Dev Day Diary: Wide Turns

Odd how technical stumbles can alter the direction your coding. Until T2D's Mac socket code is up to snuff, trying to make the playable iTunes interaction fly will be difficult, and I really need to get more up to snuff myself on techniques for quick 2D visualizations before making it pretty.

So I ripped out the core sections of SHMUP code that was in there and reframed it into the start of an Asteroids clone, with the idea of adding a random mission system to keep things interesting. However, I'm also doing all this with the intent of hooking up a pair of joysticks so that The Girl and I can crash on the couch and play. The oddity here is that the most fundamental analog device available to OS X is a mouse ... and there you only get one. However, the GamePad Companion conveniently allows you to remap analogs as an eight way hatstick.

Course, eight compass points is significantly smaller than, well, the 360+ that analog offers. So while it offers a convienently low denominator of control which can be easily translated to keyboard, mouse or joystick - it certainly doesn't offer Asteroids style control.

So now I have a control system in search of a game. Not the worst thing in the world, since there wasn't much of a game to start with. It's nice to have next to nothing for at least one reason - you can easily make wide turns.