Quisby

Speaking of coding, meet BulletML. In the creator’s broken English:

BulletML is the Bullet Markup Language. BulletML can describe the barrage of bullets in shooting games.

You guys have proven again and again that shmups are boring, but BulletML is a rather inventive use of XML that turns something like this:

<bulletml type="vertical" xmlns="http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/bulletml">
<action label="top">
    <fire>
        <direction>50</direction>
        <bullet/>
    </fire>
    <wait>32-$rank*16</wait>
    <fire>
        <direction>-50</direction>
        <bullet/>
    </fire>
    <wait>32-$rank*16</wait>
</action>
</bulletml>

Into what you see in the above video. (Not exactly: the above code is a very simplistic example, and what the video demonstrates is not.)

The above video, by the way, is of rRootage, a shmup made by the guy that made BulletML, that generates all its bullet patterns with BulletML. (Thanks to it being open source, it’s also been ported to OSX and the iPhone, though I hear the iPhone port sucks.) It even includes all the XML files loaded up with the necessary code, which means you could just edit them and make your own rRootage bullet patterns quite easily.

There’s a demo applet loaded with plenty of examples, including bullet patterns from your my favourite shmups recreated in BulletML.

27th October 2009 • 7 notes