cschladetsch / xiq

A QIX Clone written from scratch on Linux using just video- and audio-buffers.

XIQ - A QIX clone written quickly

This is a very simple game based on the old arcade game, Qix.

Now, this may seem like a really small, trivial and badly written game. And it is.

However it is written with practically no 3rd-party library source or components. It uses a framebuffer of pixels, and a sound buffer of unsigned 8-bit bytes. These are provided by SDL, as well as input.

Nothing else is used. So when a line has to be drawn, I had to write a line-draw algorithm. Want to draw a circle? Then write the algorithm to plot the points of a circle (quickly).

When a sound effect had to be played, I had to write the sound values directly to the byte array for the sound buffer.

There is a custom FontLibrary as well. As well as an ObjectFactory and GamePhase management system.

Basically, I wrote this to see what I could with the following self-imposed limitations:

1. A framebuffer of R8G8B8A0 pixels.
2. A sound-buffer of unsigned 8-bit bytes.
3. An input system that I could poll for key down/key up.
4. One weekend.
5. And absolutely nothing else.

So, it's a simple, badly-drawn game with no fancy graphics or sound or music or fonts. But it has graphics and sound and music and fonts, all custom made from the ground up.

Instructions

• Move with the cursor keys or WASD.
• Get hit and you lose a life.
• You have three lives.

I know there's a problem with the game area being half the screen. That's a consequence of the 23-minute port from SDL1 to SDL2 and can't see much point fixing it.

Build Instructions

Linux

$ sudo apt install cmake libsdl2-dev
$ mkdir -p build && cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make
$ cd .. && build/xiq

Windows

Projects for VS2017 and VS2019 are included.

xiq's Issues

Half the playfield isn't used.

For all entities except Xiq, only half the playfield is used.

Timing is wrong

The timing is not correctly frame-rate adjusted for clock speed.

Cmake is Broken

CMake build system hasn't been maintained in over a decade. And it doesn't work.

Include SDL as a submodule

Currently, the entire SDL2 2.0.8 library is included in the repo, including its artifacts.

This is stupid and wrong. Also, SDL2 has line-draw primitives in it, which entirely misses the point of the project.

Better to add SDL1 as a submodule and revert the port to SDL2.

Build for Linux?

Title says you wrote it on linux. Can it build run on linux+sdl?

Cheers!

Binaries are included in Build

Built library dependencies and outputs are in the repo. They shouldn't be.