I stumbled upon this forum, and just had to register and participate in the 8-bit wars. Big thanks to qube and everyone else who is making this happen. It's been over 20 years since I last made a game, so I might be little rusty.
My game is going to be a story driven platformer about battling your inner demons... At least that is my excuse for using same lazily recolored sprites for all characters. Your player has three different 'mario style' sizes, and enemies maybe more.
I'm using Polyanna https://csdb.dk/release/?id=153091 (https://csdb.dk/release/?id=153091) for music. 5 extra channels for sound seems almost like cheating, but this tracker should actually run on real hardware. I'm only using 4 of the 8 channels anyway. At the moment i'm using QB64 for coding, but not sure if I'm sticking with that.
Oh yeah: i'm trying to make something that sounds and smells like a C-64 game.
QB64, a popular software. Just like FreeBASIC. Good luck.....
you have until Sunday March 31st 23:59:59 BST so there should be plenty of time left to build something.
also welcome to forums ... a home away from home. :D
He he, love the c64_bigguy.gif, reminds me of the Bruce Lee game :P
Quote from: jonza on February 16, 2019, 23:15:29
I stumbled upon this forum, and just had to register and participate in the 8-bit wars. Big thanks to qube and everyone else who is making this happen. It's been over 20 years since I last made a game, so I might be little rusty.
My game is going to be a story driven platformer about battling your inner demons... At least that is my excuse for using same lazily recolored sprites for all characters. Your player has three different 'mario style' sizes, and enemies maybe more.
I'm using Polyanna https://csdb.dk/release/?id=153091 (https://csdb.dk/release/?id=153091) for music. 5 extra channels for sound seems almost like cheating, but this tracker should actually run on real hardware. I'm only using 4 of the 8 channels anyway. At the moment i'm using QB64 for coding, but not sure if I'm sticking with that.
Oh yeah: i'm trying to make something that sounds and smells like a C-64 game.
+1 for Tiny guy. It'll keep your asset work to a minimum too. Let's face it - most old 8bit games required you to fill in the blanks with your imagination ;)
Quote from: Qube on February 17, 2019, 16:56:36
He he, love the c64_bigguy.gif, reminds me of the Bruce Lee game :P
This is exactly what I was thinking. That game is such a classic.
Welcome to the forum - good stuff. Looking like a dark horse competition-wise.
Quote from: Qube on February 17, 2019, 16:56:36
He he, love the c64_bigguy.gif, reminds me of the Bruce Lee game :P
Me too. It's not intentional, but it's hard to unsee. Maybe I should include a power-up that makes you yellow and gives you karate :)
Some early gameplay video!
https://youtu.be/9PGD7uAG5yw
Many things are still missing, wrong or broken. Code is slow as hell and I think I'm getting a tendonitis to my wrist :)
ah man, that is cool. but it's best just use screenshot's when show casing your progress.
you don't want give away to much, at least game play wise. all & all very cool look.
Quote from: MrmediamanX on February 18, 2019, 11:01:21
ah man, that is cool. but it's best just use screenshot's when show casing your progress.
you don't want give away to much, at least game play wise. all & all very cool look.
Probably a good idea. No worries. It's going to be plenty different. I already redrew almost all of the graphics. Style is similar, but it sits on a 8x8 grid now and is a bit more like an actual C-64 game could look like. There's not a lot of the intended game play mechanics on the video -- beyond jumping and platforms anyway. It isn't going to be so "mario". Just needed something to do in the game so I threw in a bunch of coins and some projectiles for now.
it's cool ... all the best :)
Graphics and my game engine is working correctly with double wide pixels. Graphics are trying to emulate 4x8 multicolor character mode with some sprites. This scene would be using sprites for the player character, clouds and coins.
Trying to have a char set and sprite set that could actually fit in the VIC-II:s 16kb memory. Just found out there's no sprite mirroring or flipping registers in C64, and my palette swaps take space too. That ram runs out fast! I'm currently counting that I would need about 14.5kb. :)
Next up: Enemies
My game just turned into a series. Other one is going to be a entry to the "Love letter to freebasic" -comp. It's going to be totally different, a run 'n' gun game with aggressive punk as background music. Story wise it's a sequel, but the other deadline is earlier, so it looks like "Inner Demons" will technically be a prequel :)
Protagonist of both games will now be called "90's guy". He's traumatized by everything that has happened since 2001. Nineties Guy had a nervous brakedown and is currently stuck in a mental hospital tied with a straitjacket. Both games are set in his imagination. In Inner Demons he's dealing with his... Inner Demons. In the other one he still needs to deal with the trauma that's caused by Visual Basic, .net, Object oriented programming etc. In his mind he's going to make things right and shoot him self some JS, CSS3 ad HTML5 with his finger.
My wife just showed me an amazing draft of a picture for the loading screen... So I guess the loading screen war is on :)
Great work, another well presented game, still a month to go.... 8)
Enemies, new levels, tiles, parallax scrolling, palette fixes, etc. Not sure if I can finish the FreeBASIC comp game on time. Lost few days of developement time to an unforeseen situation. Haven't totally given up on that yet, but I'ts really hard to come up with fast and easy enemy designs and sprites if your concept needs "other programming languages" as enemies.
8-bit wars is coming along fine thought... Still missing most of SID music and SFX. Parallax scrolling needs to be simplified or removed from this level to be almost somewhat possible.
QuoteNot sure if I can finish the FreeBASIC comp game on time. Lost few days of developement time to an unforeseen situation. Haven't totally given up on that yet
Keep at it until the last minute as sometimes things can come together really quickly :)
QuoteParallax scrolling needs to be simplified or removed from this level to be almost somewhat possible.
Looks good but keep in mind you don't need to go crazy specific to if your chosen computer could do x, y, z stuff technically. If you want to add in multiple layers of parallax scrolling then feel free to do that. Besides the C64 had games with parallax scrolling.
Hope you can pull it off in time, looks spot on for this compo.
Loading screen...
Nicely done loading screen ;) 8) Reminds me of an arnie shwarschnegger film, total recall....
excellent graphics you got going on there.
tiny suggestion for you:
maybe make the text a little bigger, slant it (slightly) and take out the dithering (spots)
Like this maybe? Too many possibilities...
yup - you got it. ;D
my (personal) preference would be to rotate it the other way and sort of put it where the previous one was - would fill the spce nicely and leave you some space below for anything else - logo, etc
Was hoping you'd have gone with the tiny sprite since it seemed to have more character, but still looking good!
I'm still using it. Our hero has 3 sizes that represent mental health. Basic enemies are color swaps of it, and there will be points where you need the tiny guy.
No work done for a while. My son, who is the Ron Hubbard of the team, got sick and got diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma three days ago. My son is still eager to finish, albeit with somewhat reduced workload. Anyway it would be stupidest thing to leave a project unfinished now. But you know... Fuck! (Sorry about that)
Cool loading screen. 8)
Sorry to hear about your son. :(
Dude, Best thoughts to your son
Sorry to hear about your son, shocking news :(
Quote from: jonza on March 15, 2019, 08:26:31
I'm still using it. Our hero has 3 sizes that represent mental health. Basic enemies are color swaps of it, and there will be points where you need the tiny guy.
Ahhhh ok my bad. I think my coherent brain shuts down after midnight. Glad you're still using it :)
Sorry to hear about the bad news!
Very very sorry to hear about your son Jonza.
Quote from: jonza on March 15, 2019, 08:38:13
No work done for a while. My son, who is the Ron Hubbard of the team, got sick and got diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma three days ago. My son is still eager to finish, albeit with somewhat reduced workload. Anyway it would be stupidest thing to leave a project unfinished now. But you know... Fuck! (Sorry about that)
This is terrible news. Unless he's getting benefit from working on this with you then life should take priority over a game. Carry on working on it when he wants to but maybe forget about working to a competition deadline. Sorry for your bad news :-(
Fuck the game ... priorities . Unless it's something which is being driven by the wee man?! A distraction is always a good thing!
Quote. ago. My son is still eager to finish, albeit with somewhat reduced workload. Anyway it would be stupidest thing to leave a project unfinished now.
Sorry to hear about your son's diagnosis, if he's happy to code along as a focus thing, good luck to you both in the competition. The artwork your entry has is inspirational, happy coding!
Dam :( Sorry to hear about your son, hope everything gets better soon!
I'm sorry to hear that. Best wishes for your son.
We got some good news. Cancer is "better" version of the possibilities, Hodgins, so it's almost always curable and non-deadly for young people. People under 20y have a survival rate that nears 100%.
There hasn't been much progress. Restarted work today. So we're feeling fine and are still in the race 8)
Quote from: jonza on March 27, 2019, 14:18:13
We got some good news. Cancer is "better" version of the possibilities, Hodgins, so it's almost always curable and non-deadly for young people. People under 20y have a survival rate that nears 100%.
There hasn't been much progress. Restarted work today. So we're feeling fine and are still in the race 8)
Excellent news - must be a huge relief!
Great news, happy for you all, it must be a relief.
Quote from: jonza on March 27, 2019, 14:18:13
We got some good news. Cancer is "better" version of the possibilities, Hodgins, so it's almost always curable and non-deadly for young people. People under 20y have a survival rate that nears 100%.
There hasn't been much progress. Restarted work today. So we're feeling fine and are still in the race 8)
That's good news ( in the grand scheme of things ).
Quote from: Qube on March 27, 2019, 17:16:52
That's good news ( in the grand scheme of things ).
Thanks :)
Some battling with one of your bigger inner demon on an unfinished level.
This one's no longer an competition entry. Sorry about that, but I'm still finishing it at some better time.
That's a shame Jonza, but totally understandable - hope you get it finished and that everything is okay!
don't sweat man, we know how difficult dev-ing can be and with life issues popping up now and then it is what it is. :)
Wow... it's been almost two years already. I'm here with an positive update. SInce last time a lot has happened. My son was in a scary situation. Things got quite bad before they got better. Treatment didn't work, but after some future-magic, he should be fine again. Immune-system had to be replaced with a new one, and waiting for second first immunizations during pandemic is weird -- but almost nice compared to what came before. We won! Thank god we live in Finland, where medical care is used to cure -- not make some greedy pigs rich.
Anyway. Inner Demons has devolved in to a prequel of sorts. My current project is a story driven action platformer that is based on the last chapters of the Finnish Epic Poem "Kalevala", added with the weirdest stories, beliefs and pagan traditions ever...
Good news!
Ah and the game... yeah ... dunno if it matters but also good news.
bye
Ron