As written here Searching a graphic artist (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/games/searching-a-graphic-artist/msg88760/#msg88760) I'm working on a tower defence game for CPC.
To not sit in my "silent chamber" for months and then come up with something finished, I want to show here a little bit from time to time.
So as a first start I made a little video and uploaded it to youtube (tadaa first time I did this).
Defence - Work in progress - YouTube (http://youtu.be/lMP9ml6HtFM)
Still many things to do. But:
- Game engine is running
- Using 2 * 16 kB double-buffer screen
- 6 Songs included (I'm not planning SFX)
- Main Menu
- Highscore Table
Missing:
- Balancing
- Buy weapon upgrades
- Achievements
- GFX improvement and additional tiles
The GFX now is a mixture of ripped, mocked-up and self painted things because my outcry for an GFX artist was not that successful.
Cause the game is a complete "one man show" I do in my spare time beside my family It'll take its time....
Great work in that short time you had! Keep the good work going! :) :) :)
nice music. and the rest seems promising as well.
I am in love with your game. This reminds me so much of the tower defense game on my previous phone which I played to death.
Good luck with the remaining development and I personally look forward to it's progress. Can't wait to have a go on my 6128.
Did you write the music yourself? Coder and musician is a great mix. 8) (I am neither!) :laugh:
I also love it. Even the ripped graphics and the loading screen have a charm, and the music is just awesome!
The only thing that is slightly confusing is that the turrets dont do anything - so I can't tell why the enemies die when there's a turret near by, they just disappear!
I like the concept and what a great tune.... Who did compose it?
Really great PT3 music, and I like the tiles/sprites a lot! The sprites are already designed in such a good way that I thought a professional did it.
It's cool to see this the first time on the CPC!
Will you add some animations showing the towers shooting the robots? Some flying robots planned? All the base functions already seem to be completed, congratulations!
Thanks @all :) .
At the moment there is an animation when an enemy is under attack. I overlaied a fire-animation over the enemy. Perhaps this is not sufficient ? I'll have a closer look at that later.
About music: I still have some own never released soudtrakker-tunes which I composed in the past but I dont thaugt that I find the time to compose the remaining ones. So I asked the speccy-composer mmcm If I'm allowed to use some of his fantastic tunes. So all the 6 tunes I included are from him.
@Prodatron (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=13):
yes, I'm planning flying enemys..
@Morri (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=95):
I played and still play robo defense on my android.
The music is superb, and I look forward to a tower defence game on Amstrad. The loading screen is pretty smart although I would go for a different hair colour personally. But you might be basing it on someone specific. Anyway as always great to see people developing on the CPC.
Quote from: Puresox on 13:19, 09 March 15
The music is superb, and I look forward to a tower defence game on Amstrad. The loading screen is pretty smart although I would go for a different hair colour personally. But you might be basing it on someone specific. Anyway as always great to see people developing on the CPC.
the music is indeed very good. The best I have listened to from any Amstrad game.
I love this. And loving Defense games I'll sure play it a lot! Thanks for letting us know, please keep us updated!
One question: why did you go for mode 0? I would have thought mode 1 is really well-suited for such a game?
Awesome tune btw :)
I agree, mode 1 would have seemed appropriate. No probs with what your doing of course , look forward to it.
I agree too :) . I thaught many times that mode 1 would be better but I went that far in mode 0 that I did not want to change. Also I think that for mode 1 the best way is to work with masked sprites and my current sprite-routine is using transparency. Now my goal is to finish this one the way it is. Perhaps also to proove that I'm able to do so and then, when the game is liked to go for another one. At first I wanted to make the game completely by myself then realizing that I was not able to do the gfx the way I wanted. So the actual gfx is only a compromise and I lowered my ambitions, completely skipping some things which are still in my mind.
I love working on this game very much but this'll be the only production I'll do on my own.
BTW: After servicing my 6128+ the last two days I'm now getting back to the game. I've moved many things between the banks the last days to get some space for the now added tribute to the death of Leonard Nimoy:
[attachimg=1]
HEEEEEEEEELP the flying enemys are coming ;) .
Awesome! Keep the good work going! :)
Thanks for the explanation, nice to know the process.
Great work, please keep it up!
TBH in 90% of the cases I like Mode 0 more for games, as here the amount of colours is more important than the resolution. So in my opinion it was a good choice. Nice to see the flying Star Trek robots! :D
Quote from: Prodatron on 19:46, 25 March 15
TBH in 90% of the cases I like Mode 0 more for games, as here the amount of colours is more important than the resolution. So in my opinion it was a good choice. Nice to see the flying Star Trek robots! :D
Heh, I was actually thinking of opening a thread titled "Colours or resolution?" and then I read your post :D
Quote from: Gryzor on 18:05, 19 April 15
Heh, I was actually thinking of opening a thread titled "Colours or resolution?" and then I read your post :D
Wait... does this mean I can't have the pie and eat it? :laugh:
EDIT: Anything new about this great game?
To give some lifesigns about the game, here some screenshots of three different tilesets:
[attachimg=1]
[attachimg=3]
[attachimg=2]
- The game consists now of 4 tilesets (which are all completed)
- 8 Maps (which are not fully completed)
- Ground and air enemys
All Ingame-GFX is complete. At the moment I'm working on some things around the game (menu, level-chooser etc.).
I think later THIS YEAR I'll go into balancing the game (which will be a big effort). Then I hope that one or two of you are willing to help because I think it is a different story when someone else plays a game than the developer.
Looking better each time ! All strength to you and the project!
Great to see all the progress!!! Always there for helping, just PM / email me when needed. :)
Great to see a project like this on the CPC (haven't seen the thread before)
Best of luck, do hope you finish it.
Music is excellent by the way.
Thanks @all.
By the way: For sure, defence will be absolutely free ! But do you think there is an interest in a little physical edition with for example the soundtrack ?
Oooh I like this!!! And, of course, I'm all for a physical release!!!
I would take a physical copy, and I don't mint to pay a bit more for good work!
Just an idea: Would it be possible to exchange the GFX for enemies? So we could patch our own stuff in?
As I already mentioned, I'm using 128k. And scince my double-buffered screen resists between 0x8000 and 0xFFFF, I'm using 0x4000-0x7ffff for banking. And there in the default bank reside the enemys, the map and the ingame gfx.
Today, the ingame gfx is depacked to this location so xchanging this is not so easy. Perhaps later the maps will also be packed. But the enemy-gfx is easily patchable. Perhaps I'll think about that when the game is nearly finished (after balancing). It will be not that complicated to make the things exchangable better to get for example a defence construction kit or something like that....
00004000 _MapLevel sprites
00004380 _SpriteSoldier sprites
00004A40 _SpriteTank sprites
00005100 _SpriteRobot sprites
000057C0 _SpriteTitan sprites
00005E80 _SpriteFire sprites
00006030 _SpriteGrass1 sprites
000060C0 _SpriteGrass2 sprites
00006150 _SpriteGrassBorderUp sprites
000061E0 _SpriteGrassBorderDown sprites
00006270 _SpriteGrassBorderLeft sprites
00006300 _SpriteGrassBorderRight sprites
00006390 _SpriteGrassBorderLeftDown sprites
00006420 _SpriteGrassBorderRightDown sprites
000064B0 _SpriteGrassBorderLeftUp sprites
00006540 _SpriteGrassBorderRightUp sprites
000065D0 _SpriteWater1 sprites
00006660 _SpriteWater2 sprites
000066F0 _SpriteWallStone1 sprites
00006780 _SpriteWallStone2 sprites
00006810 _SpriteWallGlobe sprites
000068A0 _SpritePlayerCursor sprites
00006930 _SpriteNone sprites
000069C0 _SpriteMG sprites
00006A50 _SpriteRocketLauncher sprites
00006AE0 _SpriteSlowTower sprites
00006B70 _SpriteAntiAir sprites
00006C00 _SpriteHeart sprites
00006C18 _SpriteDollar sprites
00006C33 _SpriteEnterpriseRight sprites
00006CC3 _SpriteEnterpriseDown sprites
00006D53 _SpriteRedShipRight sprites 00006DE3 _SpriteRedShipDown sprites
Yeah, would be awesome! You can even make a contest out of it! ;D
IMHO it's enough to know start addresses, lenght and bytes per line of the GFX (well, and of course their composition = Aufbau). :)
So, you are not using the C3 mode for your double buffer?
I don't know exactly what is meant with C3 mode...
My double-buffer is "always in". Which means that I use n2 and n3 (normal page 2 and 3) for it. (In my first experiments I used n1 and n3).
The sprites resist in n1 which is also the page I exchange with the additional pages (like the bankmanager does).
Sometimes, when I don't need the double-buffer (menu for example), I unpack some stuff in n2.
In some of the pages are one or two bytes left. But the 128kB are nearly squeezed out :) .
It is a mode that allow to use only the Base RAM (64K) to display at &4000 the content of B1 or B3 when required.
This not avoid to access the Expansion RAM at &C000.
C0 mode : B0, B1, B2, B3
C3 mode : B0, B3, B2, E3
It is used on Pac-Man Emulator and Future OS for example.
Soo today another lifesign. Defence is now lets call it "feature complete". GFX and tilesets are completed. We have 16 different maps (still have to finetune them). Upgrade system is implemented. Achievements are implemented....
So now I think the game is ready to begin balancing and testing. For this task I'm searching for one or two of you to help me with this task. So if you like to and think you have enough time and fun to help balancing the game please contact me. Best of all you are also able to test the game on different hardware than I own (I can only test on 6128 and 6128+). Remind that the game needs 6128 compatible 128kB. I can provide the images as dsk or HxC-files.
I've also made a little trailer:
https://youtu.be/F9POaXSXE1Q (https://youtu.be/F9POaXSXE1Q)
How exciting!
Great Video! Can't wait so play the game! Great word done!! :) :) :)
Cool. Does the game have an in-game music?
Yes (you can hear some of them in the trailer). The game has only ingame music and no sfx. There are 4 different tunes ingame, one title-music and the highscore music = 6 tunes.
This really looks very nice!! :D
Quote from: Shining on 09:02, 29 January 16
Yes (you can hear some of them in the trailer). The game has only ingame music and no sfx. There are 4 different tunes ingame, one title-music and the highscore music = 6 tunes.
Great news! CPC platform have been suffering from lack of ingame music a lot.
Just my two pence worth, this looks like my kind of game.
Would it be possible to include animation of your bullets hitting the enemy, and the enemy taking damage, it's not really evident in the video I watched. Also, this type of game needs a nice 'Rock' heavy intensive soundtrack.
Apart from that, I like the look of it, 2016 is shaping up to be the best year ever!
Well, one could add SFX using the PlayCity. I'm sure TotO is willing to help. ;) :)
Though I feel it would benefit from a higher resolution, I understand it's too late to change direction. I'm liking what I'm seeing and since I love Defense games I'm anxiously waiting for it :)
MODE 0 only please, hate that horrible, Speccy looking, no colour Amstrad hi-res mode! ;)
Quote from: Gryzor on 10:57, 31 January 16
Though I feel it would benefit from a higher resolution, I understand it's too late to change direction. I'm liking what I'm seeing and since I love Defense games I'm anxiously waiting for it :)
I agree , seeing as this game is not graphics intense by the looks, I would think Mode 1 would be ideal. However really not bothered it looks a great game that look forward to playing . And I am not going to moan why haven't you done this, that or the other . It's your project and grateful that you are doing it .
Yeah, not moaning either. My point was that by using mode 1 you could have more detail and space to play with, but I'm not complaining :)
Quote from: Gryzor on 11:03, 01 February 16
Yeah, not moaning either. My point was that by using mode 1 you could have more detail and space to play with, but I'm not complaining :)
Nobody cares about Mode 1, Mode 0 baby!
Quote from: ukmarkh on 13:51, 18 February 16
Nobody cares about Mode 1, Mode 0 baby!
Seeing as I do, your statement is obviously not true...
Quote from: Gryzor on 11:39, 26 February 16
Seeing as I do, your statement is obviously not true...
Absolutely right ! Many games or demos in mode 1 are simply amazing.
For me there's more value to mode 1/2 than simply detailed graphics: while I love the chunky pixels of 0 and all the colours, every game in mode 1 feels like something special because it's unusual, and a nice break from the norm...
Quote from: Gryzor on 11:39, 26 February 16
Seeing as I do, your statement is obviously not true...
I've personally never seen any game that looks good in mode 1, I've always thought, this would look way better in mode 0, what were they thinking! The lack of colour kills the Amstrad experience, and on fast moving games, movement doesn't feel smooth enough. But you know what, each to their own. I just realised I made that last statement without including a ;-) but please don't take it seriously, I was just joking.
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All of the mode 1 games i can think of wouldn't work in mode 0, or at least they'd be substantially different. It's a different use. For instance, Marche à l'ombre (mentioned in another thread) - mode 0? Hm.
Quote from: Gryzor on 11:59, 26 February 16
All of the mode 1 games i can think of wouldn't work in mode 0, or at least they'd be substantially different. It's a different use. For instance, Marche à l'ombre (mentioned in another thread) - mode 0? Hm.
So the ones I'm thinking of, list below, all would have looked better in mode 0 impo:
Lotus Turbo Challenge
Enduro Racer
Fres Fighter
Hudson Hawk
The Blues Brothers
Head over Heels (Overscan)
Nigel Mansell's World Championship
The Untouchables
And when programmers use overscan, the extended Mode 0 resolution at 192*264 in 16 colours, looks even better. There's only one game where I feel it works, and that's when you have a mixture of mode 1 and 0 as seen in the likes of Sorcery +
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Quote from: Gryzor on 11:59, 26 February 16
For instance, Marche à l'ombre (mentioned in another thread) - mode 0? Hm.
That game looks terrible IMHO! Needs colour, and what's with that tiny small window, sorry, big turn off.
That's another thing I've noticed with Mode 1, even smaller playing windows for most games...
Definitely feel that there is a place for mode 1 stuff , I do prefer Mode 0 and its spectacular ,colourful blockiness . I feel there is a lot of hate for Mode 1 stuff cos it reminds us of Speccy ports ,and yes I used to hate the look when I saw a mode 1 game appear on the screen tbh. There are many instances when it was used effectively it looked great and I feel that some games that we got in mode 0 would have been better done using Mode 1 , Stuff like Shadow fire and many other games which I can't think off the top of my head would have looked far sharper .
As always I feel it depends on the game type
Sometimes I convert some pictures for CPC and most of them look very poor in mode 1. I miss colors more then I miss details. So in my opinion most games look better in mode 0 too.
For example compare Lotus CPC and C64. But not all. Compare Switchblade in CPC mode 1 with some extra colors and wide pixels in C64.
Fres Fighter - I think have soo good palette and so marvellous details, I afraid in mode 0 could be less impress.
Nigel Mansell's - for God sake, who decide to trees, grass, Ferrari, Maclaren, stop lights and all flags should be soooo Blue (Da Ba Dee)? So do I think should be mode 0 ? Not nessesery, but with right 4 colors (and one of them must be red) plus some 2 extra over horizon in rasta could be fantastic. :)
And Chess look good in mode 1 too. ;)
Lol Blues Brothers and Nigel Mansel , I thought they looked pretty cool , I liked the style tbh
[emoji15]
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Thank god you went with Mode 0, really looking forward to this... Looks great!
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Thank God you pleaaed ukmarkh
Quote from: Puresox on 18:06, 27 February 16
Thank God you pleaaed ukmarkh
What can I say, I prefer 16 colours, instead of four...
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Quote from: Shining on 21:46, 28 January 16
So now I think the game is ready to begin balancing and testing. For this task I'm searching for one or two of you to help me with this task. So if you like to and think you have enough time and fun to help balancing the game please contact me. Best of all you are also able to test the game on different hardware than I own (I can only test on 6128 and 6128+). Remind that the game needs 6128 compatible 128kB. I can provide the images as dsk or HxC-files.
Noone ? ???
Two more weeks time - would playing it on emulator help ? Dunno if I'll build up my 4-576 next days :(
For balancing (and this is the main task at the moment) playing on emu would definitely help.
Hi Shining, I have time now (still not home for 1 week, but having WinApe here :) ), maybe you can PN me?