Damnation Alley - 8-bit wars competition entry

Started by Xerra, January 27, 2019, 18:50:00

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Xerra

Time for another couple of screenshots. Can't show a video really as there isn't much road defined yet. Until I got graphics I was happy with I hadn't made a start. I've gone through my own efforts (abysmal) and god knows how many other tilesets before I happened upon a random tweet I'd replied to back in 2015.

The player car, some of the enemy cars and the tileset that's making up the road are now using graphics designed by Davide Fichera who has made loads of C64 games over the years. He did a mock up picture using sprites and tiles for a racing game he was going to develop for the C64 but never got round to it. He has kindly given permission for me to use/adapt them to purpose for my game as long as I never use them for a genuine C64 game myself.

I've learnt a lot more about C64 sprites in the last couple of weeks to keep up the authenticity criteria for the game. Anyone who knows the C64 hardware will know that the multicolour mode for sprites will automatically go into double pixel mode so, while the sprites stay the same size, you only have 21 pixel width to work with as well as some colour restrictions that have already been discussed. The mock up screen I'm also showing below shows sprites that don't appear to be possible on a proper C64 because they aren't double pixel in width and yet do have multiple colours. This is because each one uses two sprites. A multicolour top component which is double pixel in width and the fine detail outlining is in black single pixels. Really clever stuff. I don't really need to do the same thing in my game so I've just overlaid both elements into one sprite but wanted to point this out in case it looked like I was taking a short cut.

Those buildings on the right side of the screen are some of my own work and also some images that are were free to use. Not that they are really that recognisable because I've discovered that Multisprite (covered in the competition thread) has the ability to load in any image you want and it will convert it into a 320 * 200 image using only the colours that are available for your chosen machine. And it works really well too, if any of you fancy trying it. Hopefully no chance of me screwing up a couple of images due to my old methods of manually recolouring anything that I've been tinkering with without putting the C64 palette into the editor first. I've already bitched about how i've had to keep doing that each time I relaunch it so won't go over that again.

The road design is going to take a huge amount of time so I'm likely to just have a rough attempt so I can think through having a stage system and get the other elements like cars in before I finish it. There's a hell of a lot of work needed still for this game so I'm glad I don't need to think too much about more graphics stuff and can concentrate on getting on with the code.

I'm not going to run with the boat sections that Spy Hunter had but I am now considering adding a bumping buggies element into the game where you can jump sections of water in your car and destroy things you land on. Undecided on that at the moment though.
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blinkok


MrmediamanX

It's a thing that doe's when it don't..

Qube

Looks like it's coming along nicely ;D - Great work on the C64 look.
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Until the next time.


Derron

While the buildings look really cool - they have the wrong perspective. The "front" of the houses should be hardly visible as it is "top down". If you take in a bit perspective ("bird view") then the front part will be visible a bit (but only some pixels wide).

Some games - like Zelda (on SNES) use some "fake perspective" to show the side walls - maybe you want to use a similar thing. Still the front should be less "wide" on your screen.


If you did the building sprites on your own - I do not see any reason to use a car sprite by someone else. Just do it on your own and get rid of the extra artist in the credit section of the game - be proud of your work and abilities.


bye
Ron

3DzForMe

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Steve Elliott

Looks good, but I thought you were going to do your own graphics this time.  ;)
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Xerra

Quote from: Derron on February 22, 2019, 07:09:12
While the buildings look really cool - they have the wrong perspective. The "front" of the houses should be hardly visible as it is "top down". If you take in a bit perspective ("bird view") then the front part will be visible a bit (but only some pixels wide).

Some games - like Zelda (on SNES) use some "fake perspective" to show the side walls - maybe you want to use a similar thing. Still the front should be less "wide" on your screen.


If you did the building sprites on your own - I do not see any reason to use a car sprite by someone else. Just do it on your own and get rid of the extra artist in the credit section of the game - be proud of your work and abilities.


No, I've not done the building sprites myself. I used some free art and converted the colours before making some amendments to tidy things up a bit. There's still some of the graphics in the game that I did. A couple of other cars such as the tyre slasher and a vehicle I currently still plan to use for the innocent public car that you have to avoid shooting so you don't get a score penalty but they look so bad compared to the other stuff that I'm not sure I want to keep them. Always going to be a problem when I accept defeat using all my own work. As much as I've liked tinkering with graphics in this game it's been both a huge time sink and not very productive. I should be way further in this game by now and I'm really concerned that if I stubbornly still kept trying to do it myself then I won't make the deadline.

I missed the deadline on a previous competition because I didn't get my priorities right and I don't want to do that again. I keep a list of "Maybe" stuff for every game I've done in these competitions and this one will probably get very little of it implemented unless I really knuckle down on actual game now.

I do see what you mean about the buildings perspective, though. If I do get a chance then I'll look at them again and maybe do something different. But I need to move onto the gameplay 100% now.
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therevills

Looking good! Along with Spy Hunter the other game like this I use to like was a cops one... quick google: APB!

MrmediamanX

that's what this reminded me of .... Action fighter from sega, played the ever lovin crap out that on c64.
It's a thing that doe's when it don't..

3DzForMe

My 5p, get the tyre slasher in, the buildings look fine to me ;)

QuoteThere's still some of the graphics in the game that I did. A couple of other cars such as the tyre slasher
BLitz3D, IDEal, AGK Studio, BMax, Java Code, Cerberus
Recent Hardware: Dell Laptop
Oldest Hardware: Commodore Amiga 1200 with 1084S Monitor & Blitz Basic 2.1

Xerra

First of four zones track is in. I'll need to do some more tidying up with it but it will work for now so I can start thinking about having other cars in there. Ignore debug info as forgot to switch it off before I started video.

Still a loooong way to go with this. No collisions, other vehicles, shop, 3 tracks and stage breaks are broken to hell at the moment. Hope I can get it done in time...

http://retroevolved.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Damnation-V0.06.mp4
M2 Pro Mac mini - 16GB 512 SSD
ACER Nitro 5 15.6" Gaming Laptop - Intel® Core™ i7, RTX 3050, 1 TB SSD
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Latest game - https://xerra.itch.io/Gridrunner
Blog: http://xerra.co.uk
Itch.IO: https://xerra.itch.io/

Qube

Coming along well :) - Hurry up and get to recording a "blowing shit up" video :P
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Until the next time.

MrmediamanX

It's a thing that doe's when it don't..