To create these kind of games, you need to install either DirectX (maintained by Microsoft) or OpenGL (open source (maintained by a not-for-profit). You create a window, using a method from one of these libraries. Then, tell the window where a certain image should appear and where to find that image in the sprite sheet.

Unfortunately, I haven't created any games yet. Neither DirectX nor OpenGL is particularly easy to install; I spent a day at that, but didn't finish. I'll come back to this project later.

Clarissa Explains It All was one of my favorite shows growing up. I've always wanted to create the kind of games she did. I hear from professional game programmers that it isn't that much more difficult than she made it look.

The language of choice is usually Flash, but a genuine Adobe Flash license costs hundreds, so many hobbyists still program in C.

The animations are really just a series of images displayed one after another. These images are laid alongside each other in memory and called a "sprite." All the images in these old games would be stored together in one bmp (bitmap) file called a "sprite sheet." I won't bother including a sprite sheet here because there are plenty out there.

Duck Hunt: http://tsgk.captainn.net/?p=showsheets&t=sr&sr=151

Mario: http://www.mariomayhem.com/downloads/sprites/super_mario_bros_sprites.php

The program would keep track of 3 pairs of numbers for each image: the x-y of where the image is displayed on screen, the x-y of where the image is stored on the sprite sheet and the height/width of the image on the sprite sheet.

This seems pretty straightforward to me so far, but I still have a few questions. How do you tell your program to display a window? How do you tell it to display the image onto the window? How do you tell it to stop displaying the image on the window?

I'm hoping that, if I can get these questions answered, I'll be able to build the kind of old-school computer games I used to see on Clarissa Explains It All.

Saturday, November 24, 2012
Clarissa Explains It All Promo