I have worked hours a day, at least 9 days out of 10, the whole year on this game (EP2 is based on the code from EP1 - when EP1 was finished, I just kept on coding without stopping)
From here on I will work on the game music (Unique on all 5 levels), the Intro/Cutscenes and other incidental graphics (Bigger and Far more than EP1) - and test the thing like crazy (Much more to test now the game supports 1 or 2 players ), so I'm not done yet, but I'm hoping all the seemingly 'impossible' stuff is now done!
At times the whole screen seems filled with bullets and no way to dodge them, im not really sure why i lose lives at times and not others.
The trick with bullet hell games is that your character hitbox is only a tiny area in the centre of the sprite, not the whole sprite. Learning where the hitbox is and how to accurately squeeze it through tiny gaps is part of the challenge. It's also why movement speed slows down whilst shooting - you need the slower speed to precisely position yourself. Check out the player guide at http://www.chibiakumas.com/guide/ (http://www.chibiakumas.com/guide/) which explains this in more detail.
What I feel is missing is the ability to hold down the fire button to slowdown the movement of the sprite. This would help immensely in dodging the bullets.
What I feel is missing is the ability to hold down the fire button to slowdown the movement of the sprite. This would help immensely in dodging the bullets.Holding down the firebutton should slow down your character - also any drones should move closer to your character, reducing fire spread - please check your joystick/control settings, it sounds like you have autofire enabled!
Have moved to Japan in later years or are you genuinely Japanese? What's your story with retro computers and the Amstrad CPC? How and when did you get started?No, I was born in England, I started learning Japanese about 15 years ago as a hobby, and moved to Japan about 5 years ago.
No, I was born in England, I started learning Japanese about 15 years ago as a hobby, and moved to Japan about 5 years ago.
The CPC is pretty much unheard of in Japan (ironic, considering I believe it was manufactured here)... someone told me that Chibi Akumas was the first CPC game 'made in japan'
Probably the first CPC game made outside Europe, except a few made in Egypt and published by Amsoft.
So how is life in Japan?
So how is life in Japan?
I read somewhere else that doing graphics isn't your favorite thing, maybe someone here can do it for you?
I finished episode 1 tonight, played on genuine 1980s hardware. Great game and for some reason much more enjoyable when played on a real CPC.Glad you liked it! I always find a bit of 'analog distortion' makes the retrogames look better! but I have to admit I do all my development on Winape, and only do final testing on the real hardware.
Glad you liked it! I always find a bit of 'analog distortion' makes the retrogames look better! but I have to admit I do all my development on Winape, and only do final testing on the real hardware.I've only played it on my original c p c 6128 hardware not the full plus experience yet other than winape but enjoyed it alot after better understanding the game. looking forward to episode 2 now.
*** Weekly Update! ***
Artwork has taken longer than expected, I thought I was pretty much done last weekend, but bits and bobs kept cropping up... I will start coding the introduction sequence this weekend, and I plan to make the code move inteligent than last time, so hopefully the debugging and testing will be easier than episode 1!
well, as I have very little to say, I think it's about time I introduced the 2nd Akuma! Bochan!
Bochan is a ghoul, and was ressurrected after his timely(?!) death by his sister Chibiko... and now they're both causing trouble in the town of Nikoyama!
Some more details and stuff here...
http://www.chibiakumas.com/ep2/characters/ (http://www.chibiakumas.com/ep2/characters/)
There are some more 'chibi' characters coming... but these are the only two playable 'akuma' characters... please note that 64k users will only get 'dual chibiko' mode, as your systems have too little memory for all the extra sprites!
And remember! the game has different dialog and cutscenes for the following game modes:
1. 1 player Chibiko only
2. 1 player Bochan only
3. 2 player Chibiko and Bochan
I love bullet hell shooters, and did okayish on games like Battle Garegga and Dodonpachi on my Sega Saturn along with Ketsui on my PS3/360, but Chibi is absolutely destroying me! I really need to play this on actual CPC instead of my laptop. :)
There were some technical/personal skill limitations with regard to the coding which mean the collision detection & frame rate is not as good as other comparable games...Apart from the odd rude word i didn't think any of it was offensive.
I wanted the bullets to move very fast across the screen, but witm my programming ability on a z80 it was impossible to increase the frame rate, so instead I have to move the bullets multiple units across the screen each frame - this means that sometimes a bullet can literally go through the player, and can make the collision detection feel a bit random - increasing the hitzone of the main character would have rendered the 'weaving while firing' unusable, as the player would have being hit by things that were some distance away.
It's hardly ideal, but as I said, I could not make the game as fast and furious as I wanted without this trade off. it would have also been nice to have the bullets have some kind of 'glow' making them bigger and more clear, but with the same hitzone which may have made them more visible, but all screen drawing slows things down, so it was not an option.
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Weekly update!
I've pretty much finished the introduction sequence, and am now coding up the 'cutscene before the last battle'... The new 'dialog script' code I wrote is making it a lot easier than last time, and the 'half width' font I have now is making things easier...
In Chibi ep1 the cutscenes were actually 'levels' and each line of text was coded with a 'event time' like an enemy coming onscreeen... yeah it was a bad way of doing things, but it worked with relatively little text...
The 'pre-final battle' cutscene in Ep1 was one image, with about 4 lines of text from 'Chibiko' and 'the necromancer'... the new one has 30 images and a ton of dialog - the main problem I'm having is not actually the graphics (the new code automatically does all the loading and the display), but writing the text.
As I've previously mentioned, the new has a lot more characters than the last, and I'm trying to get across the personalities of the characters, explain the plot while keeping everything as short as possible so there's a chance anyone will actually read it, without making things so short the sound badly written, and trying to balance the jokes between 'ridiculous' and 'downright offensive'... I hope it's clear to people that the 'Chibi Akumas' game is an intentionally ludicrous parody, and that when I have scenes of extreme violence and bad language and baseless aggression that far from endorsing that kind of behavior, I am turning it into something absurd that hopefully no-one could take seriously or consider acceptable...
I really struggle with this last point these days (it was a big concern when I released the first game), as we seem to be simultaneously in a world where Ultraviolent media like GTA and 'SAW movies' are seen as completely acceptable and widely enjoyed, but someone saying the vaguely wrong thing on twitter causes them to be a target for mass trolling and abuse...
Early in the development of Chibi Akumas, I did consider making the game 'family friendly'... but if I had started down that road I would have had to remove all religious references (Crucifixes , references to hell/heaven etc), and creepy Gothic horror imagery (skulls, dismembered bodies etc)... and I would have just ended up with an 8 bit version of 'magical chase'*, and I wanted to create something different, and much darker in style because I feel those kind of games have been done enough, and there is nothing more worth doing there...
*(Yeah, I know the PC engine is technically 8 bit - so what)
There were some technical/personal skill limitations with regard to the coding which mean the collision detection & frame rate is not as good as other comparable games...great breakdown of game issues
I wanted the bullets to move very fast across the screen, but witm my programming ability on a z80 it was impossible to increase the frame rate, so instead I have to move the bullets multiple units across the screen each frame - this means that sometimes a bullet can literally go through the player, and can make the collision detection feel a bit random - increasing the hitzone of the main character would have rendered the 'weaving while firing' unusable, as the player would have being hit by things that were some distance away.
It's hardly ideal, but as I said, I could not make the game as fast and furious as I wanted without this trade off. it would have also been nice to have the bullets have some kind of 'glow' making them bigger and more clear, but with the same hitzone which may have made them more visible, but all screen drawing slows things down, so it was not an option.
--------------------
Weekly update!
I've pretty much finished the introduction sequence, and am now coding up the 'cutscene before the last battle'... The new 'dialog script' code I wrote is making it a lot easier than last time, and the 'half width' font I have now is making things easier...
In Chibi ep1 the cutscenes were actually 'levels' and each line of text was coded with a 'event time' like an enemy coming onscreeen... yeah it was a bad way of doing things, but it worked with relatively little text...
The 'pre-final battle' cutscene in Ep1 was one image, with about 4 lines of text from 'Chibiko' and 'the necromancer'... the new one has 30 images and a ton of dialog - the main problem I'm having is not actually the graphics (the new code automatically does all the loading and the display), but writing the text.
As I've previously mentioned, the new has a lot more characters than the last, and I'm trying to get across the personalities of the characters, explain the plot while keeping everything as short as possible so there's a chance anyone will actually read it, without making things so short the sound badly written, and trying to balance the jokes between 'ridiculous' and 'downright offensive'... I hope it's clear to people that the 'Chibi Akumas' game is an intentionally ludicrous parody, and that when I have scenes of extreme violence and bad language and baseless aggression that far from endorsing that kind of behavior, I am turning it into something absurd that hopefully no-one could take seriously or consider acceptable...
I really struggle with this last point these days (it was a big concern when I released the first game), as we seem to be simultaneously in a world where Ultraviolent media like GTA and 'SAW movies' are seen as completely acceptable and widely enjoyed, but someone saying the vaguely wrong thing on twitter causes them to be a target for mass trolling and abuse...
Early in the development of Chibi Akumas, I did consider making the game 'family friendly'... but if I had started down that road I would have had to remove all religious references (Crucifixes , references to hell/heaven etc), and creepy Gothic horror imagery (skulls, dismembered bodies etc)... and I would have just ended up with an 8 bit version of 'magical chase'*, and I wanted to create something different, and much darker in style because I feel those kind of games have been done enough, and there is nothing more worth doing there...
*(Yeah, I know the PC engine is technically 8 bit - so what)
Thanks for all the positive feedback, it really means a lot, as we're rapidly approaching the 9 months of development point, and it’s keeping motivation that’s the tough bit at this stage!
Weekly update!
Working on the end sequence… I’m hoping to have it finished this weekend, so I’m a bit ahead of schedule – once the endsequence is done, I still need to do the music, graphics like the ‘game over’ and Loading screens, get the final music in, finish off the ingame dialog, and test the whole thing… and then when it’s tested, I need to compress all the files, and work out how it’s all going to fit on 180k disks so theres plenty left to do!
I’m working on the cutscenes in the evenings, the music at work in my lunch hour, and I’m doing research on the planned MSX port before work in the mornings – so this should give some idea just how much work this is taking me.
Anyways time for an announcement!
Chibi Akumas Episode 2: Confrontation will be released Halloween 2017!
no matter what it takes, the game will be released for October 31st this year even if it kills me!
In celebration of this, I have made (rather quickly – I’ve got to get back to programming!) a teaser poster!
Enjoy!
Great work! I hope you squeeze it onto a single disc!
It MAY fit on one 720k disk image, but it certainly won't be one 3 inch disk!
I'm hoping it will take 4 sides of 3 inch disks (so 2 double sided 3 inchers), and that's only thanks to roudoudou's superb lz48 cruncher...
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/programming/lz48-cruncherdecruncher/msg136046/#msg136046 (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/programming/lz48-cruncherdecruncher/msg136046/#msg136046)
it's unnavoidable, taking advantage of 256k systems means a lot of extra data!
Will you be using some sort of trackloader or just a plain file loader?its a plain file loader, it a slightly reworked version of the one in Episode 1 - so yes, it should work on the M4, and be instant... I've not tested Ep2 on the M4, but Ep1 worked (and boy - was it fast!), and I expect EP2 will as well, it works with the AmsDos/ParaDos bios, not around it.
/me thinks of M4 instant loading ;D
Weekly Update!
Things are coming together nicely... the last of the graphics are in (the gameover screens, new loading screen etc), the new music files are hopefully done - unless one starts annoying me and I decide to redo it!
Dialog is looking good, but I'll keep tweaking it until release. I played the game all the way through for the first time this week - I usually start the game from the level I'm testing - but there's always the risk Level X will cause a bug in level X+1... a small bug occured - the player credits changed for no apparent reason, so I need to look into what happened there - but there were no crashes, and the game was playable - so there's no major problems there! I'm testing on an emulator for now - because I can run the game at 200% speed for quicker testing (and with a dualshock controller - so I can play as both players at once!), but once I'm reasonably happy everything is OK, I'll move onto real hardware.
Sooo, anyway, here is the new Teaser poster... this time with the Full Story! I'll be posting details of new characters on twitter and the website over the next week - so stay tuned!
As I know everyone loves animated gifs, I've done one of the first level 2 player gameplay!
feel free to redistribute it as you wish!
this seems as if it be one of the most "complete" shooters ever released on the CPC, if you know what I mean.Did I mention there's a big secret feature on level 5? well there is... a BIG SECRET FEATURE! (I'm not telling what it is! :P :P ) - I'm not talking about the 256k support either!
This is looking superb! Even though bullet hell is not really my thing I’m looking forward to this.See the AniGif below... Here's the game in 'easy mode' - it reduces the fire rate, and fire spread, does this look more to your taste?
Did I mention there's a big secret feature on level 5? well there is... a BIG SECRET FEATURE! (I'm not telling what it is! :P :P ) - I'm not talking about the 256k support either!
See the AniGif below... Here's the game in 'easy mode' - it reduces the fire rate, and fire spread, does this look more to your taste?
Did I mention there's a big secret feature on level 5? well there is... a BIG SECRET FEATURE! (I'm not telling what it is! :P :P ) - I'm not talking about the 256k support either!That’s probably more my thing but I will try it in the ‘normal’ mode!
See the AniGif below... Here's the game in 'easy mode' - it reduces the fire rate, and fire spread, does this look more to your taste?
Weekly update!
This may be the last weekly update, because hopefully the game is done! I just finished testing on my (real) Amstrad 6128 - I played the game all the way through without problem, I did 6128 Plus with Xmem and Multiplay last week, and I will do 464 next week!
I'm hoping there are no bugs left and the game is finished! I'm afraid you're still going to have to wait though, as I'm sticking to the 'Halloween' Release date! that mean's the game will come out in 29 Days!
The latest build has been uploaded to the website, and the download links will automatically go live at midnight on the 30'th Japan time, so you'll be able to download it Halloween morning UK time if you want!
I have a little trailer video I'll be releasing in a week or so, to try to build up some excitement!
I've currently shifted my priority to porting the first game to the MSX and Spectrum - which I'll be posting about elsewhere! if you're interested, please keep an eye on the msx.org forum, and worldofspectrum... as well as my twitter-feed and the Chibi Akumas website!
I've not finished on the CPC though! Quite the opposite! I can't do any more work on the CPC version of the game engine without having to redo all my testing, so I'm working on other things in this 'lull'
Once Episode 2 is released and bugfree - I'll start upgrading Episode 1 to the new game engine - so it will gain 2 player, new game modes, better backgrounds... and hopefully a new super-special feature that even Episode 2 does not have!!! - I'm not telling what it is yet! watch my twitter feed over the coming months to find out more!
Polyplay are now selling a Chibi Akumas poster! I'm hoping they will do a physical release of the game later, but I'm sure that will depend on how many posters are sold, so please consider buying one!