New game: Cameronne

eto · 15:38, 26 February 21

I am proud to release my first game ever for the Amstrad CPC.

It's a board game called "Cameronne" and based on the great game Ishido for the Gameboy which I played for hours.

Cameronne is written in Locomotive BASIC except for the music, which is using the Arkos Tracker BASIC binary provided by Targhan. Despite being a Basic game, I put quite some effort into optimizing the slow parts. It's of course not efficient as an Assembler game, but I think I could hide the annoying slow parts, so it doesn't hurt the gameplay too much.

Special thanks to Mr. Lou for providing the excellent music tracks. And thanks to Targhan for providing an easy way to include music into Basic programs.

You can download the DSK here as an attachment or at www.blue-genie.de/cameronne

It's also possible to play it at that website in the browser. But I recommend to play it on real hardware or a good emulator.

On the website there is also a ZIP file which contains the printing arts for the inlet, disk label and also a small manual with a background short story and the instructions. So it's possible to create a physical release if you want.

I hope you enjoy the game.

GUNHED · 16:48, 26 February 21

Looks awesome! Downloading...

HAL6128 · 18:40, 26 February 21

Well done! Nice game, cool grafix and great & effective BASIC programming. I like the idea drawing a sprite with the help of a defined function.

SkulleateR · 18:50, 26 February 21

Dang ... you just ruined the weekend of my wife ....

Now I have to play this until monday morning

Nice game, pretty good gfx/sfx and I had 429 points in first try, so on to another game ....

eto · 19:57, 26 February 21

Quote from: SkulleateR on 18:50, 26 February 21
Dang ... you just ruined the weekend of my wife ....

Now I have to play this until monday morning

Nice game, pretty good gfx/sfx and I had 429 points in first try, so on to another game ....

Thanks - I'm happy if you like it! And say sorry to your wife. ;-)

Btw: my personal best is 1457points - but I only achieved that once. Usually I end up around 700-800 and every now and then above 1000.

skylas · 20:22, 26 February 21

Nice clever puzzle game! Congratulations!I also really liked the guidance for making a physical edition if someone wants too, very well detailed and organized.

Targhan · 00:34, 27 February 21

Very nicely done! My score was only 116 though

. Nice music too (though the main menu song is already known, unless I'm wrong?).
The Help function is a very nice touch. I did an Ishido version quite a few years ago. It didn't have the Help

.

Also very glad my tracker and player could be useful to you!

Misel982001 · 08:40, 27 February 21

I like it very much! Well done!

eto · 10:37, 27 February 21

Quote from: Targhan on 00:34, 27 February 21
Very nicely done! My score was only 116 though . Nice music too (though the main menu song is already known, unless I'm wrong?).

Each stone exists exactly twice. With this in mind you can build a strategy to prepare for 4-way-matches. Plus, I added a logic which increases the points each time you have a 4-way match, which allows you to easily get over 500 points. In comparison to Ishido on the Gameboy this makes the strategic element even more important as a 4-way will make so much more points than a 3-way. This leads to a much more strategic gameplay. Pure "luck" is becoming less important and is replaced by your own strategy and well taken risks, e.g. when a 3-way would be save and leave some space for the end part of the game, but a 4way would still be possible and e.g. lift you over 1000 points...

I spent quite some time to optimize that part by playing it over and over again, checking which is the best way to motivate me, to play it again, which led to some changes in the code. Before, a really great game and an average game didn't have a huge difference in score. Now a great game will always be far beyond an average game. Also a great game that doesn't solve the board will have a better score than an average game which finishes it - with the difference, that the stones will not reveal their secret wisdom ;-)

It could be that the music is known. I didn't get an exclusive license from Mr. Lou on purpose, as I think it would be a pity if the music is just used in a single game, especially since I don't know if a lot of people will play it.

eto · 13:08, 27 February 21

v1.022 uploaded

Thanks to Celestino Fernandez on Facebook, who provided a better solution for the cursor-sprite.

roudoudou · 14:28, 27 February 21

great game, i like it's done in "pure" basic, congratulations!

GUNHED · 15:45, 27 February 21

The colors are most beautiful on the real machine!

Great fun game!

XeNoMoRPH · 09:33, 28 February 21

https://youtu.be/cj_aWJL6WCg

eto · 23:19, 28 February 21

Hint: you can easily reach a score of 700-1000 points if you start preparing for 4-way matches from the first move on. Every stone exists exactly twice, so you can know, which stone will still appear later on and you can set your stones in a way, that one specific stone will later create a 4-way match.

To get a better understanding, how that works, I recorded a typical match with five 4-ways and almost 900 points. With a bit of luck and a lot of thinking, around 1200 or even 1500 points will be possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFFkWIRp0ps

News:

New game: Cameronne