mbmFramework V1.4 released and tutorials started!
The tutorials are underway and the very first one exposed some omissions from the framework. First of all there was no way to work with individual X and Y values for a sprite without accessing their fields directly. Not that there’s too much wrong in that, but I’d prefer it wasn’t necessary anywhere in the framework code. Once users are happy using fields directly it can cause chaos when they begin accessing those they shouldn’t. (For non Blitzmax readers; while Blitzmax handles OOP, Polymorphism and Inheritance it is rather lacking in the Public / Private department).
Another thing missing was a simple way to handle lots of sprite objects. I always use a list of free sprites that I create at start up, then take one from it everytime I need one and put it in a list of live sprites. The live sprites are drawn, updated and used for collision detection etc. When one of those live sprites is finished with, I take it out of the live list, and put it back in the free list so it can be recycled. Simple enough.
Except, I’ve added a SpriteList type to the framework to handle this for you. I’ve also updated the first tutorial to use this new type.
