MAZE

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  1st lvl (2d)

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  3rd lvl (2d)

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  4th lvl (2.5d/ raycasting)

When we first heard of PickHacks and its theme, we weren’t quite sure what we were supposed to be doing for our project. We both knew a bit of C, but that really wasn’t very optimal for beginner game development. Still, we tried using what we had and learned a bit of SDL in order to prepare for PickHacks.

At the beginning, we were quite sure that we would be making some kind of 2D dungeon, but it turned out we managed to overestimate and underestimate ourselves at the same time. The first turning point was when we had to place tiles all over our “dungeon,” but we weren’t quite sure how. Quite stupidly, now that I think of it, we tried to create our first grid of tiles using just loops and coming up with crazy logic in the loop to somehow place the tiles. In the end, we wasted quite a bit of time on that effort before one of our seniors suggested we get help from some AI. Deciding on ChatGPT, we asked for the most viable method, and that’s how we learned about tile grids—i.e., placing tiles with the help of a 2D array and using just a single nested loop to place them wherever we wanted! It was quite an experience.

After finishing the tiles, we wanted to try our hands at ray casting since we had “finished” our project a bit early. We stayed up the entire night trying to understand how ray casting works and how to implement it in SDL before finally completing our final product—just as I’m writing this. This has honestly been one of the most educational opportunities I’ve ever had!

Built With

• c
• makefile