Damnation Alley - 8-bit wars competition entry

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

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Xerra

Vehicle bashing and impacting scenery seems to finally be as done as it can be for where i'm at. I might tweak it before I release the game but it's working well with the three tracks I have at present. These cars are all about self preservation even without their own unique AI yet. They'll smash another car off the bridge into the river if it means they don't crash when you whack them.

Added three skill levels selectable which adjust scoring, number of vehicles allowed on screen at once and also how hard impacts affect the players car with other vehicles.

Once I stop pissing about actually playing the game then I can get on with the rest of it :)

I'll post a video later in the week when i've finished the fourth zone and do a full play through.
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Xerra

I went back to my InvadeALoad mini game today to finish it off and get it into the loading sequence of the main game.

It was a blatant impossible-mission thinking that it could be a game running on a C64 when I revisited because I've got a lot tighter on what could be done to look like the real thing. To start with the multi-colour graphics had to go because you couldn't use sprites while loading from the tape unit. I'm not sure about multi-colour mode but I've never seen it done, and didn't need it for space invaders, so changed stuff like the lives display, explosions and also made everthing move the 8 pixels that a character shifting would have done. The player ship is 32 * 32 pixels but there's nothing wrong with that, as i'm just using 16 user defined graphic blocks to show it.

As I was doing so much work to put it into the game I took the opportunity to actually make it a proper game. For those who never saw the original video I posted of it earlier in this thread, I had no end of level, the bases wouldn't respawn, the invaders fired even when there was one of them in the way of the shot and there was no speeding up of the invaders when their numbers diminished.

Oh, and no sound. Nothing wrong with putting that in there as the original InvadeALoad had Rob Hubbard music blasting in the background.

I'll be waiting for the first comment where someone says they preferred playing the loading game to Damnation Alley itself. Someone's bound to :-)

From my list of milestones to put into the game before the end of competition I decided to allocate them across the remaining days so I can, hopefully,  get enough time to put every one of them in. My worklog in the project files now shows this:

Updated 19-3-2019
================

Working
---------
19/03/2019 - Finish Invadaload integration and complete the mini game. DONE!
20/03/2019 - Shop needs to work with the auto parking.
21/03/2019 - Shredder AI.
22/03/2019 - Redraw Bike and Truck and draw Police car. Use the grand prix cars as public cars.
23/03/2019 - Animation of player car for wheels turning at right speed and shifting left/right.
24/03/2019 - Zone 4 laid out and road lines in zones 2,3,4.
25/03/2019 - End of Zone transition with bonus countdown etc.
26/03/2019 - Player car needs to drown, explode and put in Game Over scene.
27/03/2019 - Police car AI. Homing missile?!?!
28/03/2019 - Player car weapons. Smoke, Bomb and Oil.
29/03/2019 - Bike AI and Truck AI.
30/03/2019 - Title Screen revamp.
31/03/2019 - THE END. Do Itch.IO and forum stuff to put the game up by midnight.

Somewhere to add in there are sound effects, a scrolly text on the title screen to put the credits I need to add in and anything else I've forgotten. I've obviously got scope to change these tasks around over the remaining days but they all need to get done so there's no rest days for me until the end now. Wish I could take time off work to get ahead of myself a bit...
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Xerra

New video - sorry, had the audio switched off while recording. My bad.

Around 85% complete now. A lot still to do but I'm now ahead of the schedule I set myself yesterday so that's promising.

You can see the revised invadeaload and tracks 1 to 3 as they look right now. Everything is WIP at present - especially those dodgy car sprites.

https://youtu.be/846ncqtawSU
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Xerra

Set today as graphics work so here's a couple of new screenshots of this evenings work. I've added in the Police car, recoloured Enforcer, Truck and reworked the bike so it's in the correct palette now. All my own work this time apart from the civilian cars which look a bit smaller than the player car. These were drawn by the artist behind most of the background tiles for a real C64 game.

C64 fonts were amazing for their time, considering the colour restrictions in multi-colour mode. It was great fun putting these in and tinkering with them.
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Steve Elliott

Looking good, and very C64 authentic.  I particularly like the game title with some really nice dithering.  Although the S in SyntaxBomb has gone a bit AWOL.
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iWasAdam

yep, what Steve said. all looking very good :)

Xerra

Night off today for a work leaving do so I made sure i did two days worth of targets yesterday. I do really think that if I can get this over the line in time then I've achieved more than any of my last three games did. It's the hardest game I've had to write so far.
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Steve Elliott

#82
Quote
I do really think that if I can get this over the line in time then I've achieved more than any of my last three games did. It's the hardest game I've had to write so far.

Good stuff, it's always worthwhile learning something new.  And I'm in the same boat, hardest game I've had to write (plus pixel art with only 16 colours is surprisingly time consuming).  It's all very well understanding the theory of routines, but to bring everything together in a complete game is something else.

btw the Invaders game looks good too, but not much firing from the Invaders on that video.
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Xerra

Quote from: Steve Elliott on March 22, 2019, 23:11:33
btw the Invaders game looks good too, but not much firing from the Invaders on that video.

It does ramp up the less invaders there are. At present there's a 1 in 40 chance each frame that any of the invaders can fire off a shot. But I wanted to make sure that none of them could fire if there's another invader directly underneath them so, until a few paths are cleared, there's a lot who are given a chance to shoot but don't yet.

I think it makes it a bit harder as the screen is cleared which is how it should be but it's not that challenging once you've played a bit. I do tend to play with it a bit more than I should whenever I compile the main game to test something new, however, so I've disabled it for now so I don't get distracted :-)
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3DzForMe

The invadaload in itS own right, such attention to detail, and then there is the main game, all round awesome stuff. Syntaxbomb could make it's very own retro humble bundle with the quality of these entries!
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Xerra

Quote from: 3DzForMe on March 23, 2019, 06:37:43
The invadaload in itS own right, such attention to detail, and then there is the main game, all round awesome stuff. Syntaxbomb could make it's very own retro humble bundle with the quality of these entries!

We should have an off-shot website, or maybe a seperate area here, that lists all of the games ever created for these competitions as an easy reference instead of digging through the old threads. A lot of these games are timeless and there's bound to be new people who come along and want to see the kind of stuff that's been created before. Wish I was good at website design as I'd do something like that.
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Xerra

Hard at work this morning. Time for some sound effects as I just finished the player car animating tyres to run alongside the car speed. Got the car angle changing when moving as well but it's brought up some kind of judder when firing so I've got to fix that later.

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3DzForMe

My lord, that's one complex looking Dev UI.
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Steve Elliott

Quote
...maybe a seperate area here, that lists all of the games ever created for these competitions as an easy reference instead of digging through the old threads.

Great idea!   8)
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Qube

Looks like it coming along nicely :) - Is that a long to-do list I spot in your IDE screenshot? :o

Quote from: Steve Elliott on March 23, 2019, 17:09:38
Quote
...maybe a seperate area here, that lists all of the games ever created for these competitions as an easy reference instead of digging through the old threads.

Great idea!   8)
I agree :) - Something to sort out after the comp closes.
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Until the next time.