Repetition: Drawing A Sine Curve With A For Loop

References:

• Pre-requisite: it is assumed that you have read through the prior tutorials, and are familiar with the concepts covered in those tutorials.

Goals:

• In this tutorial, we will:
  • Examine a simple for loop, which is used to repeat some action a large number of times

1. Obtain the example code

• Here is the zip file to the source files and compiled executable of this example.
• Here is the keyboard mapping for the XBOX 360 controller.  
• Here is the main tutorial page for working with XNACS1Lib, and here is the complete documentation of the library: html-page or compiled html help file .

When the game starts, you'll see a screen that looks similar to this:

The program for this tutorial is almost exactly identical to the program used in the drawing A Sine curve with a While Loop tutorial .   The difference is that for this tutorial, we're using a for loop.

2. Examining The Program:

Let's examine the C# source code that produces the behavior we see on-screen

• UpdateWorld():

  float yPos = 0.0f;     // here is the for loop     for ( float xPos = 0.0f; xPos < World.WorldMax.X; xPos += 1)     {         float radian = ComputeRadianFromXPos(xPos);         yPos = ComputeSineYPos(radian) ;         CreateABallAt(xPos, yPos, "SoccerBall" );     }

  • First, you'll notice that we create the yPos variable, and give it an initial value of 0.0f.  While this isn't strictly necessary (we will assign it the value of sin(x) before using it), it's good to see that there are different styles of writing equivalent, correct code.  Some people prefer to initialize all of their variables, so we're showing you this example code in order to show you that style of coding.
  • Let's briefly examine the details of how the for loop.
    • First, we can see that the for loop is a normal, counting for loop:
          for ( float xPos = 0.0f; xPos < World.WorldMax.X; xPos += 1)
      You'll notice that we choose to declare xPos as a float (instead of an integer), mainly to show you that one can declare any type of variable you want in the initialization step of the for loop.  You'll also notice that we increment xPos using the counting expression " xPos += 1 ", which is equivalent to " xPos = xPos + 1 " , both of which are equivalent to " xPos++ ".  Again, the goal here is to show you that there are multiple, correct ways of writing this loop.
    • Second, you can see that the body of the loop should all be familiar to you - using the functions ComputeRadianFromXPos and ComputeSineYPos , the Y value of the center of the new soccer ball is calculated, just like in the previous tutorial(s).

FURTHER EXERCISES::  

1. Start from a blank starter project (1000.201, if you need it), and re-do the code from memory as much as possible.  On your first try, do what you can, and keep the above code open so that when you get stuck, you can quickly look up what you forgot (and that after you finish a line, so that you can compare your line to the 'correct' line).  On the next try, do the same thing, but try to use the finished code less.  Repeat this until you can type everything, without refering the tutorial's code.
   • Repeat this exercise daily for several days, so that you really get the hang of this.  As you go on, periodically review this by re-doing this exercise.
2. Familiarizing Yourself With Loops: Modifying the program
   For this exercise, you should use the same project that was explained in the above tutorial.
   Go back to the previous tutorial about animating sinusoidal motion, and run that program.  Observe how the program moves the small basketball along the sine wave.  You should implement identical functionality here in this program, and you should do that from memory as much as possible.  To be clear: do not refer to the source code in that previous tutorial unless you absolutely have to - the more of this exercise that you can and figure out (and do) on your own, the more you'll learn from it.

	This work is supported in part by a grant from Microsoft Research under the Computer Gaming Curriculum in Computer Science RFP, Award Number 15871 and 16531.
2/8/2010