Space Pest Control (Development)

reidrac · 07:12, 06 October 15

I got a little bit too late to the party, but this is my attempt to submit a game to CPC retro Dev 2015 (running out of time!!!!11one).

It is also my first Amstrad CPC game, so it is the perfect excuse to put together something and learn about the platform (meaning that if I can't make it to the compo, I'll still have a game!).

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The game is still in development. I have a rough idea of where I'm going, but but there are still lots of unknowns. What I know so far is that it'll be a classic jump & shoot game, with an exploration component and priming strategy over the "shoot'em all" part.

I'm using mode 0, targeting the 464, with SDCC, some bits of cpcrslib and a custom tile/sprite engine. Still not sure how it will scale when I add the enemies, but I still have room to optimize so it may turn out just fine.

I have some videos of tests in Gamedev in progress - YouTube and I tend to digress about the development in Juan (@reidrac) | Twitter.

I'll keep you posted!

TotO · 08:17, 06 October 15

Watching the video, your game look promissing as the player moves are ok.
Now, take time to perfect the gameplay and the level desing as you no more have the contest dead line...

||C|-|E|| · 11:15, 06 October 15

It is actually looking very nice

. I think that if you polish it will be great, the foundation is already there

. I my humble opinion, it is much better if you take your time to finish it. There are so many productions that could have been potentially great but were rushed at the end just to be presented at this or that compo...

reidrac · 11:40, 06 October 15

Quote from: ||C|-|E|| on 11:15, 06 October 15
It is actually looking very nice . I think that if you polish it will be great, the foundation is already there . I my humble opinion, it is much better if you take your time to finish it. There are so many productions that could have been potentially great but were rushed at the end just to be presented at this or that compo...

We'll see! I tend to lose focus and interest (unfortunate, but true), so having a deadline is helpful.

If for some reason I don't get to the compo with a "good enough" game, I'll keep working on it. There are too many things I don't know how to do or if it's even possible (I'm new to the CPC, remember?), so there's always a chance I get to a dead end or the game is not as good as it could be. No problem, it is likely next one will be better!

Thanks for the support!

Optimus · 11:44, 06 October 15

Wow, the character reminds me of an old PC game called Electrobody.
I'd really like to play this when it's out.

TotO · 11:53, 06 October 15

Quote from: reidrac on 11:40, 06 October 15We'll see! I tend to lose focus and interest (unfortunate, but true), so having a deadline is helpful.

Nice Chrismas game that should be the game of the year on the PushNPop chart so!

TFM · 15:51, 06 October 15

Very nice. Keep the good work up!

McKlain · 16:18, 06 October 15

Looks promising

VincentGR · 17:03, 06 October 15

Oh, very nice!

reidrac · 20:08, 08 October 15

Testing some sound effects!

I'm using WYZ Player for now. The tracker kind of works in Linux (using Mono, somewhat unstable crashes frequently; I don't know why!). The tracker doesn't have support to edit effects, so I'm using Shiru's AYFX Editor for that and is quite nice (available here: Shiru's Stuff). The preview is good enough, although it sounds different (perhaps because it emulates the AY in the spectrum); and the version of WYZ I'm using doesn't seem to support noise for the effects (don't quote me on that, still trying to grok the code).

WYZ is great: the code is very clean and easy to read. I've made some modifications already to use my own interrupt handler and so far I'm very pleased.

I've been told Arkos is better, but the tracker doesn't work in Linux. Vortex tracker works fine with WINE, but the only player I've found is a little bit rough and I don't think I can use it in the game "as-is".

So I've spent a couple of days with this and looks like WYZ just works. The video was recorded with JavaCPC, that runs so-so in my system, but in WinAPE looks like the player doesn't add overhead and I think I'll be able to increase the FPS a little bit.

I'm not sure if I'll keep working on the game engine or tackle the music for the menu and (perhaps) in game (and adjust the volume, still not sure if I got the right levels). We'll see!

invent · 00:29, 09 October 15

Nice work Reidrac, enjoyed watching the video progress

The character looks great too.

ervin · 01:29, 09 October 15

This is looking really great.

It's wonderful to see so much activity in the cpc community right now!

TotO · 08:15, 09 October 15

Quote from: reidrac on 20:08, 08 October 15I've been told Arkos is better, but the tracker doesn't work in Linux. Vortex tracker works fine with WINE, but the only player I've found is a little bit rough and I don't think I can use it in the game "as-is".

For the best, you can use Starkos on CPC too...

R-Type's sound and sfx was done with it.

reidrac · 08:22, 09 October 15

Quote from: TotO on 08:15, 09 October 15
For the best, you can use Starkos on CPC too...
R-Type's sound and sfx was done with it.

Oh, I forgot to mention that: I also tried Starkos!

My main problem with that one is that emulators in Linux aren't great at the moment and both JavaCPC and WinAPE (this one used with WINE) have their issues specially with sound.

Starkos looks really nice and I think it could work just fine, but I'm going to stick to cross-development for now

mahlemiut · 22:15, 09 October 15

There's about a bajillion arcade games in MAME that use an AY, so that should have reasonably accurate sound...

Gryzor · 15:17, 10 October 15

I really like how it looks and am looking forward to see your further progress! What I love most is that it really looks like an old classic from the golden days

reidrac · 22:05, 10 October 15

Got the music working!

It wasn't that difficult, but I got stuck with an issue with one of the instruments (the tracker played it just fine but the player on the CPC was crashing because I was going one octave too high!).

Finally I found that the tracker improves its stability when used with Mono 4.0 (I was using 3.2 that comes packaged by Debian). There are still some issues, but after some time I'm used to them so is not too bad.

EDIT: oh, I forgot! The tune in the video is my last attempt to understand the tracker, but I'm starting to like how it sounds (and it is really small), so I may keep it.

||C|-|E|| · 23:04, 10 October 15

It sounds really cool!

AMSDOS · 04:06, 11 October 15

Quote from: reidrac on 08:22, 09 October 15
My main problem with that one is that emulators in Linux aren't great at the moment and both JavaCPC and WinAPE (this one used with WINE) have their issues specially with sound.

That's odd, I thought the Sound Technicians swear by JavaCPC. The other emulator mentioned isn't highly regarded for the sound it produces (even in Windows), even though I haven't had any trouble with it, but I'm not known for my great hearing.

mr_lou · 05:02, 11 October 15

People are so active on the CPC these days! It's gonna be a great Christmas this year! I can tell!

I'm always using Starkos on my real CPC when doing music. I don't trust emulators.
I would trust Arkos Tracker too because I know how much of a perfectionist Targhan is, but since it doesn't run on Linux I'm sticking with Starkos. That way I'm 110% sure I'm getting the sound I want.

Everything else in my game development is done with Linux - except the graphics because my artist (i.e. my girlfriend) insists on using Windows for some silly reason.

I'm also struggling with emulators.
I remember getting decent results regarding sound with CPCE once, and Caprice was also ok as far as I remember.
I'm hoping things will be perfect in Arnold Emulator soon though. I know @arnoldemu is working on it.
I'd have loved to use JavaCPC, because I like Java. Well, I'm into anything multiplatform'ish, and anything Java ought to run anywhere with a JVM. But I've always had problems with JavaCPC running too slow on my machines, and since it also seems to depend on a lot of Windows specific tools to run, I sometimes think it should be renamed to WindowsCPC-coded-with-java. (Sorry Markus).

Look out for Arnold Emulator.

reidrac · 10:30, 11 October 15

Quote from: mr_lou on 05:02, 11 October 15
I'm also struggling with emulators.

At the moment I'm using WinAPE with WINE for testing, and seems to be OK. Is just that in the previous video the screen capturer didn't record WinAPE audio (but I fixed that fiddling with WinAPE settings).

JavaCPC is very nice, I really like it just to play games; but for development it uses too much CPU just being idle and I can't find an easy way to load the disk and boot the game quickly (this may happen a lot during development).

I would prefer a native emulator, but what I tried so far doesn't provide good enough emulation. After developing some games for the Speccy in Linux, I appreciate FUSE more than ever!

arnoldemu · 11:34, 11 October 15

I will share the link to the source code with you.

But the emulation needs much improvement still but I am actively developing it.

The GUI is much improved over the previous one so in terms of launching and debugging you should find it much nicer.

EDIT: The past couple of weeks I have been busy at work and at the weekend's I've spent a lot of time finishing off a wall I've been building in the garden before the weather gets too wet or too cold.

Devilmarkus · 13:18, 11 October 15

Quote from: reidrac on 10:30, 11 October 15
JavaCPC is very nice, I really like it just to play games; but for development it uses too much CPU just being idle and I can't find an easy way to load the disk and boot the game quickly (this may happen a lot during development).

Just drag'n`drop the DSK into CPC screen

Left side goes to DF0, right side of screen to DF1...

To boot: Try ALT + END, when is in DF0

Gryzor · 14:24, 11 October 15

Love the tune... The whole thing has a really old-school to it!

reidrac · 07:59, 13 October 15

Getting there with the entity system

It works fine with 8 enemies, but it slows down a bit when the player is firing full throttle (up to ~16 entities, being an entity anything moving on screen or drawing non tile-aligned).

I did my first round of optimizations writing some assembler and there's still room for more, so I don't think I'll have problems to keep it smooth (still not playing bg music though, that may change everything).

Anyway, progress!

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Space Pest Control (Development)