Making a top-down shooter

[thrashmetal15]

I'm working on a simple top-down shooter for PPC, and I'm having trouble working out how to make the ship fire many bullets in quick succession. I could make about 5 identical bullet sprites and just cycle through them as the fires a burst, but it seems that there should be a more efficient way. My code is a real mess right now, so it wouldn't really mean much to post it, lol. Any ideas, would be really appreciated.

Thanks,

thrashmetal15

[sponge]

Er, what do you mean? Just make a new sprite for every bullet, and once it's off-screen, delete it. There's no other way to do it.

[mmtbb]

[thrashmetal15]

Ok, just checking. What I ended up doing was making a couple bullet sprites and just fire them in succession depending on the whereabouts of the other bullets. Thanks.

[Conan]

what you want is a particle system. All this is is a large set of simple sprites all of which get processed each time throught the game loop. This allows for lots & lots of bullets flying all over the place. Give each one a lifetime which you decrement plus update the position. Only draw if active and on screen.

[kornalius]

PPL has the particle you need! It's all there.

[Conan]

[bmanske]

[Conan]

[thrashmetal15]

Never thought about using particles.......hmm...........

[thrashmetal15]

[thrashmetal15]