LabVIEW
How to make a really basic pong game for a beginner
EchoWolf wrote:Now, on to LabView. No, I do not plan to copy>paste someone's code, because the purpose of this assignment is to learn the functions of things such as clusters, arrays, shift registers, indexing and local variables. I know what they are, but I've never really used arrays or clusters before, or at least not that I can remember.
Why would you need local variables for this??? 😮
The pong you attached acts more like an incomplete "breakout", and not "pong". Too much code for my taste, it is probably cleaner to use arrays instead of numerous scalar shift regsiters.
Here's a quick draft that just bounces a ball around in a box. See if it makes sense? 😉
Maybe it can give you some ideas.
EchoWolf wrote:
Do you divide that by two to set the initial ball location in the middle? Also, what function actually generates that ball?
There is the picture function to draw a filled circle at a given xy position. That draws the "ball".
Another option would be to use an xy graph as in your old example. It will not work well to draw the paddles, though.
Here is a quick example using an xy graph indicator instead. As you can see, With a few small modifications, my code is fully scaleable, so no code changes are needed if you want more balls.
(Of course, if you want the balls to collide with each other, it would be a bit more complicated ;)).
I thik I prefer your previous one better. I was able to recreate some parts of the code (I feel a bit accomplished for being able to figure out how to without just copy/pasting) ^.^
My question is that, if I wanted to have a set speed for the ball without having those random values you place in, how much of that bottom portion of the code can I remove? And, what part of that code reverses the X and Y values upon collision?
I think for today, I just want to be able to get the ball to bounce around within the frame.
On a side note: what is the point of the "wait" timer in this program?
Also, this is the "bottom part of the code" that I am referring to:
I am guessing that I could remove the "GenerateWhiteNoise" module and the case structure that it goes through later?
EchoWolf wrote:My question is that, if I wanted to have a set speed for the ball without having those random values you place in, how much of that bottom portion of the code can I remove? And, what part of that code reverses the X and Y values upon collision?
I think for today, I just want to be able to get the ball to bounce around within the frame.
On a side note: what is the point of the "wait" timer in this program?
...
The code gets random speeds at start and whenever the bump button is pressed. If you want fixed speeds, create an array constant with two elements. Set the values in some range -1..1. of course it will now be the same whenever you run the program, which is a bit boring. 😉
The reversal happens in the small FOR loop. Whenever the new x or y is out of bounds, we negate the corresponding speed. The "in range and coerce" function outputs an array which is FALSE for all values that are not in range. We loop over all speeds and flip the ones that have an out of bounds x or y.
If you would remove the wait, the loop would spin as fast as the computer allows, probably millions of times per second. The wait makes sure that the loop iterates at a constant and reasonable rate. Dataflow dictates that the loop iteration cannot complete until all code in it has completed. The wait takes the longest and thus determines the loop rate. Why don't you try to remove the wait and see what happens? Now put the wait back! 😉
EchoWolf wrote:
Also, what is the purpose of dividing the values that come out of the DrawAreaSize by 2?
as you guessed already, to start in the center...
(nothing will freeze if you remove the wait. Just stop the vi as usual.... )
Thank you very, very much, sir! I will be back tomorrow to ask for help with implementing an interface to put in a paddle, and allow for it to be controlled with the up and down keys. And, because that sounds simpler to me, I am betting that it will be harder than the bouncing ball part. >.<
One last question for tonight though:
Is this part here just computations to redraw the "ball" each loop iteration?
