#CPCRetroDev 2018 - Amstrad CPC Game Creation Contest new for 2018!

[Arnaud]

It's interesting you are talking about these points because they have been a problem for me during the development.

The lack of any actual attack sprite and having to 'push' into the enemy in the latter really kills the fun of combat for me.  I just feel no sense of actual contact with the enemy at all.

I haven't added attack animation because i thought they weren't needed, why ? Because Gauntlet didn't have it But i must admit it's a lack, and i'll try to add them.
But before that, i have to found memory, for now it remains exactly 9bytes free, but @Targhan promise me a gain of 500kb of memory with the new arkos2 player. 

I was using the push to fight because the fire button was already used for throw dagger and open inventory and Gauntlet works like that (but the fight is more based on missile weapon). I can try to see if the fight with fire button is more intesting.

And while the slower speed on low food may make some sort of real world sense i guess, the speed changes just make the game seem quite frustrating to me.

I'm agree it's too much annoying. Maybe i should replace the slow down effect with a fight malus and a more important lose of life.
To the people who played with DW, what do you think about that ?

Thanks for feedback @Carnivius

[norecess464]

- Since there is no risk of few entries, I would add a 128kb category. This I think would be good to enhance the creation of bigger and more complex games.

Completing what Rhino said, I would also suggest introducing the Amstrad Plus/GX-4000 platforms in the contest. They are Amstrad machines after all, and with recent games released / C4CPC there is no reason anymore to not give some love to those platforms!

[Carnivius]

I was using the push to fight because the fire button was already used for throw dagger and open inventory and Gauntlet works like that (but the fight is more based on missile weapon). I can try to see if the fight with fire button is more intesting.

I never even knew that.   I have played Gauntlet a lot over the past few decades on various machines but always assumed the 'shooting' style attack was the main form of combat as it just never occured to me to be able to walk into an enemy without receiving damage.   Loading it up again now I can see the pushing sorta works but seems far too risky and then shooting axes is much safer and more fun.  If you're being true to Gauntlet then yes i guess your game makes sense.
Hope i wasn't too negative with things. I do like your game, I just found it quite frustrating and lacking a visual impact of actually hitting the enemy (the blood splat is fine but just seems to strange to me with no movement from the character, even one frame per direction)  but again like much here could just be down to personal tastes.

[Targhan]

I personally think this is wise to keep to competition to 64kb. It's like in demo parties: there are categories for 1k, 4k, 16k, and "no limit"...


A game that exploits the full 128k memory will certainly have a better "wow" effect than a student game which, in retrospect, could have an awesome gameplay and should win the contest, as it is for me a "best game" contest.

I'm agree it's too much annoying. Maybe i should replace the slow down effect with a fight malus and a more important lose of life.
To the people who played with DW, what do you think about that ?

As this is getting out of topic, I will answer you in the DW thread .

[Arnaud]

Hope i wasn't too negative with things.

Of course not 

[awergh]

@awergh Like @reidrac said, my problem is not about platformers. There are many ways to make platformers. The most famous one, Mario, has yet to be challenged by a CPC game! My only gripe is that most of the latest platformers on CPC relies on the same mechanisms and have all the same weakness (monster spawning, high level of difficulty, etc.).


Galactic Tomb was a bit different, for example, more hectic, which is what I liked it.

Clearly I misread a bit there, and now I don't know the best way to pose my original question, ah well. 
So do you think it is only platformers that suffer from overusing the same mechanisms?
What genre(s) would be interesting to see more of?
Somehow I don't think a text adventure is going to win    but it could still be the funniest game  [size=78%].[/size]

[alex76gr]

First things first.

Every single one who has submitted a game in this competition, has my gratitude for helping our beloved machine not to succumb into oblivion.

For me it's like early Xmas when the games are released and i have a chance to play them.

Thank you all.

Now.
FFS STOP USING WASD CONTROLS!

What is wrong with you?

This is CPC and and not an Intel or Amd machine.

Please, stick to QAOP keys, joystick or a redefine option.

[Gryzor]

Ooh, that was the best comment so far. Respect.

[alex76gr]

Please don't get me wrong here with my yelling.
It's just that i have noticed this strange wasd hype for a couple of competitions now and i really don't understand what makes the programmers adapt this out of place and time control scheme.

[skylas]

Please don't get me wrong here with my yelling.
It's just that i have noticed this strange wasd hype for a couple of competitions now and i really don't understand what makes the programmers adapt this out of place and time control scheme.

I would like to add that, for me at least, it is difficult to use WASD to move and JIKL to shoot at the same time, it is more easier (and more classic) to shoot at the direction you are looking at

[awergh]

I remember being surprised when I played the 2014 entries that they adopted wasd which seemed so strange.
I think I put it down to them adopting what was familiar for modern games and not knowing what was typical for our machine.
However I would have thought they might have played a few classic games and figured it out by now that no other games use that control scheme.

[Nich]

Somehow I don't think a text adventure is going to win    but it could still be the funniest game 

I think 'funniest' is a mistranslation of the original Spanish, which is 'más divertido'. According to the Spanish dictionary that is currently on my desk, this phrase can also be translated to 'most enjoyable' or 'most entertaining', which sound like more appropriate terms to me.

[GUNHED]

Please no keys!!! After 1 minute of gaming I do erase it, because my hand seriously hurts.


Just go with the joystick!!! Therefore it was made, and if you like keys - PLEASE use the Cursor keys and Copy. 

[XeNoMoRPH]

@Nich , can you make a loader with pokes for Operation Alexandra y Jarlac ? 

[awergh]

I think 'funniest' is a mistranslation of the original Spanish, which is 'más divertido'. According to the Spanish dictionary that is currently on my desk, this phrase can also be translated to 'most enjoyable' or 'most entertaining', which sound like more appropriate terms to me.

Ah ok, just looking at 2017 rules again it has the same thing for the english rules.
That said if it were an actual category that encouraged people to add humour that could be interesting although it may not translate internationally.

[cngsoft]

What a nice little discussion Targhan has fired!
I think I might have an opinion to share, but before I do, I'd need the help of technically minded people.
Are there games in CPCRetrodev 2018 that run at a constant 50 frames or 25 frames rate? Are there games where the movement (sprites and scrolling if have) is done in per pixel steps rather than byte steps or character steps?
rb

That's actually a good question. When I wrote "Timothy Gunn" (I released a big update yesterday night, btw; code and data needed serious cleanup, the AI of both old and new enemies needed a full rewrite) I wanted to keep a consistent framerate (in this case 12.5 fps) at any price; hence some design choices such as forcing a C64-like sprite size (24x21) to ensure that sprite render code could be unrolled. And so, sprites can be flipped horizontally and vertically, as well as drawn in full colour or masked into a single ink (the "flash" effect). But the unrolled code carries a heavier footprint, so pixel-aligned sprites became out of question.
During the brainstorm before the making of the game I pondered writing a much simpler one that would however allow higher framerate. For example a clone of "Mad Planets" (for our C64 friends, "Crazy Comets" and "Mega Apocalypse") could easily run at 25 fps on the CPC, and even at full 50 fps after severely restricting the amount of sprites.

All these possibilities jumped off the window when I realised that all the tile and sprite code I had written ate too much memory and also had consumed my time: I ultimately had to make the actual game in just four weeks. I imagine that others had to take similar choices as well.

[Carnivius]

When I wrote "Timothy Gunn" (I released a big update yesterday night, btw; code and data needed serious cleanup, the AI of both old and new enemies needed a full rewrite)

20181113: fourth version. Completely new AI logic, following a major cleanup of code and data. The sniper can be dodged with quick vertical motions, and it's guaranteed that at least one out of 16 enemies will always carry evidence.

Ah cool!  I've played each update.   It's one of my fave games from the contest and great for quick frantic blasts to see how far I can get.

[mr_lou]

Make keys redefinable. Problem solved.

[Targhan]

@cngsoft I have played the latest version of TmmyGun. Congrats for your effort! It is much better I guess. The pace is less hectic. Yet, this time (you're going to think I hate you!!) there were not enough enemies (!!!), so not enough bonus, and the sniper kept on killing me, and there was nothing I could do about it as it is almost impossible to escape from it. So I admit I couldn't past beyond the first level, whereas I reached level 4 with the CPCRetroDev version!


On a side note, for some strange reason, the DSK could not be converted to HFE (HxCFloppyEmulator would crash when converting your DSK), so I had to play it on emulator, sorry.

[Scarlettkitten]

@Arnaud
I agree and think replacing the slow down with something else would improve the fun factor in DW.

[cngsoft]

@cngsoft I have played the latest version of TimmyGun. Congrats for your effort! It is much better I guess. The pace is less hectic. Yet, this time (you're going to think I hate you!!) there were not enough enemies (!!!), so not enough bonus, and the sniper kept on killing me, and there was nothing I could do about it as it is almost impossible to escape from it. So I admit I couldn't past beyond the first level, whereas I reached level 4 with the CPCRetroDev version!

Au contraire, you're the alpha tester I should have had during development :-) I'd like to keep the relatively slow pacing of the first levels so new players don't get too overwhelmed; I can instead make the sniper delay longer. How about twice as long in the first level? It would roughly fit the current enemy spawn rhythm, twice as slow in level 1 as in level 6.

On a side note, for some strange reason, the DSK could not be converted to HFE (HxCFloppyEmulator would crash when converting your DSK), so I had to play it on emulator, sorry.

Intriguing. I use the same tool to generate the DSK files as in the past, its only unusual feature is that it clips unused tracks off, but the header itself shows the right number of tracks (right now 6: the last used track is #5). Do other games of mine transfer properly? Did the previous versions of TimmyGun transfer?

[Targhan]

I only transferred the last version, as well as the one from CPC RetroDev. It is the first time it happens. Note that loading with HxCFloppyEmulator works, but crashes on export. It is probably not your fault, since Winape loads it correctly. Don't worry too much. I'll rather contact the dev of the software.

[roudoudou]

You should try sugarconvdsk for conversion. The best tool

[cngsoft]

I only transferred the last version, as well as the one from CPC RetroDev. It is the first time it happens. Note that loading with HxCFloppyEmulator works, but crashes on export. It is probably not your fault, since Winape loads it correctly. Don't worry too much. I'll rather contact the dev of the software.

Alright. Meanwhile I've posted a fifth version of TimmyGun with a slower sniper in the early stages, several small tweaks, and a bugfix: bullets shot above the top edge of the screen aren't ignored. Player and enemies can now kill each other while standing on the highest platforms.
P.S.: I just reuploaded it after noticing that a bit I had written while on the laptop (enemies that jump vertically also look at the player) wasn't on the desktop.

[Nich]

@Nich , can you make a loader with pokes for Operation Alexandra y Jarlac ? 

Here you are:

Operation Alexandra

The listing below also works with the censored version where the swastikas are replaced with alternative symbols.

Code Select Expand

1 ' Operation Alexandra pokes
2 ' by Nich
3 '
10 MODE 0
20 OPENOUT"d":MEMORY &964:CLOSEOUT
30 LOAD"disc.bin"
40 a=&BF00
50 POKE &1363,0:POKE &1364,&BF
60 READ h$
70 IF h$="END" THEN CALL &965
80 POKE a,VAL("&"+h$)
90 a=a+1:GOTO 60
100 DATA 3e,c9,32,9a,ba,cd,79,ba
110 ' Infinite health
120 DATA 3e,21,32,60,14
130 ' Don't delete the line below!
140 DATA c3,40,00,END

Jarlac

Code Select Expand

1 ' Jarlac pokes
2 ' by Nich
3 '
10 MODE 1:CALL &BC02
20 INPUT"Infinite lives (Y/N)? ",i$
30 i$=UPPER$(i$)
40 IF INSTR("YN",i$)=0 THEN 20
50 INPUT"Number of hearts to collect (1-13)? ",h
60 IF h<1 OR h>13 THEN 50
70 MODE 0:MEMORY &3FFF
80 LOAD"jarlac",&4000
90 a=&BF00
100 READ h$
110 IF h$="END" THEN 140
120 POKE a,VAL("&"+h$)
130 a=a+1:GOTO 100
140 IF i$="Y" THEN POKE &BF1F,&21
150 POKE &BF24,h
160 CALL &BF00
170 DATA 21,00,40,11,40,00,01,6d
180 DATA 03,ed,b0,21,1e,bf,11,00
190 DATA 04,d5,01,12,00,ed,b0,e1
200 DATA 22,45,03,c3,d4,02,3e,fd
210 DATA 32,54,25,3e,0d,32,b4,67
220 DATA 3e,da,32,b5,67,c3,57,7a
230 DATA END