Chibi Akumas (チビ悪魔) - Episode 1: Invasion

[keith56]

Game Updated 2017/01/21!
Now supports 64K machines - game should also be a bit faster on 128k - so this upgrade should help everyone!

New! 'Box art kit' up for download to make your own boxed copy - I won't sell this! you have to do it yourself!



Introduction:

Chibiko didn't get any presents from Santa this year... in fact, in the last year she's been killed by
God, banished from hell, and reincarnated as the enemy of all mankind -so it's pretty likely she will
never get in his good books again!

Still, she can always do without that 'gotta-buy-it' plush doll, and the coal is always useful for
burning 'leftovers'

What's a whole lot less welcome is the strange monsters that have been lurking around the
mountains lately - and now they are infesting HER castle!

Join Chibiko in her unholy battle against the invasion of badly drawn, cliche and generally uninspired
enemies, pummel your way through 4 levels of brainless firepower crazy action - and unleash hell on
the 4 end level boss enemies!

This game is free! you can get it here:

http://www.chibiakumas.com/download/

it's also open source, so use the code for your own stuff if you want

See the gameplay on youtube!:
https://youtu.be/qtMgpII24ZA

*** WARNING ***
This game is satire, it contains religious references, 'graphic' 4 color violece, bad language and
general bad behavior - This game should not be played by those under 15, or people who cannot
differentiate between acceptable behavior in fiction and reality. I do not endorse any of the actions
portrayed in this game - it's just a silly bit of fun.

If you think this game may offend you - it probably will - please play something else!

Please use at your own risk! This is my first Assembly game, so there will be bugs in it!

Hope you enjoy it!

[Dizrythmia]

I've been eagerly awaiting this one 

[Skunkfish]

Looks like some fantastic use of Mode 1 there, I'm assuming that is the Plus version in the video judging from the player sprite?

[mahlemiut]

Deathsmiles is easier!    I guess that why you get 20 credits.

Also, runs well in MAME.

[Targhan]

Ok... Played it and... finished it (in "normal" mode)! With a highscore of 2035 ("F") .

There is a tremendous amount of work on this game. A lot of details everywhere. Horizontal, vertical scrolling, rasters, flickering, many many sprites. The way you handle all this is quite bold!
I think the graphics are quite good, and the humor is refreshing.

Some things that bothered me a bit:
- It is hard to know when you get hit. It's as if the bullets don't really affect the player (no flickering on the character as when the player hits another monster), so many times I died without knowing why.
- The sound of the player's bullet is a bit strange .

Well done!

[VincentGR]

Dear Lord!!! This is awesome.
Thank you.

[Morri]

Great! Great!! GREAT GAME!!! 
I've just won the game but had to go EASY and 255 lives (used about 30 of them).
So much going on but super enjoyable. When I get the chance I'll put it on my HxC and play it on my 6128.

Cheers!

[Puresox]

The download, I presume requires unzipping and ready to go on Winape!?
Oh and appreciate the work and keeping the scene thriving , And it is thriving at the moment!

[||C|-|E||]

Very very nice job!  I was playing today in my modded 464 Plus and it looks awesome. If found some bugs, though. Sadly, the computer froze one time and refused to detect that the floppy 1 was in the unit in another occasion (after dying in the first stage it tried to reload the main menu and kept asking me for floppy 1). When it froze, if was just after redefining the keys, the whole screen went green and the computer engaged the tape deck, same as if you try to load a tape from Basic.

This particular machine is atypical though: a 464 Plus upgraded to 6128 Plus by me with X-MEM, X-MASS, Albireo, C4CPC and a HxC (your game was loaded from the HxC). It could be really difficult to debug and probably I am the only one finding problems because of my setup.

Anyway, awesome job! 

[keith56]

Very very nice job!  I was playing today in my modded 464 Plus and it looks awesome. If found some bugs, though. Sadly, the computer froze one time and refused to detect that the floppy 1 was in the unit in another occasion (after dying in the first stage it tried to reload the main menu and kept asking me for floppy 1). When it froze, if was just after redefining the keys, the whole screen went green and the computer engaged the tape deck, same as if you try to load a tape from Basic.
Anyway, awesome job! 

I had a similar issue on my 6128 PLUS, I was sending some bad OUT's during the raster colors, which were messing my HxC disk on drive 2 - it worked fine on my 6128 non plus - I thought I had it fixed on my release version but your description sounds very similar!- I will recheck my code - and I need to read up on the CPC hardware - the rastercolor code was based on stuff copied from CPCWIKI - and I would be lying if I said I completely understood it - I think some bugs crept in!

[fgbrain]

Like Targhan said, its almost impossible to know when you are hit - there's no indication for this.
The bullets that hit your character just keep on moving instead of getting removed off screen.
That's my main complain because this fact decreases playability a lot.

Otherwise, a really impressive game considering its a first try...
Well done keith56!!!

[keith56]

I have trimmed some empty space from the files, and recompiled a new 'Single Disk' version of the game

No content has been removed, and you can play the whole game (with intro) without swapping discs

you will need Parados and a HxC or similar drive to play it on a real CPC

The download is available on the game's website:

http://www.chibiakumas.com/download/

I've had a few requests for a CPR version of the game,  Note: I am unable to make a cartridge version at this time... as far as I can tell the 'NoCart' compiler cannot work with such large disks - the game requires 128K anyway, so it would not work on GX4000 - I do plan to make a 64K version of the game, however the graphics will be inferior (no sprite animation, backgrounds movement less smooth)- Whether on an classic machine or PLUS - you will want 128k of memory to get the best from this game

Update - Crash bug found :-(
I have found some bugs in the CPC+ code which may cause crashes  - I am testing a new version which hopefully fixes these bugs and will release it as soon as I am happy it is stable

[keith56]

A new 'bugfix' version of Chibi Akuma(s) has been released today - I have updated all the archives with the new version, and the old versions are also still available

What's changed:
1. Bugfix in disk load code which will have caused CPC+ crashes (I think this is what caused ||C|-|E|| 's crashes)
2. Bugfix in intro animation which may have caused crashes
3. Speedup(?) there were a few HALT ops in the game loop to stabilize the graphics - I decided to favor speed instead, so they are removed - also tweaked Raster code slightly which will make it quicker, but its so slight it may not be noticable
4. 3rd disk no longer exists - game now only takes 2 standard disk sides! no content was removed, I tidied up the sprite files to remove some blank space.

sorry, Still no 64k support, I need to get the game stable before making the code more complex!

Sourcecode for new version is also uploaded

Download links are the same:
http://www.chibiakumas.com/download/

If you want the oldversions Ill keep them here:
http://www.chibiakumas.com/download/oldversions/

[XeNoMoRPH]

Thx for this update

[keith56]

Bump to show off my new box/label/manual art! you can download it from the website, and print your own 'official' box!

[keith56]

As a bit of a teaser, HERE are some videos of the soon to be released version of Chibi Akuma(s)!

Here's the game running on a 464
[youtube][/youtube]
[youtube]https://youtu.be/ozvsl54GJHU[/youtube]

Here is the 464 Plus version
[youtube][/youtube]
[youtube]https://youtu.be/nJT1kMBlHjc[/youtube]

Just to be clear, the new version runs on ALL CPC's, it adjusts its functions to the capabilities of your system - I've worked hard on optimizing and debugging the code - so I'm hoping this version will be very slightly faster than the old '128k only' version

The new version should be out in a few days!

OH, and despite what I said in my last thread, I've decided to maintain 64K support for Episode 2 - so you won't need 128k for my future games! - I've done a lot of work on the game engine, and I'm pretty sure I can do everything I want in the future and keep a cut down version for 64k users

Limitations of the 64K version:
1. Enemies have no animation and background sprites move more Jerkily (sorry, there was no way to have 2 12k banks of sprites - when 32k of ram is used by the screen buffers!)
2. Longer load times - the game has to do some Juggling on 64k to make room for the firmware
3. 'Loading' screens (Ingame ones - boot Loadscreen is there!) removed and 'Continue' screen simplified - no point Loading a Loading screen
4. uses system font rather than custom one - Not as nice, but not much difference

All other gameplay is the same! All levels present, Gamespeed should be identical, All Plus features work on 64k!!

[villain]

Just to be clear, the new version runs on ALL CPC's, it adjusts its functions to the capabilities of your system - I've worked hard on optimizing and debugging the code - so I'm hoping this version will be very slightly faster than the old '128k only' version

Thanks for your efforts. Very cool.

[kawickboy]

I haven't played it yet but the 464+ shows that a massive work has been done.

[Skunkfish]

Your efforts to go the extra mile and support all CPC machines are really commendable. I can't think of many (any?) CPC games that have that level of adaptation to support and take advantage of CPC variants...

Thanks and well done!

[trocoloco]

No CPC was left behind! your effort is very much appreciated =)

[keith56]

I've uploaded the 6128, and 6128 plus versions as well, for completeness

6128
[youtube][/youtube]
[youtube]https://youtu.be/Dc4EXu-QNWc[/youtube]
6128 Plus
[youtube][/youtube]
[youtube]https://youtu.be/GL-hd1R8LkM[/youtube]

[keith56]

Bumping this thread to announce the release of the new 64k compatible version (1.06) - this version supports all CPC systems, 464-6128, and uses PLUS sprites on 464+ or 6128+

It should also be slightly faster than the last version, so 128k users should upgrade too.

As always, the new version is available free, at:
http://www.chibiakumas.com/download/

Source-code archive has also been updated.

Please report any crashes to me, but otherwise this will be the last release of Chibi Akuma(s) Episode 1 - I want to move on and start work on 'Episode 2'.

Japanese site info:
レトロゲーム「チビ悪魔」の日本語のサイトは:[size=78%]http://www.chibiakuma.com/download/[/size]

[Gryzor]

I edited your post to embed the videos.


After playing this, even though hell shooters are definitely not my cup of tea (hmmmmm), I can say it's pretty awesome. Not only do I keep going, firing left and right while laughing maniacally, but also the aesthetics of it is really unique. Congrats!!

[Skunkfish]

Not my normal type of game either, but I've been enjoying it in the past week or so. I've resisted the temptation to switch to 'Easy' mode so far, but I may have to at some point!

The bosses I've seen are fantastically done, the second one is as hard as nails!

[keith56]

The bosses I've seen are fantastically done, the second one is as hard as nails!

Please tell me if you figure out a valid tactic for Boss 2! I recording some videos the other day, and was being made to look useless at my own game!

the 3rd boss USED to be a lot harder, during the attack stage with the blade it was near impossible to avoid getting hit, but I changed the 'hitzone' of the character later, to make it smaller so you could weave between the bullets better, and now the 3rd boss is 'over easy'