Question

i am trying to figure our how to make a snake like tail for a XNA game. The snake it self is a sprite of 34×20 pixel, and my sprite of the tail is a 34×20 sprite.
But i am having problems finding a way to create a tale on.
My first idea is to make it tile based, and the remember the visited tiles, to a limit of the tail length. but this will make the tail lag, so after the snake have left the tile will there be a tail.

Do any one have an idear that i can make a tail of X length that follows the snake smooth, in an XNA game?

The snaked movement is based on pixel location, and can not stop, only change direction!

Answer 1

Nick Gravelyn wrote Sammy the Snake for XNA sometime ago (albeit in XNA 3), but I think that you’ll find this most useful for your game.

In this example, he uses List<Point> to store the body points, which makes it very easy to add new body parts:

bodyPoints.Add(new Point(2, 0));
bodyPoints.Add(new Point(1, 0));
bodyPoints.Add(new Point(0, 0));

Then, when it comes to rendering, you can simply loop through the body points:

for (int i = 1; i < bodyPoints.Count - 1; i++)
{
    DrawBody(
        spriteBatch, 
        bodyPoints[i], 
        bodyPoints[i - 1], 
        bodyPoints[i + 1]);
}