My CPCRetroDev2015 entry - RUN"CPC"

[TFM]

@TFM: Referring to the low-level library, CPCtelera directly speaks to hardware. The only "firmware" part it provides is an implementation of the putchar function to let you use C's printf function without any problem.

Everything is written in ASM. You can navigate and check source code directly at github.

Pretty awesome!

So... a CPCTelera program can be (in principle) started from Amsdos, CP/M or whatever, right?


Can't wait to download the games of the Game competition... only one day left!!!

[ronaldo]

Well, you'll have to wait a little bit more. Games won't be published until Award Ceremony is over, next saturday, the 31st . Nominees and their games are to be presented there, through the streaming online, to the entire world

[ervin]

Well, you'll have to wait a little bit more. Games won't be published until Award Ceremony is over, next saturday, the 31st . Nominees and their games are to be presented there, through the streaming online, to the entire world

Wow, there are some VERY interesting games popping up.
I'm so excited to see what everyone has created (even if my entry will be beaten by a number of them)!

[cpc4eva]

Thanks man.


Still feeling really weird this morning.
I don't know if it's the anticipation, the relief, or the fact that the thing I've been laser-focused on for 4 months is now over, and I won't know what to do with myself!

u better go have a mini celebration to release all that nervous energy then you can have a bigger celebration if you win something 

[ervin]

Hi everyone.

Now that the competition is over, I can present my game to you all!
I hope you enjoy playing RUNCPC as much as I enjoyed creating it.


To run the game, simply type:
RUN"CPC

[AMSDOS]

Yeah bummer it missed out, I didn't even see a Screenshot of it 

[Singaja]

I had the chance to see it on the livestream , the message "I'm f.... fast"    was definitely delivered. Awesome dynamics,almost too good as the game has no remorse on the player, hahah it's pure punishment. Imho the difficulty needs to progress more steadily (bigger rings for starters    ). Sometimes you get the impossible ones at the very beginning.  I barely made it to highscore on continuous retries. This has it's charm  in the spirit of 80s, where most of the games where so unforgiving. Great work Ervin

[Arnaud]

Hello, here my comments :

- First of all it's really fast for full screen game, your engine runs very well

- The game is very hard, and i wonder if the main sprite is not a little too large to have good visibility, or you can reduce the hitbox.

- For improve gameplay :
    - Start the game with easy rings and increase difficulty
    - In the first levels set more space beetwen rings
    - When hitting an obstacle lose a life or lose double energy, sometimes i have game over with less than 3 seconds of play.

Honestly good works.

[arnoldemu]

@ervin, my comments:

- nice sparkle effect on run-cpc made with simple chars

- menu screen is simple and colourful and easy to navigate

- i really like the in-game graphics style. the variation in the coloured blocks is very nice. the graphics of the ship are chunky and suit the style. continue to explore this style, it's worth it and your results are really nice.

- game is too hard and too fast for me. it's hard to avoid things and the things you have to avoid i think could have better design to make it easier. the z shape is awkward for me.

- dying quickly makes it harder, consider something where you can scrape if you get close and loose some energy. this would allow simple errors in play but make it a bit easier.

- consider telling the player which way to go. maybe some hint. it depends on if the flying is freeform or a set route.

on the whole, its a fun, but tough, game with a nice style.

EDIT: For me the size of the main ship sprite is fine.

[ervin]

Yeah bummer it missed out, I didn't even see a Screenshot of it 

Yeah I was a *little* disappointed that I didn't get at least third place.
I guess when you put your heart and soul into something, you hope that others see that effort, and enjoy what you've created.


However, reading the comments that have been posted so far today, I can see that I made the game *far* too difficult.
I did indeed set out to make a very difficult game. That was always the intention.
I was very much inspired by the feeling of satisfaction felt in Dark Souls, when you overcome a particularly difficult part of the game that has had you stumped for days...
I guess RUNCPC's difficulty is what defeated it in the end.

Having said that, I was beaten by some *stunning* games.
I can't wait for the download links to appear... I'm SO excited to try all the games, especially the top 3 games in the PRO category.
I have to admit, when I saw the first video posted for Frogalot, my immediate thought was, "That's it. I've got no chance"!

[ervin]

I had the chance to see it on the livestream , the message "I'm f.... fast"    was definitely delivered. Awesome dynamics,almost too good as the game has no remorse on the player, hahah it's pure punishment. Imho the difficulty needs to progress more steadily (bigger rings for starters    ). Sometimes you get the impossible ones at the very beginning.  I barely made it to highscore on continuous retries. This has it's charm  in the spirit of 80s, where most of the games where so unforgiving. Great work Ervin

Thanks Singaja.
I think you've pretty much nailed what I was aiming for!

I did consider making the difficulty a *little* bit more gradual, and I had some brief designs for it, but I decided against it in the end.
Ah well...

[ervin]

Hello, here my comments :

- First of all it's really fast for full screen game, your engine runs very well

- The game is very hard, and i wonder if the main sprite is not a little too large to have good visibility, or you can reduce the hitbox.

- For improve gameplay :
    - Start the game with easy rings and increase difficulty
    - In the first levels set more space beetwen rings
    - When hitting an obstacle lose a life or lose double energy, sometimes i have game over with less than 3 seconds of play.

Honestly good works.

Thanks Arnaud.
I really appreciate your comments.

I did try a smaller sprite, but it felt "wrong"...
I also tried a smaller hitbox (shrinking by one "cell" either side of the ship), but it felt too easy. I guess that's the problem when you're the developer and the tester at the same time.

Those are all good ideas, and I had actually thought of some of them, but in the end I had pretty much run out of memory and time, so I submitted what I had.
But it means a lot to me that the awesome folks on this forum appreciate the engine I created (I like designing games very much, but I'm primarily a programmer).

[ervin]

@ervin, my comments:

- nice sparkle effect on run-cpc made with simple chars

- menu screen is simple and colourful and easy to navigate

- i really like the in-game graphics style. the variation in the coloured blocks is very nice. the graphics of the ship are chunky and suit the style. continue to explore this style, it's worth it and your results are really nice.

- game is too hard and too fast for me. it's hard to avoid things and the things you have to avoid i think could have better design to make it easier. the z shape is awkward for me.

- dying quickly makes it harder, consider something where you can scrape if you get close and loose some energy. this would allow simple errors in play but make it a bit easier.

- consider telling the player which way to go. maybe some hint. it depends on if the flying is freeform or a set route.

on the whole, its a fun, but tough, game with a nice style.

EDIT: For me the size of the main ship sprite is fine.

Thanks so much for your comments.
I consider you one of the finest CPC devs around, so I really appreciate that you like what I've done.
It means a lot to me.


I'm so glad you like the graphics style.
It was very much born out of necessity.
Simple blocks are of course very fast to draw as tiles (and in fact my tile routines are pretty much compiled sprite routines with 2 parameters for colours).
I can't pixel my way out of a paper bag, so that player sprite took hours! 
I made it chunky to keep the pixels square, to fit in with the larger chunks flying at the player!

Believe it or not the game was originally faster - a lot faster!
Somewhere between 40% to 50% faster, in fact (not frame rate, but game speed).
Of course it was virtually impossible, so I slowed it down.

I had considered losing energy on a hit instead of instant game over, but unfortunately I decided against it.
Never mind...

Incidentally the game does sort of tell the player which way to go (or rather, what to do), by way of the instructional word in the top right corner.
That's pretty much all you need to do, because other than that, the game is totally on rails - there's no real freedom of movement as such.

The "Z" obstacle caused me more grief than any of the others.
It was originally a bit fatter, and far more difficult.
I trimmed it down to something that felt a lot fairer, but never managed to make it gel with the other designs in terms of difficulty.
I wish I had another day left to tweak that aspect of the game.

Incidentally, the A and Z obstacles are tributes to my daughters, and the roses are for my wife.


[EDIT] By the way, I've changed my forum sig. It now mentions RUNCPC, and points to the pouet.net page for it.

[reidrac]

Very nice game. Easy to enjoy is short bursts. Reminds me to Flappy Bird on that regard.

Getting between the obstacles and scoring is very satisfying, I like the sound effect. Getting killed is nice too, but as others said it is a little bit unforgiving and perhaps it could benefit of having more than one life; but no necessarily. The way is it now is fine, it is easy to start again.

Currently the only way of getting some sense of progress is the score (and it works great!), but the fact that the obstacles change each play makes me feel that some plays are harder just because of randomness and not because of my skill.

Thanks for the game!

[ervin]

Very nice game. Easy to enjoy is short bursts. Reminds me to Flappy Bird on that regard.

Getting between the obstacles and scoring is very satisfying, I like the sound effect. Getting killed is nice too, but as others said it is a little bit unforgiving and perhaps it could benefit of having more than one life; but no necessarily. The way is it now is fine, it is easy to start again.

Currently the only way of getting some sense of progress is the score (and it works great!), but the fact that the obstacles change each play makes me feel that some plays are harder just because of randomness and not because of my skill.

Thanks for the game!

Thanks reidrac.


Indeed you are right - some plays are indeed harder due to randomness.
I've mentioned the "Z" before, but I also find the twin snakes a bit harder than the bubbles, even though they are virtually the same dimensions!

[Fessor]

Can we have an old people Mode by seeding the PRNG at start of a game with a fixed value so that the obstacles in each game are on the same place as in the game before?

[arnoldemu]

@ervin: thanks

btw, i also think that you don't need to go back and change anything. runcpc is released and no need to go back and change it. i would not go back and change any of my games even if they had poor feedback. i think it's too demotivating to do that. i prefer to take the feedback and apply it to the next game.

i played runcpc again and this time i looked at the word in the top right. i watched this and followed what it said. i am getting better each time i try it.

[AMSDOS]

However, reading the comments that have been posted so far today, I can see that I made the game *far* too difficult.

As far as difficulty went, flying through the "O" was the hardest for me, because it seemed to be about getting the elevation & position correct. I did a lot better flying along the bottom of the "A"'s and got into the Hiscore Table. But I only 113 as my PB, not that it took me that long. As a game of concentration I love it.

[ervin]

Can we have an old people Mode by seeding the PRNG at start of a game with a fixed value so that the obstacles in each game are on the same place as in the game before?

For anyone playing the game on an emulator, try slowing the emulation down.
RUNCPC is still very playable even at 50% speed, but it's a heck of a lot easier!

For those playing on real hardware, I'm sorry to say there is no cheat mode.
However, it definitely plays better on real hardware!

[ervin]

As far as difficulty went, flying through the "O" was the hardest for me, because it seemed to be about getting the elevation & position correct. I did a lot better flying along the bottom of the "A"'s and got into the Hiscore Table. But I only 113 as my PB, not that it took me that long. As a game of concentration I love it.

Do you mean the blue bubble?
Yeah that one is a bit tricky, but it's actually my favourite.
I wanted a mixture of levels that require horizontal+vertical movement, and levels requiring only horizontal movement.
Even though levels with vertical movement are harder, I find them the most fun to play.

[ervin]

@ervin: thanks

btw, i also think that you don't need to go back and change anything. runcpc is released and no need to go back and change it. i would not go back and change any of my games even if they had poor feedback. i think it's too demotivating to do that. i prefer to take the feedback and apply it to the next game.

i played runcpc again and this time i looked at the word in the top right. i watched this and followed what it said. i am getting better each time i try it.

Thanks man.


Yeah the word in the top right is something that came along quite early in the game's design.
Originally I wanted the word to fly across the screen at the start of a level (this would have made the objectives clearer), but I decided to leave it as a feature that would go in if there was enough memory left.
Unfortunately there wasn't. 

[ervin]

I've seen mention a couple of times of Flappy Bird (both here and on pouet.net), in relation to RUNCPC's difficulty, and the quick restarts.
Indeed it was an inspiration.


Although I don't like Flappy Bird very much, I do like the punishing difficulty. For a pure score-chaser as my game is, the satisfaction comes from improving your score, little by little (if you have the patience for it!).

Of course, RUNCPC throws some chaos into the mix by starting you on a random level.

[AMSDOS]

Do you mean the blue bubble?
Yeah that one is a bit tricky, but it's actually my favourite.
I wanted a mixture of levels that require horizontal+vertical movement, and levels requiring only horizontal movement.
Even though levels with vertical movement are harder, I find them the most fun to play.

Well it's an 'O' and you fly through the middle of it to get your 7 points.   


That just seemed to be the Hardest out of all the Letters being tossed towards your ship.

[ervin]

Is it the twin green snakes?
If so, that one is quite hard, yes.

[TFM]

WoW! Great game! Best technical achievement (ok, Frogalot too), but way too hard for me. Fun playing!!! Awesome job done!!!