CPCRETRODEV 2018 feedback for NON top games

[skylas]

I had an idea to start a thread for the games of the contest that are not on the top (eg 11-41).
Of course it is logical that most comments are discussing the first in ranking games, but i think that the non-top games are also needing feedback, in order for the developers to create something better next year, and perhaps they need more  feedback in comparison with the expert developers.
I hope that many will find this thread useful.

You can also give feedback for my game, <Penalty kicks>, although maybe there is not so much to say for it!

To start with, i enjoyed very much the harvest day, i think it is very good game, and it combines strategy with reflexes.
I also liked taulellets, which is a new idea, cannon duels seems enjoyable in 2 player mode,  and also Bank, which is simple and short, but it was enjoyable for me!

[AMSDOS]

I had an idea to start a thread for the games of the contest that are not on the top (eg 11-41).
Of course it is logical that most comments are discussing the first in ranking games, but i think that the non-top games are also needing feedback, in order for the developers to create something better next year, and perhaps they need more  feedback in comparison with the expert developers.
I hope that many will find this thread useful.

You can also give feedback for my game, <Penalty kicks>, although maybe there is not so much to say for it!

To start with, i enjoyed very much the harvest day, i think it is very good game, and it combines strategy with reflexes.
I also liked taulellets, which is a new idea, cannon duels seems enjoyable in 2 player mode,  and also Bank, which is simple and short, but it was enjoyable for me!

For that reason I generally start from the bottom working up because I like the simpler games. I don't know how 18th Century Invaders only got 3 points! Was it a game slightly modified from an existing game for CPCTelera?

The graphics in Crocker were basic and chunky as well as Colourful, though I really liked them, the other aspect of the game I really liked was the Keys/Return situation, you get to your objective and the game pauses. Press Return, nothing happens, but when you press the key to move backwards & then return, your Crocker starts moving back towards the hazards. I thought that was very funny!

Disassembler was a bit odd in that you had to press a key to begin playing (from a blank screen!). This was probably the easiest Breakout clone I've ever played.

Killing Machine is a nice idea, but the keys make it somewhat difficult, though perhaps that's their point, to change may have made it too easy.

In Penalty Kicks initially I got confused in 1 Player Mode which team I had to Defend the Ball and which I had to Strike, though it was interesting you picked Mode 2, otherwise I'm not sure why the low score, the Character Faces were a nice touch as well, the Ball Animation Sequence looked good, the Diving Goal Keeper looked good, maybe only a lack of colour which was initially confusing. There's a programme from AA17 Type-ins which could allow you have 4 Colours in MODE 2, so shirt colours could be switched between the Player in the Goal Square and the Striker, unfortunately I get confused with regard to what's allowed and what's not allowed and Licensing. What I found in the BASIC 10-Liners Compo when I've enquired about the use of Type-ins out of Magazines was they were fine with it.

Invade Space sadly I thought was the worst game, the Collision was a little out, but the slow nature of the bullets that you fire and the Invaders fire is terrible, if the were fired using Text Coordinate positioning, then I would have played it more.

Tank I absolutely enjoyed, I thought it was very polished and accurate, the Enemy tanks got harder and were quick to surprise with a bullet thrown at you. I don't know why it scored so low, or at least I just don't see, I didn't have any Sound or Tune since I've been playing them in CPCBox, which needs a particular version of Firefox for that to happen.

In Lunatic I could only get so far and it seemed Impossible where I had all those Tanks to get passed.

HackTank was just too easy, I enjoyed Tank more than this.

Bank like yourself I thought was very enjoyable with simple but adequate graphics, no animation, though I like games like that.

I've played both versions of Fitzroy and the Infestation quite a bit now (but only on Easy), I enjoyed the revised version more in that you don't get an Energy drain when you up alongside an obstacle. I had no problems with the graphics, there is a bit of flicker, and I found a bug of some kind in the 2nd stage, perhaps the bugs has hampered the final score on this game?

Cuchara Voladora, this is very unusual game and I can't work out if I've completed the game after getting so far in it.

Cat Pang - Nice idea, though limited as more and more objects come into the game.

Two Finger Death Now - Think it was just alternating between 'A' and 'D' on the Keyboard and watching your score rack up.

Elfo Saves Christmas is another game I enjoyed playing with good Difficulty Setting. A little unusual getting used to the Key Sequence as well as the controls for Firing. Good use of Mode 1 I thought.

SpaceBall - Haven't actually played because there was no DSK image included for this game.

Turtle Slam - Very difficult, it has the same controls as Elfo Saves Christmas, though had limited enjoyment from this game.

Overheap - Nice Graphics and Scrolling, but like Turtle Slam it throws you into the Deep end.

BringRGB Back, I thought was an interesting game, though I've haven't got very far in it and I'm still in B&W!

Indigo - another difficult game and wasn't sure if I Won or not if I managed to survive for 25 seconds!

Space Cowboy - I remember Targhan saying they had problems with this game on their 6128, it's using some Hardware Shakes when your bullets hit the Enemy and just above the Messagebox (at the bottom of the screen), is some colour palette switching, which is being done by splitting of colour segments, there's probably some Split Modes occurring in this game as well, but I'm unsure if those would present a problem for a Real CPC.

Cannon Duels - Nice game, though the Computer seems more concerned with shooting the away from the object, definitely a 2 player game, would have to buddy up with some Aussie folks, but I don't know if this is the game, you just kind of sit there with your finger on the fire button and occasionally press a key to go for another row.

...and that's as far as I've got so far.

[skylas]

Thx very much Amsdos for providing feedback for so many games!
I can say that generally i agree in most you say!
Ref my game, i think it is easy to see who is shooting. First of all, if team names are entered, the shooting team is displayed (eg OFI shoots), but instead of that, when player 1 shoots, kicker is displayed on the left side of the ball, and when player 2 shoots, kicker is displayed on the right side of the ball.
Yes, lack of colours exist, there are only 2, dont know if i can use more in mode 2 or how.
In the start i had chosen mode 1. But: Moving of the ball is just printing chr$(231) to the next <locate> point and disappear from the previous point (with delay added). If kicker shoots eg left, ball is printed at <locate> -1 (both in horizontal and vertical) etc. This causes that, in mode 1, position of penalty is very much in front. In mode 2, where the width of the character is reduced, position of penalty is placed not too much in front.
This is the main reason of the shooting only low. Theoretically, there could be added more options (shooting high) but drawing shadows of the ball or making the ball moving and displaying  correctly would be very difficult for me, as my knowledge is very limited. Also, this would be time consuming, as now we have 9 fixed possible endings (3 choices of kicker X 3 choices of keeper). If we add 3 more choices for higher shoots, we will need 36 fixed endings (6 X 6).
Thx very much for your feedback!

[AMSDOS]

Thx very much Amsdos for providing feedback for so many games!
I can say that generally i agree in most you say!
Ref my game, i think it is easy to see who is shooting. First of all, if team names are entered, the shooting team is displayed (eg OFI shoots), but instead of that, when player 1 shoots, kicker is displayed on the left side of the ball, and when player 2 shoots, kicker is displayed on the right side of the ball.

Fair enough, I was only describing what happened when I initially played the game. As much as I like the game, I'm not a huge follower of it and I don't even recall having seen any penalty shootouts, so it's one part of the game that I don't have a lot of knowledge about.

Yes, lack of colours exist, there are only 2, dont know if i can use more in mode 2 or how.

Well after considering all the things which are occurring in your game, the program I suggested from AA17 Type-ins is going to cause some odd colouring effects with the ball as well as the Goal Net, so in actual fact it seems to be a bad suggestion.

In the start i had chosen mode 1. But: Moving of the ball is just printing chr$(231) to the next <locate> point and disappear from the previous point (with delay added). If kicker shoots eg left, ball is printed at <locate> -1 (both in horizontal and vertical) etc. This causes that, in mode 1, position of penalty is very much in front. In mode 2, where the width of the character is reduced, position of penalty is placed not too much in front.

It might be worth considering using MODE 1, using PRINT and LOCATE obviously it's limited to Text Coordinate positions, though Graphically there's no restriction for Calculating the MODE 2 Text Cursor position in Mode 1.
The only restricting factor is the Graphic itself, so for example CHR$(231) looks like this:

Code Select Expand


00000000
00111100
01111110
11111111
11111111
01111110
00111100
00000000



To make the graphic MODE 2 width in MODE 1, you need to half it's width, so instead of 8 it becomes 4, but in many cases some of the data has to disappear, so the ball that you had would look like this in MODE 1:

Code Select Expand


00000000
01100000
11110000
11110000
11110000
11110000
01100000
00000000



The MODE 2 Text Cursor coordinate system can simply be calculated. Calculating the YPOS position is the same in all screen modes since there are always 25 lines, but for MODE 2 each position is times by 8 because for each byte 8 pixels are represented, likewise for the MODE 2 Cursor, however every mode has a cursor or character on an 8x8 grid, they are just calculated differently when it comes to dealing in the Graphics.


I wrote this Silly little demo earlier, which just prints Balls all over the screen on a 80x25 perspective:

Code Select Expand


100 MODE 1
110 SYMBOL 255,0,96,240,240,240,240,96,0
120 DEFINT a-z
130 DEF FNbx=(x-1)*8:DEF FNby=398-((y-1)*16)
140 PRINT CHR$(23);CHR$(1);
150 WHILE 1
160 x=INT(RND*80)+1:y=INT(RND*25)+1:c=INT(RND*3)+1
170 PLOT -2,-2,c:MOVE FNbx,FNby
180 TAG
190 PRINT CHR$(255);
200 TAGOFF
210 WEND



upon running you'll get something like this.



The only trick about it is the PRINT command in 140, which tells BASIC to go into XOR write mode, this is needed because in normal Screen Write mode a character will overwrite another. In this case my Ball is on the left side of a 8x8 character matrix, anything to the Right of it is Deleted. By using different a different Screen Write command, the character to the right can now exist and give the illusion of it being 80x25.


Otherwise the Formula's themselves work by assigning X and Y variables a value, both of them have to be subtracted by 1 since Left Side of Screen begins at 0 and likewise Y begins at the Top (398) so making Y = 0 cancels everything and returns a result of 398.

This is the main reason of the shooting only low. Theoretically, there could be added more options (shooting high) but drawing shadows of the ball or making the ball moving and displaying  correctly would be very difficult for me, as my knowledge is very limited. Also, this would be time consuming, as now we have 9 fixed possible endings (3 choices of kicker X 3 choices of keeper). If we add 3 more choices for higher shoots, we will need 36 fixed endings (6 X 6).
Thx very much for your feedback!

I think the game is already fine in this regard. By adding routines which control if the ball goes aerial or not, you're really telling the player that you have an 1/6 of making the right move, instead of 1/3 which seems much fairer.

[Nich]

I don't know how 18th Century Invaders only got 3 points! Was it a game slightly modified from an existing game for CPCTelera?

The authors didn't include any source code in their upload (which was worth 40 points), and there was no reference to Chicago's 30 in the game (worth 20 points).

[AMSDOS]

The authors didn't include any source code in their upload (which was worth 40 points), and there was no reference to Chicago's 30 in the game (worth 20 points).

So unfortunately, I'm guessing that what might of happened with Penalty Kicks was had the Source Code a straight text file, it would of received the full 40 points.
I'm unsure what happened with Crocker, there's Source Code and a reference to Chicago's 30 with the use of a Bonfire sprite, though it only gets 20 points. It doesn't look like the Source Code is complete because I couldn't find the Sprite Data, though with the Chicago's 30 reference I can only assume it didn't received the full 20 points.  Sorry I'm a compulsive Nitpicker.   
I like the opening screenshot of their manual, I was thinking of making a BASIC version of this game with the use of Spritemaker 2.3. It won't have the same smoothness as CPCTelera, though I just like the idea of 2 Lanes of Traffic with a Centre Median Strip.

[skylas]

As i can understand, finally mode 1 seems possible - many thx for your help Amsdos!
For me, having 3 choices for shooting was a disadvantage, but, as you say, if possibility of saving is inly 1/6, this could be unfair and boring, you are right!
Ref crocker, you get 40 points if you provide a license (i provided one), not only source code. They didnt seem to provide one, so they got only 20 points from the gesture of chicago 30.
I have to admit that in this <low category> division, 20 points of difference in the beginning is very hard to cover. Six games (including mine) got 0 points from jury. I believe that the fact that there were unexpectedly many games (41) was a reason for that, as at least 10 games were in a very higher level and they got points from every jury.
But this is a competition and the goal is not necessarily getting points, but participating, creativity, and each one do his best!

[AMSDOS]

As i can understand, finally mode 1 seems possible - many thx for your help Amsdos!
For me, having 3 choices for shooting was a disadvantage, but, as you say, if possibility of saving is inly 1/6, this could be unfair and boring, you are right!
Ref crocker, you get 40 points if you provide a license (i provided one), not only source code. They didnt seem to provide one, so the got only 20 points from the gesture of chicago 30.
I have to admit that in this <low category> division, 20 points of difference in the beginning is very hard to cover. Six games (including mine) got 0 points from jury. I believe that the fact that there were unexpectedly many games (41) was a reason for that, as at least 10 games were in a very higher level and they got points from every jury.
But this is a competition and the goal is not necessarily getting points, but participating, creativity, and each one do his best!

Great, that explains how that came about, unfortunately I was meaning to download the Rules which I didn't have and had trouble finding the link (I've got them now though).


Re:Penalty Kicks, I'm just a little bit surprised a lot of work went into it and it only gets points for Source and License and 0 for Effort!

[skylas]

Of course i would prefer to take at least 1 point from jury, but my goal was only participation, and i dont have a problem with that.
This game was made by me in a more basic way before 20 years, when i was 16. Of course i had lost the disk, and some months ago, when i found out that there is a contest, i decided to make it again- i didn't remember many things, only the general way i had made it. I tried, i looked into the manuals of cpc again, and what i paid much attention is to make a game, not necessarily very good, but make a game that is definitely playable, and possibly enjoyable. 
I am very happy that i managed to do it, as my very limited knowledge in amstrad programming and in computer programming generally allows me to use only 20-30 basic commands. It was something like a dream for me to participate!

[tjohnson]

I haven't had a chance to try out the games much, I did try the one that came last and the graphics looked ok but it appeared quite bugged and unfinished.  I wonder if they'll be a competition next year, it would be nice to try and get an entry in.

[skylas]

I haven't had a chance to try out the games much, I did try the one that came last and the graphics looked ok but it appeared quite bugged and unfinished.  I wonder if they'll be a competition next year, it would be nice to try and get an entry in.

Some games may be unfinished or difficult to play, but this is acceptable as most are made by students and they have not many weeks to prepare them. I believe that next year there will be a competition again, as the competition started at about 5 years ago and every year it is made.

[AMSDOS]

Of course i would prefer to take at least 1 point from jury, but my goal was only participation, and i dont have a problem with that.

In that case I might just have a game for them next year! 

[tjohnson]

In that case I might just have a game for them next year! 

I think I might give it a go too.  No way could I ever produce anything like the best games.  Maybe a collaboration it would be possible to produce something super.

[ervin]

I think I might give it a go too.  No way could I ever produce anything like the best games.  Maybe a collaboration it would be possible to produce something super.

A collaboration would be tremendous!

[skylas]

In that case I might just have a game for them next year! 

Yes! try it!

[AMSDOS]

I think I might give it a go too.  No way could I ever produce anything like the best games.  Maybe a collaboration it would be possible to produce something super.

Well what I had in mind for it, is the lowest scoring all nicely polished and bug free game, just to see what it gets (as close to nothing), so source code would have to be out and license and no themes. The idea for the game would have to worse than 18th Century Invaders as well as a legitimate contender (not disqualified), though I'm worried that saying all that here may change the rules, so points are either distributed for something that needs to be provided or the game is disqualified.


Last time I tried writing a last place getter was last year for the BASIC 10-Liners Compo with this game, but it ended up coming 2nd Last, so writing Last place getters maybe harder than what it seems (at least writing one with no bugs in it!).


Unfortunately I wouldn't be able to collaborate if CPCTelera is being used, I don't have anything against it, I'm just a dreadful C coder. 

[asertus]

Last time I tried writing a last place getter was last year for the BASIC 10-Liners Compo with this game, but it ended up coming 2nd Last, so writing Last place getters maybe harder than what it seems (at least writing one with no bugs in it!).
Unfortunately I wouldn't be able to collaborate if CPCTelera is being used, I don't have anything against it, I'm just a dreadful C coder. 

Never forget 8 bits de poder, I think this is allowed in the contest too, isnt it? Using any library is allowed having the right license, I understand this library is free for any use. You can do BASIC on steroids.

[AMSDOS]

Never forget 8 bits de poder, I think this is allowed in the contest too, isnt it? Using any library is allowed having the right license, I understand this library is free for any use. You can do BASIC on steroids.

The rules state that any tool or language maybe used, so 8BP maybe a option.