Alright, so I finally got around to that little idea I had, the one I’ve been calling “thomas and james are racing.” Just wanted to see if I could get something basic up and running. It’s been bugging me for a while, so I thought, today’s the day.
First off, I booted up my usual software. Nothing fancy. I grabbed a couple of simple images I had – one for Thomas, one for James. Really basic stuff, just so I could tell them apart. My plan was just to get them on the screen and moving. I figured I could always make them look better later if the idea had legs.
Then, I needed a track. Or, well, something that looked like a track. I just drew a straight line across the screen. Didn’t want to get bogged down with anything complicated at this stage. The main thing was to see them actually race, even if it was just a simple dash from one side to the other.
Getting Them to Actually Move
Okay, so the next step was making Thomas and James, you know, move. I started with Thomas. I just gave him a set speed, so he’d move a certain number of pixels each time the screen updated. He started chugging along, pretty straightforward.
Then I did the same for James. But I wanted this to be a race, right? So I thought, maybe James should be a bit quicker. For this first attempt, I just made James’s speed a little higher than Thomas’s. Let’s see what happens, I thought.
I ran the thing. And, well, James, being faster, just shot past Thomas. No real surprise there. It was a bit dull, to be honest. Just two shapes moving at slightly different speeds. Not much of a “race.”
So, I sat there thinking. How do I make this a bit more like a real race without overcomplicating things right now? I remembered I wanted to try adding a bit of chance into it. Like, maybe one of them gets a sudden burst of speed, or the other one stumbles a bit.
- My first idea was to mess with James’s speed randomly. Sometimes he’d go super fast, other times he’d nearly stop. That was just chaotic. Thomas would win one time, then James would zoom ahead the next. Way too unpredictable.
- Then I thought, okay, let’s tone down the randomness. What if there’s just a small chance for a speed boost? I put in a little check: if a random number was below a certain value, Thomas would get a quick, short boost.
That actually felt a bit better. It wasn’t so cut and dried anymore. Sometimes Thomas would get lucky and surge forward, and other times James’s steady pace would keep him in the lead. It’s still super, super basic, of course. A long way from being anything impressive.
But for a short practice session, just to get the core idea of “thomas and james are racing” off the ground, it was alright. I got them on screen, they moved, and there was a tiny spark of competition. I’ll probably revisit this. Maybe add some actual obstacles, or a proper finish line. For now, though, I just left it at that. It’s always interesting how you start with something simple, and then you begin layering these little bits of logic on top. That’s the part I enjoy, seeing it slowly take shape.