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Chibi Akumas Episode 2: Confrontation! - a little 'chibi' update

Started by keith56, 02:10, 02 July 17

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ivarf

A CPC developer in Japan, that's great!  :D

Have moved to Japan in later years or are you genuinely Japanese? What's your story with retro computers and the Amstrad CPC? How and when did you get started?

pelrun

Quote from: sigh on 13:45, 24 July 17
What I feel is missing is the ability to hold down the fire button to slowdown the movement of the sprite. This would help immensely in dodging the bullets.


Are you sure it's not there? We were literally talking about this feature in the last few posts, and it's explicitly mentioned in the player guide.

keith56

Quote from: sigh on 13:45, 24 July 17
What I feel is missing is the ability to hold down the fire button to slowdown the movement of the sprite. This would help immensely in dodging the bullets.
Holding down the firebutton should slow down your character - also any drones should move closer to your character, reducing fire spread - please check your joystick/control settings, it sounds like you have autofire enabled!

Quote from: ivarf on 16:28, 25 July 17
Have moved to Japan in later years or are you genuinely Japanese? What's your story with retro computers and the Amstrad CPC? How and when did you get started?
No, I was born in England, I started learning Japanese about 15 years ago as a hobby, and moved to Japan about 5 years ago.
The CPC is pretty much unheard of in Japan (ironic, considering I believe it was manufactured here)... someone told me that Chibi Akumas was the first CPC game 'made in japan'
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

ivarf


Quote from: keith56 on 09:06, 26 July 17
No, I was born in England, I started learning Japanese about 15 years ago as a hobby, and moved to Japan about 5 years ago.
The CPC is pretty much unheard of in Japan (ironic, considering I believe it was manufactured here)... someone told me that Chibi Akumas was the first CPC game 'made in japan'


Probably the first CPC game made outside Europe, except a few made in Egypt and published by Amsoft.
So how is life in Japan?
I think the CPCs was made in Korea.


I read somewhere else that doing graphics isn't your favorite thing, maybe someone here can do it for you?

Morri

Quote from: ivarf on 16:25, 27 July 17
Probably the first CPC game made outside Europe, except a few made in Egypt and published by Amsoft.
So how is life in Japan?

Don't forget all of the Australian and New Zealand productions!! :P
Keeping it Kiwi since 1977

keith56

Quote from: ivarf on 16:25, 27 July 17
So how is life in Japan?
I read somewhere else that doing graphics isn't your favorite thing, maybe someone here can do it for you?

Life in Japan suits me pretty well! I don't have any plans to go back to the UK anyway.
The language barrier is always tough... I can read Japanese OK, but I'm about 4x slower than a native... the bigger problem is I have a lot of trouble with being understood, as I speak Japanese with an english accent.. so even if what I'm saying is right, I often get blank or confused looks... which hits the confidence pretty hard.

It wouldn't really help getting someone else involved... on a small gaming project, your chances of sucess are only as good as your least enthusiastic participant... and adding more people will just cause more delays and problems... also the graphics I am currently doing are character art for the dialog... which will explain the plot, and develop the characters... this is my story that I want to tell, I already know what I want each of the characters to be, and how they should react to what's going on... if someone else did the artwork then it would start to change to be something different.

*** Weekly Update! ***
Not much to report unfortunately... not to say things aren't going well! I've pretty much finished all 80 of the cutscene pictures... I'll spend the weekend doing some polishing, and I will start programming up the code to show the images and text next week...

I'm using a new compressor this time, last time I used a 'Sprite Compiler' which was aimed for display speed, but didn't reduce file size well (if at all).. I'm using a new RLE compressor I wrote this time, which gives about 50% size reduction for this kind of art... unfortunately, keeping the game working on 64k systems means I can't use any extra ram banks during the cut-sequences.

The compressor outputs assembler data, and I'm also going to add some new functions to the compressor, so it can automatically write some of the 'display code' itself - which will help if I need to make last minute changes later!

Finally, I'll point you to this tweet that Polyplay posted yesterday! please take a look!
https://twitter.com/polyplay_xyz/status/890479911844106240
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

tjohnson

Hey keith good news on the update fo episode 2.

I finished episode 1 tonight, played on genuine 1980s hardware.  Great game and for some reason much more enjoyable when played on a real CPC.

ASiC

Can't wait to bring my CPC hardware over here!
Nothing comes even close to the real thing  :D

keith56

Quote from: tjohnson on 23:01, 01 August 17
I finished episode 1 tonight, played on genuine 1980s hardware.  Great game and for some reason much more enjoyable when played on a real CPC.
Glad you liked it! I always find a bit of 'analog distortion' makes the retrogames look better! but I have to admit I do all my development on Winape, and only do final testing on the real hardware.

*** Weekly Update! ***
Artwork has taken longer than expected, I thought I was pretty much done last weekend, but bits and bobs kept cropping up... I will start coding the introduction sequence this weekend, and I plan to make the code move inteligent than last time, so hopefully the debugging and testing will be easier than episode 1!

well, as I have very little to say, I think it's about time I introduced the 2nd Akuma! Bochan!
Bochan is a ghoul, and was ressurrected after his timely(?!) death by his sister Chibiko... and now they're both causing trouble in the town of Nikoyama!

Some more details and stuff here...
http://www.chibiakumas.com/ep2/characters/

There are some more 'chibi' characters coming... but these are the only two playable 'akuma' characters... please note that 64k users will only get 'dual chibiko' mode, as your systems have too little memory for all the extra sprites!

And remember! the game has different dialog and cutscenes  for the following game modes:
1. 1 player Chibiko only
2. 1 player Bochan only
3. 2 player Chibiko and Bochan
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

tjohnson

Quote from: keith56 on 12:51, 04 August 17
Glad you liked it! I always find a bit of 'analog distortion' makes the retrogames look better! but I have to admit I do all my development on Winape, and only do final testing on the real hardware.

*** Weekly Update! ***
Artwork has taken longer than expected, I thought I was pretty much done last weekend, but bits and bobs kept cropping up... I will start coding the introduction sequence this weekend, and I plan to make the code move inteligent than last time, so hopefully the debugging and testing will be easier than episode 1!

well, as I have very little to say, I think it's about time I introduced the 2nd Akuma! Bochan!
Bochan is a ghoul, and was ressurrected after his timely(?!) death by his sister Chibiko... and now they're both causing trouble in the town of Nikoyama!

Some more details and stuff here...
http://www.chibiakumas.com/ep2/characters/

There are some more 'chibi' characters coming... but these are the only two playable 'akuma' characters... please note that 64k users will only get 'dual chibiko' mode, as your systems have too little memory for all the extra sprites!

And remember! the game has different dialog and cutscenes  for the following game modes:
1. 1 player Chibiko only
2. 1 player Bochan only
3. 2 player Chibiko and Bochan
I've only played it on my original c p c 6128 hardware  not the full plus experience yet other than winape but enjoyed it alot after better understanding the game.  looking forward to episode 2 now. 

I can certainly understand using winape fir general development as it's much more convenient.

I intend to make up a dedicated disk of the game using your labels.

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk


sigh

I was playing Chibi 1 again today. I'm really rubbish at this game for some reason :picard: !

I love bullet hell shooters, and did okayish on games like Battle Garegga and Dodonpachi on my Sega Saturn along with Ketsui on my PS3/360, but Chibi is absolutely destroying me! I really need to play this on actual CPC instead of my laptop. :)

keith56

Quote from: sigh on 21:23, 06 August 17
I love bullet hell shooters, and did okayish on games like Battle Garegga and Dodonpachi on my Sega Saturn along with Ketsui on my PS3/360, but Chibi is absolutely destroying me! I really need to play this on actual CPC instead of my laptop. :)

There were some technical/personal skill limitations with regard to the coding which mean the collision detection & frame rate is not as good as other comparable games...
I wanted the bullets to move very fast across the screen, but witm my programming ability on a z80 it was impossible to increase the frame rate, so instead I have to move the bullets multiple units across the screen each frame - this means that sometimes a bullet can literally go through the player, and can make the collision detection feel a bit random - increasing the hitzone of the main character would have rendered the 'weaving while firing' unusable, as the player would have being hit by things that were some distance away.

It's hardly ideal, but as I said, I could not make the game as fast and furious as I wanted without this trade off. it would have also been nice to have the bullets have some kind of 'glow' making them bigger and more clear, but with the same hitzone which may have made them more visible, but all screen drawing slows things down, so it was not an option.

--------------------

Weekly update!

I've pretty much finished the introduction sequence, and am now coding up the 'cutscene before the last battle'... The new 'dialog script' code I wrote is making it a lot easier than last time, and the 'half width' font I have now is making things easier...

In Chibi ep1 the cutscenes were actually 'levels' and each line of text was coded with a 'event time' like an enemy coming onscreeen... yeah it was a bad way of doing things, but it worked with relatively little text...

The 'pre-final battle' cutscene in Ep1 was one image, with about 4 lines of text from 'Chibiko' and 'the necromancer'... the new one has 30 images and a ton of dialog - the main problem I'm having is not actually the graphics (the new code automatically does all the loading and the display), but writing the text.

As I've previously mentioned, the new has a lot more characters than the last, and I'm trying to get across the personalities of the characters, explain the plot while keeping everything as short as possible so there's a chance anyone will actually read it, without making things so short the sound badly written, and trying to balance the jokes between 'ridiculous' and 'downright offensive'... I hope it's clear to people that the 'Chibi Akumas' game is an intentionally ludicrous parody, and that when I have scenes of extreme violence and bad language and baseless aggression that far from endorsing that kind of behavior, I am turning it into something absurd that hopefully no-one could take seriously or consider acceptable...

I really struggle with this last point these days (it was a big concern when I released the first game), as we seem to be simultaneously in a world where Ultraviolent media like GTA and 'SAW movies' are seen as completely acceptable and widely enjoyed, but someone saying the vaguely wrong thing on twitter causes them to be a target for mass trolling and abuse...

Early in the development of Chibi Akumas, I did consider making the game 'family friendly'... but if I had started down that road I would have had to remove all religious references (Crucifixes , references to hell/heaven etc), and creepy Gothic horror imagery (skulls, dismembered bodies etc)... and I would have just ended up with an 8 bit version of 'magical chase'*, and I wanted to create something different, and much darker in style because I feel those kind of games have been done enough, and there is nothing more worth doing there...

*(Yeah, I know the PC engine is technically 8 bit - so what)
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

tjohnson

Quote from: keith56 on 15:33, 11 August 17
There were some technical/personal skill limitations with regard to the coding which mean the collision detection & frame rate is not as good as other comparable games...
I wanted the bullets to move very fast across the screen, but witm my programming ability on a z80 it was impossible to increase the frame rate, so instead I have to move the bullets multiple units across the screen each frame - this means that sometimes a bullet can literally go through the player, and can make the collision detection feel a bit random - increasing the hitzone of the main character would have rendered the 'weaving while firing' unusable, as the player would have being hit by things that were some distance away.

It's hardly ideal, but as I said, I could not make the game as fast and furious as I wanted without this trade off. it would have also been nice to have the bullets have some kind of 'glow' making them bigger and more clear, but with the same hitzone which may have made them more visible, but all screen drawing slows things down, so it was not an option.

--------------------

Weekly update!

I've pretty much finished the introduction sequence, and am now coding up the 'cutscene before the last battle'... The new 'dialog script' code I wrote is making it a lot easier than last time, and the 'half width' font I have now is making things easier...

In Chibi ep1 the cutscenes were actually 'levels' and each line of text was coded with a 'event time' like an enemy coming onscreeen... yeah it was a bad way of doing things, but it worked with relatively little text...

The 'pre-final battle' cutscene in Ep1 was one image, with about 4 lines of text from 'Chibiko' and 'the necromancer'... the new one has 30 images and a ton of dialog - the main problem I'm having is not actually the graphics (the new code automatically does all the loading and the display), but writing the text.

As I've previously mentioned, the new has a lot more characters than the last, and I'm trying to get across the personalities of the characters, explain the plot while keeping everything as short as possible so there's a chance anyone will actually read it, without making things so short the sound badly written, and trying to balance the jokes between 'ridiculous' and 'downright offensive'... I hope it's clear to people that the 'Chibi Akumas' game is an intentionally ludicrous parody, and that when I have scenes of extreme violence and bad language and baseless aggression that far from endorsing that kind of behavior, I am turning it into something absurd that hopefully no-one could take seriously or consider acceptable...

I really struggle with this last point these days (it was a big concern when I released the first game), as we seem to be simultaneously in a world where Ultraviolent media like GTA and 'SAW movies' are seen as completely acceptable and widely enjoyed, but someone saying the vaguely wrong thing on twitter causes them to be a target for mass trolling and abuse...

Early in the development of Chibi Akumas, I did consider making the game 'family friendly'... but if I had started down that road I would have had to remove all religious references (Crucifixes , references to hell/heaven etc), and creepy Gothic horror imagery (skulls, dismembered bodies etc)... and I would have just ended up with an 8 bit version of 'magical chase'*, and I wanted to create something different, and much darker in style because I feel those kind of games have been done enough, and there is nothing more worth doing there...

*(Yeah, I know the PC engine is technically 8 bit - so what)
Apart from the odd rude word i didn't think any of it was offensive.

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk


Puresox


Quote from: keith56 on 15:33, 11 August 17
There were some technical/personal skill limitations with regard to the coding which mean the collision detection & frame rate is not as good as other comparable games...
I wanted the bullets to move very fast across the screen, but witm my programming ability on a z80 it was impossible to increase the frame rate, so instead I have to move the bullets multiple units across the screen each frame - this means that sometimes a bullet can literally go through the player, and can make the collision detection feel a bit random - increasing the hitzone of the main character would have rendered the 'weaving while firing' unusable, as the player would have being hit by things that were some distance away.

It's hardly ideal, but as I said, I could not make the game as fast and furious as I wanted without this trade off. it would have also been nice to have the bullets have some kind of 'glow' making them bigger and more clear, but with the same hitzone which may have made them more visible, but all screen drawing slows things down, so it was not an option.

--------------------

Weekly update!

I've pretty much finished the introduction sequence, and am now coding up the 'cutscene before the last battle'... The new 'dialog script' code I wrote is making it a lot easier than last time, and the 'half width' font I have now is making things easier...

In Chibi ep1 the cutscenes were actually 'levels' and each line of text was coded with a 'event time' like an enemy coming onscreeen... yeah it was a bad way of doing things, but it worked with relatively little text...

The 'pre-final battle' cutscene in Ep1 was one image, with about 4 lines of text from 'Chibiko' and 'the necromancer'... the new one has 30 images and a ton of dialog - the main problem I'm having is not actually the graphics (the new code automatically does all the loading and the display), but writing the text.

As I've previously mentioned, the new has a lot more characters than the last, and I'm trying to get across the personalities of the characters, explain the plot while keeping everything as short as possible so there's a chance anyone will actually read it, without making things so short the sound badly written, and trying to balance the jokes between 'ridiculous' and 'downright offensive'... I hope it's clear to people that the 'Chibi Akumas' game is an intentionally ludicrous parody, and that when I have scenes of extreme violence and bad language and baseless aggression that far from endorsing that kind of behavior, I am turning it into something absurd that hopefully no-one could take seriously or consider acceptable...

I really struggle with this last point these days (it was a big concern when I released the first game), as we seem to be simultaneously in a world where Ultraviolent media like GTA and 'SAW movies' are seen as completely acceptable and widely enjoyed, but someone saying the vaguely wrong thing on twitter causes them to be a target for mass trolling and abuse...

Early in the development of Chibi Akumas, I did consider making the game 'family friendly'... but if I had started down that road I would have had to remove all religious references (Crucifixes , references to hell/heaven etc), and creepy Gothic horror imagery (skulls, dismembered bodies etc)... and I would have just ended up with an 8 bit version of 'magical chase'*, and I wanted to create something different, and much darker in style because I feel those kind of games have been done enough, and there is nothing more worth doing there...

*(Yeah, I know the PC engine is technically 8 bit - so what)
great breakdown of game issues

Maniac

Always great to hear progress and how things have been approached. Look forward to seeing the results.

Gryzor

I suck at bullet hell shooters (best I've ever done was to finish Raiden :D ) and so I'm not a huge fan of the genre, but as with the first title, this one's one I'm looking forward to...

keith56

Thanks for all the positive feedback, it really means a lot, as we're rapidly approaching the 9 months of development point, and it's keeping motivation that's the tough bit at this stage!

Weekly update!

Working on the end sequence... I'm hoping to have it finished this weekend, so I'm a bit ahead of schedule – once the endsequence is done, I still need to do the music, graphics like the 'game over' and Loading screens, get the final music in, finish off the ingame dialog, and test the whole thing... and then when it's tested, I need to compress all the files, and work out how it's all going to fit on 180k disks so theres plenty left to do!

I'm working on the cutscenes in the evenings, the music at work in my lunch hour, and I'm doing research on the planned MSX port before work in the mornings – so this should give some idea just how much work this is taking me.

Anyways time for an announcement!

Chibi Akumas Episode 2: Confrontation will be released Halloween 2017!

no matter what it takes, the game will be released for October 31st this year even if it kills me!

In celebration of this, I have made (rather quickly – I've got to get back to programming!) a teaser poster!

Enjoy!
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

Sykobee (Briggsy)

Great work! I hope you squeeze it onto a single disc!

ervin

Quote from: keith56 on 12:28, 18 August 17
Thanks for all the positive feedback, it really means a lot, as we're rapidly approaching the 9 months of development point, and it's keeping motivation that's the tough bit at this stage!

Weekly update!

Working on the end sequence... I'm hoping to have it finished this weekend, so I'm a bit ahead of schedule – once the endsequence is done, I still need to do the music, graphics like the 'game over' and Loading screens, get the final music in, finish off the ingame dialog, and test the whole thing... and then when it's tested, I need to compress all the files, and work out how it's all going to fit on 180k disks so theres plenty left to do!

I'm working on the cutscenes in the evenings, the music at work in my lunch hour, and I'm doing research on the planned MSX port before work in the mornings – so this should give some idea just how much work this is taking me.

Anyways time for an announcement!

Chibi Akumas Episode 2: Confrontation will be released Halloween 2017!

no matter what it takes, the game will be released for October 31st this year even if it kills me!

In celebration of this, I have made (rather quickly – I've got to get back to programming!) a teaser poster!

Enjoy!

This is an absolutely mighty effort!
I can't wait to play this game!

Maniac


keith56

Weekly update!

I've been working this week on getting the final level music into the game, recompiling the levels and checking everything still works!

I wrote the levels one per month in order - so level 1 was finished around March, and hasn't been tested since - as the 'game core' has been changed and improved the whole time - the original code needs to be rechecked... now, the levels access the 'core' via it's jump block, so changes to the core should not matter, but sometimes things go wrong!

some of the boss battles have needed bug fixes...
if you shot the level 2 boss during the intro it would go off screen never to return!
and I found a spot where you could attack the level 3 boss, and it would be unable to fight back!

I've also had to do some extra music code for the boss battles - the music changes when the fight starts, on 128k both music files are held in ram, but 64k doesn't have the memory - so it has to be loaded from disk... 64k users causin' trouble again!

I'll be working on the last of the graphics touches this weekend, finishing of the title graphic, loading & game over screens etc - once they are done, I can finish the code that accompanies them, and the real testing can start!

--------
Useless trivia!
Please take a look at the two pictures of Chibiko below!
In one Chibiko's eyes are white and look normal, in the other they are black and 'inverted'... in Chibi Akumas, human characters have white eyes, and unDead ones have inverted eyes - So now you know!

The reason this came about is my main characters face was white - so making the eyes black made her easier to draw at low resolution, but it's actually made for a good distinguishing factor between the characters!
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

ervin

I still can't believe that a game like this is happening for our beloved CPC.
Can't wait!

keith56

Quote from: Sykobee (Briggsy) on 12:53, 18 August 17
Great work! I hope you squeeze it onto a single disc!

It MAY fit on one 720k disk image, but it certainly won't be one 3 inch disk!

I'm hoping it will take 4 sides of 3 inch disks (so 2 double sided 3 inchers), and that's only thanks to roudoudou's superb lz48 cruncher...
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/programming/lz48-cruncherdecruncher/msg136046/#msg136046

it's unnavoidable, taking advantage of 256k systems means a lot of extra data!
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

ASiC

Quote from: keith56 on 10:29, 29 August 17
It MAY fit on one 720k disk image, but it certainly won't be one 3 inch disk!

I'm hoping it will take 4 sides of 3 inch disks (so 2 double sided 3 inchers), and that's only thanks to roudoudou's superb lz48 cruncher...
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/programming/lz48-cruncherdecruncher/msg136046/#msg136046

it's unnavoidable, taking advantage of 256k systems means a lot of extra data!


Will you be using some sort of trackloader or just a plain file loader?
* ASiC thinks of M4 instant loading  ;D

keith56

Quote from: ASiC on 11:21, 29 August 17
Will you be using some sort of trackloader or just a plain file loader?
* ASiC thinks of M4 instant loading  ;D
its a plain file loader, it a slightly reworked version of the one in Episode 1 - so yes, it should work on the M4, and be instant... I've not tested Ep2 on the M4, but Ep1 worked (and boy - was it fast!), and I expect EP2 will as well, it works with the AmsDos/ParaDos bios, not around it.
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

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