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Amstrad CPC 16KBs ROM Game Development Competition!

Started by SyX, 20:31, 01 January 13

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TFM

Coordinates are 1024 in X, 512 in Y and 256 in Z. So collision control would need to check 134217728 points in Space every frame.
TFM of FutureSoft
Also visit the CPC and Plus users favorite OS: FutureOS - The Revolution on CPC6128 and 6128Plus

Border_7

Thanks for the great games guys and for adding those .dsk files into the zips  :D
01000001 01101101 01110011 01110100 01110010
01100001 01100100
01000011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01110101
01110100 01101001 01101110 01100111

ervin

It's a shame only 4 games made it in time, but wow - what a collection!

I've never been good at sokoban-style games, so I didn't really enjoy Overkoban.  :-[
Outstanding presentation though, and the music is entrancing.

Subtera Puzlo is delightful. Really really enjoyable to play.
I have a feeling my daughter would love it too, as she loves puzzle games.

Cyber Huhn is very very impressive.
That is one heck of a lot of sprites being processed each frame.
And I happen to think that chickens are amongst the most entertaining creatures on earth, so extra marks for that.  :D

But for me, Relentless is the winner.
Wow, it really is the whole package. Absolutely stunning.
Great music, distinctive art style, and flawless execution.
It even has difficulty levels!
Relentless would have been hugely successful and popular back in the day, no doubt about it.
One the the CPC's best shoot-em-ups? Quite possibly!

Overall, GREAT job by everyone that managed to get their entries in.
Fantastic stuff.

This compo has really made me wonder what could have been done in the old days if something like exomizer had been available to developers...

mr_lou

I can't make up my mind. Will require more time to play the games more, but I'm short on time these days.

How long will the voting be open?

Gryzor


@TomEtJerry: silence, sure... but the CPC does have a volume knob ;) I just love the tune! As for the frames, yeah, I know exactly what you mean; would it look bad, though, if there was a second frame for each rectangle? In this case you wouldn't be having any real animation to slow down, but alternate tiles would have a slightly different sprite. And, as for the fire button, I was playing it on my CPC with a real joystick (whose fire button works fine)...


Optimus

Some really good entries there!
Relentless has interesting mode 1 graphics, smooth scrolling and gameplay that is not that hard as previous shooters. I could make it to 2nd-3rd level and I know I can do more if I try. Wondering if there is a final boss at the end.
Cyber Huhn has impressive full screen scrolling (even if not 50hz) with many many sprites and can be fun for a while.
I particularly enjoyed Subtera Puzlo because it's very nice and playable game. Easy for some, relaxing for me.
Finally, Overkoban is a classic sokoban with very nice graphics and many many musics, music in the start, in the game menus, but why not inside the main game? It would keep me more if there was a music accompanying the main game.

Optimus

Quote from: Devilmarkus on 15:52, 03 July 13
What's about a "Amstrad CPC 16KBs ROM Demo Development Competition"?

16k demos ;)


I would love that!

Ythcal

Really great games. Never saw such smooth scrolling on my good old CPC as in Relentless. And I really enjoyed Subtera Puzlo, even while it was a little easy. Sometimes reminded me a little of Carsten Schaar's "Rana" I typed in from a magazine in the early 90s...
Unfortunately I hate Sokoban games, but the quality of Overkoban is very high and I like the title song very much.

TFM

Quote from: Optimus on 12:05, 04 July 13
Cyber Huhn has impressive full screen scrolling (even if not 50hz) with many many sprites and can be fun for a while.
Oh well, it had 50 fps frame rate, but I had to take it out for saving memory purposes. However there will be an 128 KB version with 50 fps scrolling and maybe I can even put it into a 64 KB version. Let's see.
The "technical archivement" is you would call it so is probably the 3D space. It was the first time I did something in real 3D coordinates. So things like collision control must get a bit sophisticated. It was a lot of fun for me to move from 2D or pseudo-3D to a real 3D coordinates system. You may have seen that the bigger chicken in the middle (X) get hit more early, and the chicken flying in from right or leaving at left are more far away, so the shot takes longer to reach them.
Also I had to developp new sprite routines for speeding up the whole thing, they are pretty unflexible, but allow to display chicken & shots quick and also have some kind of masking.
Thanks a lot for all the positive comments  :) :) :)

Quote from: ervin on 06:55, 04 July 13
This compo has really made me wonder what could have been done in the old days if something like exomizer had been available to developers...
Well, I don't think that the tools on a PC are that critical. For crunching I used Madrams CPCTurbocruncher, which works quite well. All the developpment of CH was done on an CPC (emultor) with tools running on an CPC. Tom&Jerry used the great Starkos for the song, however I'm not completely sure in which ways MacDeath did create the chickens. But I guess the positive point for all of us was that we haven't had the extreme time pressure like it is usual in games compnies where programmers only get weeks for conversion. Once a while you just have to sleep over a coding problem  :)

Quote from: ervin on 06:55, 04 July 13
Cyber Huhn is very very impressive.
That is one heck of a lot of sprites being processed each frame.
And I happen to think that chickens are amongst the most entertaining creatures on earth, so extra marks for that.  :D
Thank's a lot  :)  Yes, chickens are more than meets the eyes - check out the background story  ;)  I wished I would have had the time to make an intro which shows the story before the game, but I guess now I got time for that  :)
TFM of FutureSoft
Also visit the CPC and Plus users favorite OS: FutureOS - The Revolution on CPC6128 and 6128Plus

redbox

Quote from: TFM/FS on 18:47, 04 July 13
You may have seen that the bigger chicken in the middle (X) get hit more early, and the chicken flying in from right or leaving at left are more far away, so the shot takes longer to reach them.

I really like this aspect of the game engine, it's very good!  Could maybe do with tightening up a little though (it's really hard to hit the far away chickens, well for me anyway) to retain the 'arcade' feel.

Did you pre-shift the sprites and stars?  And what kind of sprite routine did you use?  I see you used a page-aligned screen so am guessing the sprites are page-aligned too and pre-compiled, or did you do it another way?

ervin

Quote from: TFM/FS on 18:47, 04 July 13
Well, I don't think that the tools on a PC are that critical. For crunching I used Madrams CPCTurbocruncher, which works quite well. All the developpment of CH was done on an CPC (emultor) with tools running on an CPC. Tom&Jerry used the great Starkos for the song, however I'm not completely sure in which ways MacDeath did create the chickens. But I guess the positive point for all of us was that we haven't had the extreme time pressure like it is usual in games compnies where programmers only get weeks for conversion. Once a while you just have to sleep over a coding problem  :)

All on CPC/emulator?
That is HARDCORE.

I wouldn't have the patience to do all my CPC dev in a CPC environment - crossdev saves me so much time!

arnoldemu

I really enjoyed all the games :)

All are polished really impressive technical coding too. And fast.

BTW, I continue with my 3d line drawn game more about that soon ;)




My games. My Games
My website with coding examples: Unofficial Amstrad WWW Resource

TFM

Quote from: redbox on 20:50, 04 July 13
I really like this aspect of the game engine, it's very good!  Could maybe do with tightening up a little though (it's really hard to hit the far away chickens, well for me anyway) to retain the 'arcade' feel.
Thanks.  :)  You can switch to the yellow-energy-shot (using Fire 2 or little enter key), this will make it more easy to hit chickens, but the firing rate is decreased.
I'm not sure what you mean with tightening? Do you mean the chickens should be hit more early (regarding Z coordinate)?[nb]I had that before, but my beta tester complained about it.[/nb]

Quote from: redbox on 20:50, 04 July 13
Did you pre-shift the sprites and stars?  And what kind of sprite routine did you use?  I see you used a page-aligned screen so am guessing the sprites are page-aligned too and pre-compiled, or did you do it another way?
Yes - in principle - the sprites have been pre-shifted and subsequently compiled. So that makes it possible to move things for a single pixel.

Quote from: ervin on 01:04, 05 July 13
All on CPC/emulator?
That is HARDCORE.
:)  Oh well, I would have used the real machine, but sadly I'm still sitting in USA and all my CPCs are in Munich. However the advantage of emulators is clearly the turbo mode, since Maxam can take 10 Minutes or more for bigger source codes.

Quote from: ervin on 01:04, 05 July 13
I wouldn't have the patience to do all my CPC dev in a CPC environment - crossdev saves me so much time!
Surely right. But I just really love to do it in the CPC environment  ;) [nb]TFM is too stupid to use crossdev, but don't tell anybody[/nb]
TFM of FutureSoft
Also visit the CPC and Plus users favorite OS: FutureOS - The Revolution on CPC6128 and 6128Plus

redbox

Quote from: TFM/FS on 17:02, 05 July 13
I'm not sure what you mean with tightening? Do you mean the chickens should be hit more early (regarding Z coordinate)?

By tightening, I actually mean loosening, but tighter for the player  ;) .  What I mean is maybe the hitbox for the far away chickens could be a bit bigger, meaning they're slightly easier to hit...?  So no, not the Z axis, but expand the X and Y hitbox zone a little.

For Subtera Puzlo I also used a page-aligned screen and sprites.  The number of sprites is deceptive because even though you only really "see" 1 player and 6 enemies, there are also 16 other sprites (in 3 banks) for the firewalls and/or forcefields - so actually the engine deals with 23 sprites (at 50hz).  I got away with not double buffering because the sprites that move are drawn outside of the visible play area and the ones that are static are drawn within it so there isn't much tearing.

I could have made things faster again though... for example I should have pre-compiled the main and enemy sprites (the main actually uses a mask lookup table for the whole sprite!) and also by improving my data structure and some of the screen address routines whilst drawing.  But luckily EgoTrip understood the 'constraints' and redesigned some of the levels to fit the engine because otherwise we'd have run out of time...!

TFM

Quote from: redbox on 18:50, 05 July 13
By tightening, I actually mean loosening, but tighter for the player  ;) .  What I mean is maybe the hitbox for the far away chickens could be a bit bigger, meaning they're slightly easier to hit...?  So no, not the Z axis, but expand the X and Y hitbox zone a little.
Ah, now I understand what you mean. Well if a shoot can hit or not depends on the distance between the balance point of chicken and the "bullet". And due to the physics it must always be the same. Actually the energy ball fries the chicken as soon as their balace points are closer than a critical range.
By using you eyeball it looks like that smaller chicken (more far away) are more hard to hit, but the critical distance it still the same. Since the game takes place in a 3D space it obviously seems harder to hit smaller chicken of course. This is part of the strategy you can choose to shoot as much chicken as doable.

Quote from: redbox on 18:50, 05 July 13
For Subtera Puzlo I also used a page-aligned screen and sprites.  The number of sprites is deceptive because even though you only really "see" 1 player and 6 enemies, there are also 16 other sprites (in 3 banks) for the firewalls and/or forcefields - so actually the engine deals with 23 sprites (at 50hz).  I got away with not double buffering because the sprites that move are drawn outside of the visible play area and the ones that are static are drawn within it so there isn't much tearing.

I could have made things faster again though... for example I should have pre-compiled the main and enemy sprites (the main actually uses a mask lookup table for the whole sprite!) and also by improving my data structure and some of the screen address routines whilst drawing.  But luckily EgoTrip understood the 'constraints' and redesigned some of the levels to fit the engine because otherwise we'd have run out of time...!
Thank's god you didn't! The Puzlo is an addictive game and a lot of fun playing it. I like the level codes very much  :)
TFM of FutureSoft
Also visit the CPC and Plus users favorite OS: FutureOS - The Revolution on CPC6128 and 6128Plus

redbox

Quote from: TFM/FS on 19:20, 05 July 13
By using you eyeball it looks like that smaller chicken (more far away) are more hard to hit, but the critical distance it still the same. Since the game takes place in a 3D space it obviously seems harder to hit smaller chicken of course. This is part of the strategy you can choose to shoot as much chicken as doable.

Ah I see what you mean.  Maybe I should just get better at the game!  ;)   Nice to see such a physics engine in Z80 and within the 16kb ROM size.  :)

Quote from: TFM/FS on 19:20, 05 July 13
Thank's god you didn't! The Puzlo is an addictive game and a lot of fun playing it. I like the level codes very much  :)

Glad you enjoyed it.  EgoTrip came up with the level code system because I said it would be impractical so save the game progress to disc (because it's a ROM game) and I agree it was a good idea!

TFM

Quote from: redbox on 21:14, 05 July 13
Ah I see what you mean.  Maybe I should just get better at the game!  ;)   Nice to see such a physics engine in Z80 and within the 16kb ROM size.  :)

Glad you enjoyed it.  EgoTrip came up with the level code system because I said it would be impractical so save the game progress to disc (because it's a ROM game) and I agree it was a good idea!
Thanks. And yes, the level codes are a lot of fun, no snapshot needed. No restart from scratch needed. I play 2-3 levels every day at work. So I can proceed every day a bit. Overkoban is lot's of fun too, but levelcodes would make my day here - also no problem, can use snapshots.
Now things like the MF and SF have more value, since we got your guys nice games  :)
TFM of FutureSoft
Also visit the CPC and Plus users favorite OS: FutureOS - The Revolution on CPC6128 and 6128Plus

Gryzor

Heh, still playing them! Getting better at all of them, though Relentless is probably the hardest...

TomEtJerry

Quote from: TFM/FS on 21:23, 05 July 13
Overkoban is lot's of fun too, but levelcodes would make my day here - also no problem, can use snapshots.

What ? You can select all levels in the start menu with left and right, you don't need levelcodes :-).

TFM

Quote from: TomEtJerry on 06:36, 07 July 13
What ? You can select all levels in the start menu with left and right, you don't need levelcodes :-).

Thanks for the hint!  :)  When I see something like 'start game' then I have no patience to read more  ;)
TFM of FutureSoft
Also visit the CPC and Plus users favorite OS: FutureOS - The Revolution on CPC6128 and 6128Plus

TFM

TFM of FutureSoft
Also visit the CPC and Plus users favorite OS: FutureOS - The Revolution on CPC6128 and 6128Plus

TFM

Quote from: tastefulmrship on 10:36, 02 July 13
4. Cyber Huhn. (MUST. KILL. CHICKENS.)
The background story explains why "MUST"  ;)  Have a read!  :)
TFM of FutureSoft
Also visit the CPC and Plus users favorite OS: FutureOS - The Revolution on CPC6128 and 6128Plus

arnoldemu

Good page on the 16K ROM competition in Retro Gamer this month. :)

My games. My Games
My website with coding examples: Unofficial Amstrad WWW Resource

Gryzor

Which page? Still haven't got it but got the PDF...

*edit* duh, skipped it the first time... p104.

TFM

Can somebody post this single page here? Would be great!
TFM of FutureSoft
Also visit the CPC and Plus users favorite OS: FutureOS - The Revolution on CPC6128 and 6128Plus

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