Carnivac's CPC pixels

[Carnivius]

This is really looking promising.

I have come round to the flick screen idea now, especially as you've added the storyline approach which means you can have puzzles too and make the game more interesting than just a straight forward blast em up!

Well there was a sort of story before but there's more of it now (not too much, I hate lengthy cutscenes like Metal Gear Solid), just enough to establish the events and characters and a bare-bones plot.   And yeah there are some puzzles mostly involve standing some place or shooting some particular thing.  Some may involve a bit of thought and others a matter of shooting at the right moment (like shooting between the gaps of multiple moving pillars so the shot passes through them all to hit a switch).   Originally it was pretty much Turrican-lite but it's now got elements of other favorite platform shooters I enjoy including modern ones like Ratchet & Clank (the robot buddy is an obvious clue to that inspiration even though I didn't realise that's where I got the idea from at the time).

The flick-screen approach makes mapping a hell of a lot easier for me and it's easy to assign a grid reference for each screen now (so say you're stuck on a puzzle in room 6,9... being 6 across 9 down)

[Carnivius]

Currently optimising the hell out of my current outdoors/caves tileset to save memory.  By making the tile size 4x8 rather than 8x16 I can see a LOT of duplication like in cases where for example a corner rock tile was the same as the middle but with the edge rounded off a bit.

At moment I am redoing the door tiles to be much more flexible and able to be all sorts of sizes, and to be made of a wooden plank tile that can also be used for the fences, interior building flooring and also wooden crates. 

So far the new tilesheet is about a third of the size of the old one and I'm not finished optimising it yet.   Ok it's more fiddly to do the level layouts now the tiles are smaller sizes but worth it as they extra flexibility in placement now too.  It's just the rock tiles and all the variations that blend into the ground which are going to be slightly headache-inducing to lay out.

edit:  Now I've made it possible to go through doors into those buildings I realise just how bloody tiny that building in my previous screenshots post really is.  Can barely jump around in it.  Have to remember that when laying out the proper level screens.

[Carnivius]

Tile testing of the new smaller but more flexible tile size and new wood tiles that are shared between the door, crates, floors and the (not seen here) fences.  Made the windows bigger so I could fit in some of the sky and mountain tiles to give the illusion there's an outside too.  That elevator is a little bit high tech looking for this building.  It's from the later more sci fi looking stuff but I haven't yet done the wooden elevator sprite yet so he's got that one to go up and down on for now.   Obviously this test shot is too big for a screen but it's just to check the tiles look ok before I sort out the tilesheet order and put them in the game and also testing how I want the interiors of the buildings to look like when properly tiled (at moment in the game they're very shoddily put together as they simply exist to check the entering/exiting door code works... which it does, yay!).  The floor/ceiling between rooms will likely be 32 pixels high so you have a noticable floor in the top bit and ceiling when in the bottom. 





right my eyes hurt from all the fiddly tiny tiles in blocky wide-pixel vision... I need a break.  Is dinner time anyways. 

[ralferoo]

Anyways a few new screenshots to show some changes such as that I'm now using a frame around the play area (made up of tiles from the status bar) and showing some of the 'story text' stuff.

Got to say, all these screenshots look phenomenal... 

[Carnivius]

Thanks. 

Found another way to recycle some tiles.   The bridge hand rail thingy bits can now be used for bannisters for the stairs inside buildings.  They look different enough in that the bridge uses both the diagonal and straight strut tiles and the bannisters use just the straight struts for balconies and the diagonal end bits for going along the steps.  For example:

______
/|\|/|\|/|\
bridge
       ________
    _/| | | | | | |
_/|
/|
bannister


Also thinking more about controls.   Trying to get as much as I can onto a 1 fire button joystick.

Some notes about controlling (other than the obvious) are listed here.  These may change as development continues but at moment they work pretty well:
Currently holding fire button down while moving shoots and locks your direction for strafing so if you wear facing left and about to turn right, holding fire keeps you shooting to the left and when going right you walk backwards to the right. 
Holding fire button down for a couple seconds while standing still for a couple seconds opens a quick little menu of icons around the player (which pauses the game).  I haven't yet designed it fully though one of the icons is for the smart bomb.   Letting go of fire closes menu, but pressing a direction towards an icon chooses that.  So if the smart bomb is in the down icon, you hold fire to open menu, press down and he'll use a smart bomb.  Works great once you get used to it and which functions are in which direction.  If I end up with more than 4 functions (I don't want to assign anything to diagonals as they can be clumsy to use) I may have to modify it so that up and down are your quick functions and left and right cycle through the others (perhaps like the ring menu system in the SNES game Secret of Mana) but I shouldn't need more than 4.  It's not a ridiculously complex game.

Jumping is sort of disabled on elevators as pressing up makes the elevator go up.  However if you walk left or right a little bit and then press up you will jump while on the elevator. So basically jumping straight up is not possible on an elevator (but you're going up anyways).
Crouching is disabled on the elevator as pressing down makes the elevator descend.  However if the elevator cannot go down any more than possible, pressing down does make you crouch.  Crouching isn't essential on elevators anyways as you already go down.
Jumping is disabled when the majority of the player sprite is touching the door as pressing up centres you on the door and you go through it.

[Carnivius]

Updated the previous mock up so look up there (and may need to refresh it).

Redid the wood tiles slightly and happier with their texture now.  Added drawer tiles to be seperate drawer units like on the bottom right or used with door tiles to make the wardrobe as shown on the upper floor.  I've currently got it using the dialogue detection object so you can 'search' the wardrobe (will likely add it to the menu thing I mentioned above, possibly as the 'up' icon) and see if you get something in return such a a gem or something more important (such as the disk needed to reprogram one of the small security robots and turn it into your robot buddy).   Gonna use some of those tiles with some other new ones to make a bed too as I want these buildings to look a bit like they were lived in before the game is set.   Added some cobweb tiles too to make the place look abandoned and can reuse those in the caves and castle areas too.  Have done a brighter variant of the lower door tiles that are used as the tops of crates and floors to show help show that those are able to be walked on. 

Hm... looking at it if I do two small drawer units with a gap between and put a wooden piece across the top, I'll have a decent looking desk too.  I can make a little computer to put on it.   ACTUALLY I ALREADY HAVE!  Of course... I can use the Amstrad CPC collectable item I've had in there since the original demo.   Heh... YEAH, the occupants of this planet can all have been CPC users before their demise.  hehe...

edit:
Like so   Makes more sense having them on a desk (or any piece of furniture) than mysteriously hanging in the air like they did in the old demo.   Yay for stuff that makes sense!

[cngsoft]

That's going to be amazing, Carnivac. You're doing God's work, son!

[Gryzor]

Love the li'l CPC in there


Also, the windows look lovely; will the 'outside' scroll, or is it static?

[Carnivius]

No scrolling, sorry.  Backgrounds are largely static tiles ('cept for the surface of water).  I'm trying to keep most cpu speed stuff for the sprites and such.

[Puresox]

Why is it that not very many people are keen on programming games on/for the Plus computers?Is it a case of not being familiar with how and what the plus's features are, or just because they're lot less of the Plus machines about to cater for. I ask this without meaning offence to you programmers, I am in awe of your skills and knowledge!! I just thought that You all, would be interested to see what the unit was capable of. Especially with the facility of Winape , people have easy access to play the game more than ever, I know it is not the same,but still.

[Carnivius]

Ugh... what does that have to do with anything?   I have zero interest in the Plus machines... they simply just do not have any appeal to me in the way the original CPC specs do. 

[Puresox]

Noticed it on the bottom of your sig.

[ralferoo]

For me, and I suspect a lot of others, the plus wasn't part of my memories. I grew up with a 464 and kind of always wanted a 6128 (or at least a RAM pack and a disk drive) but got an Amiga instead.

I hadn't even heard of the plus until a few years ago and so whilst I do have one now, it barely gets any use because I'll just use a 464 if I want to use a real CPC.

[Puresox]

I apologize  for taking it off topic Carnivac, somewhat lazy of me not looking for the correct thread.
As you were....

[Carnivius]

Sorry Puresox I didn't mean to snap or anything.  Just got me at a bad moment (just being notified of a funeral of a family member so feeling a bit all over the place).

But yeah to me the Plus just isn't one thing or the other.  It's some weird in-between of the CPC and the ST/Amiga but doesn't really offer much in it's own way of anything.  Like it's got no identity of it's own.  And when it came out it just seemed quite pathetic trying to take on the market which was by that time dominated by the Amiga 500.  If I want the 4096 colour palette I'll just skip the Plus and do an Amiga game and use pixels of normal square shape but I'm much more fascinated with what can be achieved with 'limitations' such as the original CPC's 27 colour palette.  Heck, I'm typing this on a laptop with much higher resolutions and millions and millions of colours undreamed of back in the 8-bit era and yet I find relatively low colour palettes and resolutions are almost infinitely much more interesting for me to work with (and much more managable too).

[Puresox]

No worries,Cheers.
I can see your reasoning behind it. It's a shame really as I expect that is the case with lots. Never mind , It's pleasing that there are many people developing great stuff on the old machine. For that I can be grateful.

[Carnivius]

Yeah.  I get why people with Plus machines like them and that's cool.  Nothing against that as such.  It's just not for me is all.

[Puresox]

I actually never had one, but they intrigue me. Anyway I'll let things get back on track.

[TMR]

I actually never had one, but they intrigue me.

That might be one of the problems; most coders i know wouldn't trust what they'd written without having at least having access to a real machine for testing.

Anyway I'll let things get back on track.

Oops, sorry. =-)

[dcdrac]

I saw a 464 plus for sale for £99 with monitor on ebay yesterday, I have a GX4000 so if I go for  Plus it will be a 6128

[Carnivius]

The main characters of 'Cosmic Prison Commando'.  Both were prisoners who survived the crash of the prison ship.  Both are playable but on different stages.  Jack is the 'hero' of sorts.  David is less so.   Their names actually do have some connection.  I won't say what yet.  They both are trying to get to the same destination though David is also more actively trying to sabotage Jack's attempts to get there.

[Gryzor]

Why not make one of them female? Probably too late by now, but it would add some interest...?

[Carnivius]

For so many reasons...

One being memory because these guys are designed to use the exact same leg sprites (as the legs have the most animation), co-ordinates, gunflash overlays and such so they have to be somewhat similar in shape and mass (they also share most sprites in something that happens later in the game but I ain't going to spoil that).   Besides I'm not a big fan of violence against women and these guys will be try to kill the crap out of each other.  Story-wise there were no women on the prison ship that these two were on being that it was a prison ship full of somewhat unpleasant male convicts.  There is likely to be a woman in later stages (there's a head done at moment, body won't come til I figure out who she is, what she does and what that means she will be wearing) but she will not have many sprites because she is not intended to be playable.  Another reason is I simply do not want a playable female character in this.  I've already got a female as the lead of my other game anyways mainly as a tribute to a past friend of mine even though I'm really not a fan of playing games as female characters. 

[Gryzor]

Fair enough, got more than I asked for

[Carnivius]

Yes.  Yes you did.