chicago
 Programming for the Artist
Instructor: Lindsay Grace

 

Example Code Chunk and Discussion (Week 2 Assignment 2):

Discussion:

The following code creates a glow effect. The code was provided at BlitzBasic.com and was used in the games Flight Sim AD and Wild Riders. Since it is public domain, we plan to use it in our game to highlight collect items. We will also use it warn the player that their life force is nearly depleted. The basic description of the code is as follows:

  1. Setup graphics and lighting
  2. Create a cube to which the glow effect will be applied
  3. Setup a glow texture
  4. Apply the glow texture to the cube

Code Sample:

;Glow effect
;Code by Mag. Idea from Sswift.

Graphics3D 640,480,32,2
SetBuffer BackBuffer()

; Create camera
Global camera=CreateCamera()
MoveEntity camera,3,3,0
RotateEntity camera,30,30,0

light=CreateLight()

Global cube=CreateCube()
PositionEntity cube,0,0,5
tex0=CreateTexture(300,300)
SetBuffer TextureBuffer(tex0)
ClsColor 255,255,255
Cls
SeedRnd(MilliSecs())
For k=1 To 50
Color Rand(256),Rand(256),Rand(256)
Rect Rand(600),Rand(600),Rand(600),Rand(600)
Next
EntityTexture cube,tex0
SetBuffer BackBuffer()

;glow setup
s=1
Global sizex=640/s
Global sizey=480/s
Global glowtexture=CreateTexture (384,384,256)
Global sp=CreateSprite(camera)
MoveEntity sp,-.25,-0.06,1.18
EntityAlpha sp,.32
ScaleTexture glowtexture,GraphicsWidth()/sizex,GraphicsHeight()/sizey
EntityTexture sp,glowtexture
TextureBlend glowtexture, 5
While Not KeyDown( 1 )
TurnEntity cube,0.5,0.5,0.5
CameraViewport camera,0,0,sizex,sizey
RenderWorld
CopyRect 0,0,sizex,sizey,0,0,BackBuffer(),TextureBuffer(glowtexture)
CameraViewport camera,0,0,GraphicsWidth(),GraphicsHeight()

RenderWorld
Flip
Wend

End