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General Category => Games => Topic started by: Zoe Robinson on 20:22, 28 December 19

Title: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: Zoe Robinson on 20:22, 28 December 19


Roland Goes Rescuing, a small 20-level game I threw together over the festive period, is now available to download. It is written for the Amstrad CPC range of computers but could probably be ported to other systems as well, if anyone fancies giving that a try.

It's coded entirely in BASIC; utilises a rather underused Locomotive BASIC trick to colour standard CPC characters as if they are sprites; and can be modified to your heart's content.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed coding it. :) 

Download it here (https://www.dropbox.com/s/bmh9deuf1tl3wkd/RolandGR.zip?dl=0)
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: Gryzor on 20:25, 28 December 19
Aww nice present ☺️
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: Zoe Robinson on 20:30, 28 December 19
Happy Gaming! :D
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: Gryzor on 20:39, 28 December 19
Tee-hee here I am on a Saturday night looking at a BASIC listing and playing like it's 1986 :)
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: Zoe Robinson on 21:11, 28 December 19
There's nothing wrong with that; the Eighties were awesome. :)
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: AMSDOS on 23:20, 28 December 19
Quote from: Gryzor on 20:39, 28 December 19
Tee-hee here I am on a Saturday night looking at a BASIC listing and playing like it's 1986 :)


With a few adjustments, I can have it playing like it's 1984!  :D
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: mr_lou on 08:16, 29 December 19
Perfect timing!

We're heading out the door in 90 minutes, to meet up with our retro mates, to have a whole day retro gaming. This is just what I needed to bring with me!  :)
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: megachur on 08:46, 29 December 19
Very nice !  ;D

Maybe, you can improve your code : in line 100, don't print LIVE and LEVEL all the time... only when it's change ! This will increase slightly the draw of the screen !  :D

and then, for the gameplay, you can change the x and y or the monster move with a random 1 or -1 and test if the new x, y column / lines stay in the map !
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: Zoe Robinson on 09:26, 29 December 19
I like the random movement thing, it would improve the game immensely. If I can get the damn thing to work, that would be wonderful (the game got delayed a day while I tried to do it but I kept getting out-of-bounds errors, so I took it out).
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: VincentGR on 11:38, 29 December 19
Thanks Zoe!
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: dthrone on 02:54, 30 December 19
Any chance of some screenshots being posted to the thread  :)
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: Zoe Robinson on 16:01, 30 December 19
Here you go. :)
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: JayBlood on 16:52, 30 December 19
Many thanks Zoe. Happy new year! :)
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: Zoe Robinson on 16:58, 30 December 19
Happy new year to you, too. :D
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: dthrone on 00:40, 31 December 19
Quote from: Zoe Robinson on 16:01, 30 December 19
Here you go. :)


Thanks, looks great!
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: Zoe Robinson on 18:31, 01 January 20
Thanks. It needs a fair bit of tweaking (and it turns out it won't work properly on a 464 because of string lengths) but for a few hours' work, it's not bad.
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: AMSDOS on 21:31, 01 January 20
Quote from: Zoe Robinson on 18:31, 01 January 20
Thanks. It needs a fair bit of tweaking (and it turns out it won't work properly on a 464 because of string lengths) but for a few hours' work, it's not bad.


With a few adjustments, it'll work on a 464, simply change the PRINT statements with the graphical string assignments in Lines 100-110, 590, 940 & 2630 to read PRINT USING"&"; followed by the graphical string asssignments from those lines and the game will work on the 464 as well.


I made a post (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/programming/multicoloured-graphics-in-basic-discuss/msg175500/#msg175500) about this midway last year (2019), after discovering this technique being used in an obscure 1986 Type-In Fort Invincible from Computer and Video Games Magazine.
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: Zoe Robinson on 01:14, 02 January 20
Thank you SO MUCH!! I knew I'd read about a method that would sort this out but I couldn't find where it was. You've saved me so much trouble. :D
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: AMSDOS on 10:53, 02 January 20
While I was playing with the game there were some glitches, Roland not being deleted from their old position, I'm not sure if it was an existing problem or one I created by not using PRINT USING"&";" " to blank the graphic, which I didn't think were necessary in that case.
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: Zoe Robinson on 23:37, 05 January 20
Quote from: AMSDOS on 10:53, 02 January 20
While I was playing with the game there were some glitches, Roland not being deleted from their old position, I'm not sure if it was an existing problem or one I created by not using PRINT USING"&";" " to blank the graphic, which I didn't think were necessary in that case.

Yeah, there are some glitches. Roland has never failed to be deleted for me but the goblins don't spawn in the right point on each level and the levels are too sparsely populated a lot of the time. I'll see what I can do to fix it all in the next update. :)
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: Zoe Robinson on 16:49, 06 January 20
I'm happy to say that the game is now tweaked and working just fine on the 464. I've also tweaked the goblin positions on each level, so the game works properly now.

You can download the DSK file here (http://"https://www.dropbox.com/s/bmh9deuf1tl3wkd/RolandGR.zip?dl=0") or download a WAV file to load into a 464 here (http://"https://www.dropbox.com/s/bcyynetlzn3t2ch/RolandGRwav.zip?dl=0").
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: Zoe Robinson on 14:41, 07 January 20
The game has been updated to tweak the code that prints Roland to the screen; which should hopefully remove the possibility of you leaving a line of Rolands behind when using the joystick. The presents also reset themselves now if you play the game more than once without stopping and RUNning the code again.

The links are the same as the ones in the post above, however. :)
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: SRS on 19:07, 07 January 20
Quote from: Zoe Robinson on 09:26, 29 December 19
I like the random movement thing, it would improve the game immensely. If I can get the damn thing to work, that would be wonderful (the game got delayed a day while I tried to do it but I kept getting out-of-bounds errors, so I took it out).
This seems to do it, just gave it a little try - and thx for letting us "hack" your game !

518 IF RND<0.016 THEN mondir%(t)=ABS(mondir%(t) mod 2)+1:IF RND>0.5 THEN mondir%(t)=mondir%(t)*-1
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: mr_lou on 20:16, 07 January 20
Nice coverage by Xyphoe yesterday!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/532001461

Kinda motivates me a bit to finish some of my own BASIC game projects.... I can't even remember how many I've started up at this point. But the common factor is that they always die, mostly because I imagine no one will be interested in them anyway. Xyphoe's enthusiasm for a slow BASIC game was a bit surprising to me.
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: Zoe Robinson on 21:28, 07 January 20
Xyphoe loves anything Amstrad and a new game is a new game. Don't look at it as "who will be interested in this", we aren't in the age where everyone with any interest in game making was pumping out a type-in to send to their favourite magazine; we are now in the realm of enthusiasts only, so not only are new projects relatively scarce but the recipients of those projects are eager to see the results. Code away!
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: Gryzor on 08:12, 08 January 20
Couldn't agree more. If nothing else, it gave a few lovely sessions of simple, cute fun over the holidays, and for that I'm grateful 🤗
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: Zoe Robinson on 09:52, 08 January 20
I'm glad you enjoyed it; and even more glad that you saw exactly what I was hoping the game would come across as. :)
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: awergh on 13:53, 22 January 20
I played this with my niece recently which was nice, I had O and P and she had Q and A which worked quite well. :)
It was a little bit easier then Oh mummy doing the same thing.
Title: Re: NEW GAME! Roland Goes Rescuing!
Post by: mr_lou on 13:55, 22 January 20
Quote from: awergh on 13:53, 22 January 20
I played this with my niece recently which was nice, I had O and P and she had Q and A which worked quite well. :)

Funny. My better half and our daughter has been playing Pinball Dreams together the same way lately, controlling a flipper each.  :)
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