Treasure Piles

Combining art and code to solve game dev challenges

Treasure is a fun part of any RPG. In a game as simple as Heroine Dusk the treasure needs to stand out as a main incentive. Early in the game you spend a lot of time collecting a handful of coins from beginner enemies, but later you receive hoards of gold from each creature.

To make this more interesting I wanted to display the exact amount of treasure gained. When the player gets two coins, they should see exactly two coins. I could create a single coin icon and display N random coins, but that won't look interesting. I could also create unique images for every individual value, but that's too much effort.

My solution was to create icons that represent powers-of-two values in coins. The images starting with precise coin counts and end with abstract treasure objects:

Next I chose to position each of the ten icons above into a single massive pile. I chose fixed positions for each icon, but an advanced method might dynamically create these positions. I made sure to not overlap the icons too much while still keeping them close enough to make a cohesive pile.

Ten treasure icons set to fixed positions and sort order

To display the treasure I check the bits of the total gold amount (via Bitwise And). The icons are ordered from back to front so the pile renders correctly.

  // arranged in treasure pile draw order
  if (display_value & 128) treasure_render_gold_icon(7);
  if (display_value & 512) treasure_render_gold_icon(9);
  if (display_value & 32) treasure_render_gold_icon(5);
  if (display_value & 16) treasure_render_gold_icon(4);
  if (display_value & 8) treasure_render_gold_icon(3);
  if (display_value & 1) treasure_render_gold_icon(0);
  if (display_value & 4) treasure_render_gold_icon(2);
  if (display_value & 64) treasure_render_gold_icon(6);
  if (display_value & 2) treasure_render_gold_icon(1);
  if (display_value & 256) treasure_render_gold_icon(8);

And here you can test the results. With ten icons I can display treasures up to 1023 coins in value, which may be enough for Heroine Dusk. Of course, each icon I add will double the total gold value I can display.

Interactive demo

Gold amount to display: -- ++ Render

I hope you found this interesting! My favorite part of game development is combining art and code to solve technical challenges.

About the Author

Clint Bellanger is the programmer and artist behind Heroine Dusk. When not making games he is painting miniatures..