Roland of Sherwood

[Carnivius]

Here's a screenshot of a quick crappy lil game I've been making over the last few days as a simple test project both for myself and also for any CPC developer who wants to take a go at converting it to real CPC when I'm finished.  Basically a test project to see how this process may go before finishing and convertting Cosmic Prison Commando and RoboCop: Prime at a later date.   Also this one should have no problems being ported to a standard CPC 464 as it's relatively light on memory usage with it's small sprites and limited animation.    Basically it's an update of the Roland in Time/Space pics (using some sprite designs I did for a spacey Roland mock up last year) with his time travelling phone booth having landed in medieval england.  Same basic collect the crystal gameplay as the Time/Space games with some Dizzy-esque character interaction and item usage but smoothly done and not as insanely frustrating or difficult.

More to come soon. 

[||C|-|E||]

I would say that it looks quite amazing as it is. Looking forward to play it if it is released!

[VincentGR]

Love that gfx/color setup.

[CraigsBar]

Love that gfx/color setup.

I love the look of that. If it gets ported, any chance of a native cart version?

[Carnivius]

If it gets ported, any chance of a native cart version?

I'm not sure what the exact requirements are to get it converted to the C4CPC thing to run on GX4000 but the intent is for the game to run in 64k and while supporting keyboard for gameplay it will be fully playable using just the joystick and P (for pause).  If there is going to be any typing occuring in-game (like games have highscore or player name entry) then it willl support both the letter keys of the keyboard and an on-screen key grid to select letters just with the joystick too like console games generally have.  Menus are already working with movable arrow for selection with joystick or cursor keys.

[CraigsBar]

I'm not sure what the exact requirements are to get it converted to the C4CPC thing to run on GX4000 but the intent is for the game to run in 64k and while supporting keyboard for gameplay it will be fully playable using just the joystick and P (for pause).  If there is going to be any typing occuring in-game (like games have highscore or player name entry) then it willl support both the letter keys of the keyboard and an on-screen key grid to select letters just with the joystick too like console games generally have.  Menus are already working with movable arrow for selection with joystick or cursor keys.

That should be good as is then. So long as it's a standard disc format and only needs 64k

[Captain Past]

Lovely preview pic. Fingers crossed you'll find a CPC coder soon.

[iddod]

i know it's early days, but that looks gorgeous so far, lovely use of the palette...
+1 for c4cpc compatible/convertable

[ervin]

@Carnivac - I love the way you use purples and blues together.
Absolutely stunning.

[tastefulmrship]

I've attached a quick .dsk file if you want to see this preview image on a real machine... or an emulator. It's your choice.

Hopefully, seeing it on a real machine will prompt a coder to take on the mission. We have a lot of GREAT coders here, it would be a shame for this project to fall by the way-side because no-one took on the task! Maybe we could have our first true CPC-Wiki community project game!

[Morri]

I've attached a quick .dsk file if you want to see this preview image on a real machine... or an emulator. It's your choice.

Hopefully, seeing it on a real machine will prompt a coder to take on the mission. We have a lot of GREAT coders here, it would be a shame for this project to fall by the way-side because no-one took on the task! Maybe we could have our first true CPC-Wiki community project game!

This screenshot looks amazing on WinApe. How did you do this? and get it to only be 5kb. 

Could we please have @Carnivac 's permission to make screenshots of his other works (Robocop / Cosmic Prison etc...) to put onto a .dsk file as a slideshow. I would love to see all of his work on my real CPC. 

[tastefulmrship]

This screenshot looks amazing on WinApe. How did you do this? and get it to only be 5kb. 

I used BITBuster to compress the screen, but Exomizer would have made it a little smaller (not small enough to make it 4k, though).
Crass/unoptimised source code attached.

Also, CPC-Power has some olde Cosmic Prison Commando screens.

Finally, I remember doing one recently... I'll attach it if I can find it! ^_^
(Press SPACE after the title screen for the ingame screen)

[seanb]

All 3 images for the 2 games look fantastic on a real cpc
I hope they do get released to play one day.

[Carnivius]

This is actually developing really fast.  For what was going to be a simple crappy throwaway project I'm starting to really enjoy it.  This screenshot shows trees and rock tiles.  I had to redo them several times cos I kept making them far too 'realistic' and details and were looking too similar to the tree and rock tiles I've done for Cosmic Prison Commando.  Settled on a nice colourful pleasantly 'cute' look now though.  Hope you like.   Also don't enrage the piggies! 

[CraigsBar]

This is actually developing really fast.  For what was going to be a simple crappy throwaway project I'm starting to really enjoy it.  This screenshot shows trees and rock tiles.  I had to redo them several times cos I kept making them far too 'realistic' and details and were looking too similar to the tree and rock tiles I've done for Cosmic Prison Commando.  Settled on a nice colourful pleasantly 'cute' look now though.  Hope you like.   Also don't enrage the piggies! 

I love the look of that. The backdrops remind me of 'rolo to the rescue' on the megadrive.

[||C|-|E||]

It really looks wonderful. This should be definitely a real cpc game one day 

[Neil79]

 

[Lazy Dude]

this is looking like a fun little project.
Its a good contrast to the serious nature of Robocop.

[Gryzor]

This would be the best Roland game ever... Please,god, please!

[Lazy Dude]

you can't go calling cpc coders God, otherwise their egos will get too big!!!

[Carnivius]

this is looking like a fun little project.
Its a good contrast to the serious nature of Robocop.

Yeah it really is.  With all three of my CPC projects, while they share similar traits underneath they are all their own distinctive games with own recognisable looks and styles and it's nice to be able to switch between them depending on how I'm feeling at the time.

This one is actually not going to take much longer to do.  I'm mainly doing the level layouts now that the majority of code and graphics are done (tilework is done as far needed right now.  Castle, Forest, Caves.  There may be a few more small tiles needed to be created as I design the screens but not much).  Am trying to come up with some tricky platforming screens where the crystals are a bit of a pain to get and also some secret areas.   The cave on that new screenshot shows you that while there is a crystal in there, you can only access that cave from below, but the trick is finding the way in.  There's also a couple of small character based events too in certain places during the game.   Anyways when it's nearing completion I'm gonna message McKlain to let him know what I'd like (he already agreed to do the music )  Then I'll release the game, and a few weeks later I'll put the resource pack together and release that here so that any CPC coder can take it and produce a true CPC version.  It's not a big game so a 64k cassette version wouldn't be much of a problem and not require multi-load and then it could be put onto C4CPC for GX4000 owners to play with that instant cartridge loading.

[Gryzor]

I'd literally pay for your stuff mate...

[Carnivius]

I'd literally pay for your stuff mate...

That's nice but I never feel right about accepting money for anything I do anyways.  Even when I'm actually freelancing or employed to do pixels and stuff.  Just never felt my stuff was good enough for money and then I put far too much pressure on myself. 

Is another reason for doing this game actually.  Make it simple and easy to create yet pleasing in both graphics and gameplay. 

[sigh]

Lovely! I especially like his portrait on the top.

[Carnivius]

A screenshot from last week I forgot to upload here.   Done a fair bit since then.  There are now bats flying about and knights walking around not shown here.

This here is a lil experiment I did with his phonebox  I was learning how to do orbit code for enemy types that float about in a circle and applied the script to the phonebox object with some randomisation of the x and y radius variables and with the starfield code I originally created for Cosmic Prison Commando.  And yeah this Doctor Who-esque scene occured.  Which I may keep for the intro of the game before Roland lands the phonebox in Nottingham.

Excuse the frame rate.  I did set LiceCap to 60fps but for some reason it still came out jerky.   The real running code is smoother and you can see the phone box animating properly spinning around.  Also it's a bit hard to see here cos of the jerkiness but the starfield origin moves about too like the phonebox is travelling in different directions.

EDIT: Replaced GIF animation with one I just made with GifCam which is a lot better than LiceCap.  Still not the full 60fps but 33fps is fine for now and less headache inducing than whatever the heck LiceCap was lying to me with.