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So yeah, I had an urge to revamp some stuff on this project.   Bit of a darker (though still colourful, yay CPC palette!) and more epic and atmospheric feel, again moving away from the blatant Turrican clone it used to be to a more adventure-type of game (that still has shooting).  Turrican is still an influence but so are things like Shadow of the Beast, SwitchBlade and, in some ways, more recent games such as Uncharted (particularly regarding the interaction between the two characters).   Still developing the overall feel but I'm much happier with the direction it's going these days. 

Gameplay picture (featuring brand new and extremely flexible tree tiles).
(http://i.imgur.com/kSE8nM2.png)

80's blockbuster-like loading image.
(http://i.imgur.com/gymP3Nm.png)

That looks great!

Great gfxs! Well done Carnivac. Why didn't you release on the real Amstrad Cpc?

Cos I'm not a CPC programmer?  That stuff is beyond me.

Quote from: Carnivac on 22:57, 19 June 14
Cos I'm not a CPC programmer?  That stuff is beyond me.

Nor am I, but here are your screens on a .dsk file!

EDIT: Bugger! The second screen missing a line on the "DAMN DROIDS" section, but the rest of it is there! (It's late, I'm tired!)



EDIT2: Ok, a "working" copy finally completed... I think the second screen might need moving down a line on real-hardware; can someone confirm this for me?

Quote from: Jonah (Tasteful Mr) Ship on 00:20, 20 June 14
Nor am I, but here are your screens on a .dsk file!


EDIT: Bugger! The second screen missing a line on the "DAMN DROIDS" section, but the rest of it is there! (It's late, I'm tired!)

Missing the title bar part of the frame at the top too but thanks.  Is neat seeing it load into an emulator.  :P

Is this actually being coded by somebody, or is it just a bunch of amazing graphics waiting for a z80 genius to roll up?

Quote from: Trebmint on 10:51, 20 June 14
Is this actually being coded by somebody, or is it just a bunch of amazing graphics waiting for a z80 genius to roll up?

Same dealy as RoboCop:Prime.  I make it on PC trying hard to stick to CPC limits and then when I'm satisfied and consider it finished I release 'development packs' of them with all the graphics, sounds, level layouts, various notes about speed/health/damage/puzzles and just about everything else needed for a CPC coder to take them and code the actual CPC engine to put them all in.

So now you are actually open into getting those wonderful magnificently well lavishly delicious wonders getting used on real CPC ?

Quote from: MacDeath on 12:31, 20 June 14
So now you are actually open into getting those wonderful magnificently well lavishly delicious wonders getting used on real CPC ?

What do you mean 'now'?   That was always the intention.  It's just not within my range of skills to actually do that. 

but are you still firm on the 64K limitation ?

Quote from: MacDeath on 13:15, 20 June 14
but are you still firm on the 64K limitation ?

I'm trying to do what I can to fit in the games in a playable state for 64k with extras for 128k.   I'd prefer them to not be 128k ONLY.   

Brilliant job as always! I'd pay money for this game...

And yeah, Jonah's transfers look really great :)

Thanks.  :)


And thanks again Jonah.  It's cool seeing them load into an emulator.   When I get a bit of time I'm gonna put the screenshots onto tape files to load into my real 464 to check they look ok on the CPC's real monitor like I did with RoboCop  :)

Need some tech advice.

Would making the width of the game screen to 320 pixels wide impact speed too much?   The tiles are 4x8 pixels (stretched to Mode 0 width when in game obviously).   This is a non-scrolling game and SwitchBlade is also doesn't scroll and has a 320 width screen and the sprites move smoothly though I do notice you can sorta see the screen transition when you walk off onto a new screen which it has to draw. 

Also do raster colour changes affect speed much either?   I mean if I set aside one of the 16 colour indexes for sky for example could I then have it do a simple gradient?  And so the same colour in the parts of tiles that have sky background colour (such as the outer leaves of the trees or the clouds) have that gradient too without needing new tiles?

And speaking of SwitchBlade.  A lot of the screens in it have areas that are black and then get revealed when the player walks into them.  Does anyone know if the areas are already tiled and then covered black which is then removed, or are the tiles drawn when they get revealed?

if you cover them in black, then you would have to redraw them so I guess those a drawn when revealed but some routines may manage the "fog of war"... same sort as when managing bonus or object collected on the map...

Hm.. I was just playing it and I noticed this

(http://i.imgur.com/j1uLYQC.png)

Playing the 'poked' version so I can walk about invincible and not have enemies hassle me and I noticed this when about to reveal the bottom black area.  The thing that floats about the play to signify invincibility is partially obscured by the black as it's about pass through it.  I've noticed this with a few other lil sprites in the game too which suggests to me that the black is at least treated as a foreground thing like some of the scenery tiles are (the ones the sprites move behind, even in this shot, Hiro is completely obscured by those 'door way' tiles). 

Sprites that start off in the black seem to take a second to appear after the hidden area is revealed so they're definitely not there waiting.

For a flip screen game, 320 wide (160 MODE 0 pixels) shouldn't be a show-stopper on the CPC, depending on the action on the screen. I.e., if the action takes under a frame to calculate and render, then you don't need double buffered screens (32KB).


Not that this would be an issue on a 128KB machine.


I don't know how many tiles you have so far, but the recent screenshot looks great.  It would really benefit from being a wider screen, IMO, if it's flippy.


As for the raster effects, that's not easy to do smoothly on the CPC without losing clock cycles, or doing it at the 300Hz timer intervals.  Or making it a plus game. Or making it require the CTC-AY.

Quote from: Sykobee (Briggsy) on 20:36, 17 July 14
As for the raster effects, that's not easy to do smoothly on the CPC without losing clock cycles, or doing it at the 300Hz timer intervals.  Or making it a plus game. Or making it require the CTC-AY.

Just got told earlier that Super Cauldron has colour changing sky much like I mention so I loaded it up to see and yep and it's somewhat parallax (if you jump or fly enough to make the screen scroll up you'll see) aaand the screen has a 384 width aaaand scrolls too (ok the scrolling on that game gives me a headache but it's still impressive what it's doing on a regular CPC).   So what does that use?

Yeah, that game uses the 300Hz timer, and then some clever code at each interrupt to provide a three line transition that doesn't start in the middle of the screen.  The parallax effect is free :-)


Nice animated backgrounds though (leaves, fires), amazing looking game.  Note that there's not a massive amount of action on screen. It's a fairly good implementation of a push-scroll too.  Must play this soon.

Quote from: Sykobee (Briggsy) on 21:39, 17 July 14
Yeah, that game uses the 300Hz timer, and then some clever code at each interrupt to provide a three line transition that doesn't start in the middle of the screen.  The parallax effect is free :-)


Nice animated backgrounds though (leaves, fires), amazing looking game.  Note that there's not a massive amount of action on screen. It's a fairly good implementation of a push-scroll too.  Must play this soon.

That and Prehistorik 2 are the 2 games I most want to 'legalise' in my collection. However I am not going to pay the silly money wanted for the only copy currently on e-bay for the disk and photocopy of the box sleeve (No box, No sleeve and no instruction sheet)


Amstrad CPC 464 664 6128 Disk Game Super Cauldron BY Titus | eBay (http://www.ebay.ie/itm/AMSTRAD-CPC-464-664-6128-DISK-GAME-SUPER-CAULDRON-BY-TITUS-/360991304522?pt=UK_PC_Video_Games_Video_Games_JS&hash=item540cc22b4a)


Craig

Quote from: Sykobee (Briggsy) on 21:39, 17 July 14

Nice animated backgrounds though (leaves, fires), amazing looking game.  Note that there's not a massive amount of action on screen. It's a fairly good implementation of a push-scroll too.  Must play this soon.

I'd enjoy it more if it didn't attempt to scroll.  It really just does my head in.  It's not very smooth and sometimes you gotta get quite close to the edge of the screen to get it going.   I like the background graphics though some more refining to smooth them out a bit more would be nice.  The only real issue I have with the graphics is the player sprite.  It's pretty damn messy looking.  Most of the enemies and other sprites are nicely defined though.

Quote from: CraigsBar on 23:19, 17 July 14

That and Prehistorik 2 are the 2 games I most want to 'legalise' in my collection. However I am not going to pay the silly money wanted for the only copy currently on e-bay for the disk and photocopy of the box sleeve (No box, No sleeve and no instruction sheet)


Amstrad CPC 464 664 6128 Disk Game Super Cauldron BY Titus | eBay (http://www.ebay.ie/itm/AMSTRAD-CPC-464-664-6128-DISK-GAME-SUPER-CAULDRON-BY-TITUS-/360991304522?pt=UK_PC_Video_Games_Video_Games_JS&hash=item540cc22b4a)


Craig

OMG I have just seen the Amiga version of Super Cauldron on ebay for up to 100eur... Bonkers

Had another email from someone who played the 2008 demo and is shocked to discover the current version is very different.  The old concept was CPC-inspired in wide pixels and palette and very much Turrican influenced too.    Then I decided I wanted to give this game more of it's own character (still some Turrican in there but all sorts of other influences too now) but they seemed to be most disappointed that, unlike the old demo, this doesn't have smooth scrolling (cos it now flick screen) and parallax background (now static tiles) and instead runs at 15fps instead of 60fps (for that slight 8-bit choppiness, same as RoboCop: Prime does which people have seen running in that video from a few months ago and people seem fine with that).  Also they seem annoyed that the blue sky is now purple. (wanted a darker atmosphere rather than the 'day at the seaside' the old had, plus it means I can use more black to 'blend' certain tiles together). 

That's the problem with releasing WIP demos and images and such.   Things change.  Sometimes due to personal taste, some down to technical reasons.  Most of the time though the complainers just don't bother to listen to the reasons why.  Never mind, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing cos I feel right about it  Done some more tile work today I'm pretty pleased with and finding more uses for some of the tiles that are already there (for example the leave tiles in the trees also work great in clumps just above the ground for background bushes).

Also it's possible some screens will be underwater.  But for memory/animation/gameplay/logic reasons it won't be the human characters who go underwater but rather the sidekick droid as he needs no new animation whatsoever (the frame of his 2 frame walk cycle where his legs are tucked in look like floating/hovering anyways) and he doesn't have to worry about breathing.  All I do to the controls when he's in use is making the jumping more floaty, the falling slower, and a bit of inertia to the left and right movement.  Sprite wise he simply has the red and brown secondary lighting and white highlight of his sprite shifted to all the blues to look like he's underwater (the rest of him is blues anyways). No problem. 

Also done some basic tiles for a frosty/ice cave thing  No inertia though for the player movements.  Slippy-slidey iceworlds always annoy me.  Let's just say their heavy combat boots got plenty of grip.  :)


Still trying to decide on how to activate the somewhat xenon2-like shop
Deciding whether it's accessible:
- at any time?
- at specific points perhaps via the use of a terminal?
- between stages?

Also I think I'd like to have you basically order the item and then when you leave the shop perhaps a noise is head like a shuttle is passing above (if got enough memory perhaps a Kull-Mart delivery drone sprite) and drops the usual weapons crate and you shoot the crate as normal to reveal the bought icon inside.   Just a bit of logic in obtaniing the item rather than it somehow magically being transported to you like most.  I dunno.

Anyways am just brainstorming stuffs.  Don't mind me.  :P

No matter what you do, how you do it, when you do it, there will always be someone who doesn't like it. And people who doesn't like it, will tell you about it more frequently that people who like it, will tell you they like it.  ;)

You're absolutely right: It's about doing what you feel like doing, and don't let anyone ruin that.

It always starts out as something you're really doing for yourself. Then along the way it kinda becomes something you'd like positive feedback for. And that's where it often goes wrong, sometimes to a degree that you don't really feel thrilled about the project anymore.
(Betatesting is another issue of course. Always listen to feedback, but never let it control your path).

Feedback is fine but it's when they refused to listen to or accept the reasons behind any changes.   I don't really do anything without reasons. :P

Quote from: Carnivac on 16:39, 19 July 14
Feedback is fine but it's when they refused to listen to or accept the reasons behind any changes.   I don't really do anything without reasons. :P

Reasons behind any decision don't really help the user much. If he's unhappy, supplying him with a reason doesn't really make him glad.  ;)

Some people will probably say it's a fine line, in that you'd like people to like your creation, but you don't want to compromise too much either.

I say screw 'em.  :) Make it the way you want to make it. There's bound to be people who'll enjoy it.

Quote from: mr_lou on 16:54, 19 July 14
Reasons behind any decision don't really help the user much. If he's unhappy, supplying him with a reason doesn't really make him glad.  ;)

It's not so much trying to make him happy about it, it's just to make him understand it.

Quote
I say screw 'em.  :) Make it the way you want to make it. There's bound to be people who'll enjoy it.

Well, yeah the whole point of these is it's my personal creative outlet.  I'm not being paid by anyone to make the game they want.  I'm making my own thing cos I enjoy doing so and wish there were more games about that I like to play (even if I gotta make some myself).   I mainly show the stuff here cos I often need technical advice about what is possible and what ain't on a real CPC.   :)

Stupid brain.  I dreamt I had finished this project.  I can still remember what the final boss looked like and everything.  Then I woke up and realised I haven't ever started even designing that part of the game yet.   Though now I have some idea of what it will be like.   :o

Quote from: Carnivac on 10:24, 20 July 14
Stupid brain.  I dreamt I had finished this project.  I can still remember what the final boss looked like and everything.  Then I woke up and realised I haven't ever started even designing that part of the game yet.   Though now I have some idea of what it will be like.   :o

I dreamed once that I was at a market and I had found some rare amstrad games on tape and a couple on cartridge. They were in a box with other systems. When I say rare I mean unknown. I was excited but couldn't buy all so I made a choice. I don't think they were all good just that nobody saw them before and I wanted to buy them to preserve and share them. A couple were in boxes with printed inlays not the homebrew kind. Then I woke up. Damn.

One time I dreamed about a great amstrad game I was making but when I woke I didn't remember it. Damn.

Good that you remembered enough.

I liked the CPC 464 tiles I did in that 'flappy sugar' mock up enough that I wanted to use them in my games somehow and then I looked up at the logo on this forum and felt hey why not include it as a visual acknowledgement to the site and it's members that have helped me do this stuff.  So yeah I hope it is ok to include this at the start of the games.  :)

(http://i.imgur.com/HiqZ6dS.png)

For realism I guess the shop shouldn't be available on demand. I can't think of any game that uses shops that way?And incorporating it into the level design would probably be nicer...

Well I had been thinking of having a communicator watch thing to access the store but yeah a terminal (perhaps the CPC 464 sprite) fixed in various places in the levels would be better.  I still want a delivery system of such (like you order the item and log off the store, then a normal crate sprite drops from above or is pushed on from the side by a robot and you break it open to find the item you purchased).  and it would be certainly easier to do that in specific locations designed for that.  Having it accessible anywhere would make it a nightmare to have the delivery system check there aren't any walls or ceilings in the way. 

The CPC terminal is a great idea :)

And indeed, if you don't meet any constraints a delivery method like the crate would be nice, in that it doesn't make much sense to suddenly be equipped with something. What kinds of power-ups are you considering? Will you do arming/equipping animations too?

Quote from: Gryzor on 17:42, 25 August 14
The CPC terminal is a great idea :)

And indeed, if you don't meet any constraints a delivery method like the crate would be nice, in that it doesn't make much sense to suddenly be equipped with something. What kinds of power-ups are you considering?

The initial set are shown in the screenshot.  Usual stuff so far.  From blast shots to spread to ricochet (like Turrican) and rockets, and some not shown like the freeze ammo I coded a lil while ago (which turns enemies into icy-coloured solids like Super Metroid does to use as temporary platforms) .  Also a helmet there for extra defense plus required for certain rooms due to oxygen needed, too many hits and the helmet is destroyed and your health bar depletes rapidly.   The gun itself can be levelled up to have more power (makes coming back to earlier screens with the weaker enemies easier) and I just coded a lil grenade launcher feature onto it the other night. 
I don't really like too overly gimmicky power-ups.   

QuoteWill you do arming/equipping animations too?

No. Not even sure how that would work and certainly sounds like something that may require more memory-consuming sprites.   The gun remains the same anyways due to memory.  Just the type of ammo loaded is different.  Trying to keep the torso sprite fairly compact too again for memory reasons so hands can't reach down below the belt or too high past the neck.  That's part of the reason why the gun is a large-ish two handed weapon so that both hands are holding it.

All this sounds very exciting.

Ricochet bullets - how would this work? I mean, in Turrican you get lots of enclosed spaces where it makes sense, but Robocop is more open/flat...

...and yes, I'm in the wrong thread :D

...and I had also missed the post with the CPCWiki logo. Sooooo sweet!!!!!

Quote from: Gryzor on 09:43, 30 August 14
All this sounds very exciting.

Ricochet bullets - how would this work? I mean, in Turrican you get lots of enclosed spaces where it makes sense, but Robocop is more open/flat...

Heh yeah, wrong thread.  RoboCop is the 'realistic' one in terms of weapons.   Cosmic Prison Commando can afford to be a bit more fantasy in that way (though not too much) and yeah it has a lot of enclosed areas where ricochet would prove useful.
And thanks about the CPCWiki logo piece.  I may modify it some more but I'm glad you like it as I wasn't sure if I was allowed to do anything like that.

And by the way I did end up doing some work on RoboCop Prime last night thanks to you.  Mainly cleaning up a lot of the code I had copy-pasted into the new version of Cosmic Prison Commando's engine and then revised some more for efficiency and tidiness and copied back into RoboCop.  They use pretty much the same engine but with various differences (like flick screen in one vs scrolling in the other) which is why it's nice to work on them both at same time.  If I get a bit bored or annoyed with one I can focus on the other then copy paste any relevant code between them again.  Also the differences in graphic style and sprite proportions is nice as keeps things a bit fresh for me too.

Haha it's not like we're enforcing trademarks or anything! Any mention of the wiki is not only good for it but also an honour, to be honest///

QuoteAnd by the way I did end up doing some work on RoboCop Prime last night thanks to you.

Yesssss I knew it'd work :)

Quote from: Gryzor on 11:26, 30 August 14
Haha it's not like we're enforcing trademarks or anything! Any mention of the wiki is not only good for it but also an honour, to be honest///

Cool.  I think I will display "www.cpcwiki.eu" under the image too in the main font of each game so that it's clear that cpcwiki be a website (if they couldn't guess that by the "wiki" bit.   Being retro-styled PC games they may reach a slightly different audience than if they were already purely CPC games so they might bring in a few people to the site curious about CPCs and who'd like to know more. Though I'm not using small letters in either game so really the address is gonna look like "WWW.CPCWIKI.EU" but I think most browsers will allow that even if the user doesn't realise web addresses are genereally in small letters.

QuoteYesssss I knew it'd work :)

Never underestimate gryzor-powers!

I'll be sending the sponsorship check in the next few days :D

No, indeed, any and all exposure is great for the wiki (I haven't even bothered at all when certain users used to slander it), but above all, it gives me personal and great joy seeing the site's name anywhere at all. So I'm not nit-picking about the font either ;)

But, above all: the game :)

Cool. :)I'll be name-checking some folks in the credits bit of both games too.
Which reminds me I might be starting to get to the point where I wanna ask some of the musicians here to do a couple tunes and sound effects (and sample them as wavs/ogg for the PC versions but keeping the original CPC format files handy for when true CPC ports are made).

Could even send a system-wide email notice for projects such as this, asking for contributions...

Been a while since an update but thanks to Game Maker Community member xfixium making an external level creator far, far better than Game Maker's built in one I can make much better progress now.   So here's a new (somewhat silly) screenshot from today.  There's been some colour changes and the rock tiles have been redone again and, like the clouds and tree tiles, have a lot of mix-and-match posiblities.

I hope he is not going to shoot poor Dizzy  :'(

Quote from: EgoTrip on 23:22, 28 March 15
I hope he is not going to shoot poor Dizzy  :'(

Nah he's safe.  He's not even meant to be there (gonna hide him in a secret room).  It's just a lil sample of the level before it gets to more moody atmospheric stuff.

Quote from: EgoTrip on 23:22, 28 March 15
I hope he is not going to shoot poor Dizzy  :'(

looks like the perfect day for some scrambled eggs! ;)

That screen shot is damn pretty. Would be so cool to play CPC on a CPC one day.

Quote from: Captain Past on 10:22, 29 March 15
That screen shot is damn pretty. Would be so cool to play CPC on a CPC one day.

Getting more likely each time I revise and redo bits to make it more efficient and realistically able to run on real CPC hardware.


Just realised a mistake in that screenshot.  Jack's still wearing the pinkish/magenta trousers he had since the very start in 2008.   I switched them to green/orange a while ago for two reasons.  One being green is more a Commando colour and the other being I'm gonna use magenta as the transparent colour for the sprites.  So while tiles may have that colour those that do won't need transparency.  Having it as the transparent colour on the sprites negates the need for memory consuming seperate masks.  Or that's my understanding from the advice I've had on this site over the years. :P

Quote from: Carnivac on 13:19, 29 March 15
Getting more likely each time I revise and redo bits to make it more efficient and realistically able to run on real CPC hardware.


Just realised a mistake in that screenshot.  Jack's still wearing the pinkish/magenta trousers he had since the very start in 2008.   I switched them to green/orange a while ago for two reasons.  One being green is more a Commando colour and the other being I'm gonna use magenta as the transparent colour for the sprites.  So while tiles may have that colour those that do won't need transparency.  Having it as the transparent colour on the sprites negates the need for memory consuming seperate masks.  Or that's my understanding from the advice I've had on this site over the years. :P

Correct if:
1. that colour is not used in any other part of the sprite - because those pixels too would become transparent
2. there are no more than 15 other colours used in the sprite - because using 1 pen index for transparent means you have one less colour.

Quote from: arnoldemu on 13:27, 29 March 15
Correct if:
1. that colour is not used in any other part of the sprite - because those pixels too would become transparent
2. there are no more than 15 other colours used in the sprite - because using 1 pen index for transparent means you have one less colour.

Yep.

Just out of curiousity does that transparency thing work on a sprite by sprite basis?  I mean if that colour is being used as transparency on one sprite, can it be used on another sprite as a non-transparent colour if that sprite doesn't need transparency (say if it's block shaped like a crate)?

Quote from: Carnivac on 13:32, 29 March 15
Yep.

Just out of curiousity does that transparency thing work on a sprite by sprite basis?  I mean if that colour is being used as transparency on one sprite, can it be used on another sprite as a non-transparent colour if that sprite doesn't need transparency (say if it's block shaped like a crate)?

It's possible, but that would mean a different mask table. So in most cases I would say not.

Anything that doesn't require a mask (e.g. background tiles) are free to use it.

If I were to convert the colours I would setup an image which contained each colour from the palette in a 16x16 block, side by side.
This allows me to
1: extract the palette into a form the cpc can use
2: I can use this as the palette to which all sprites and images "map" to.
The images can then be 16 colour or 256 colour and you don't have to worry about making sure they all have the same colours in the same position, just that you have used the same palette for all - the tool handles the remapping.

The transparent colour I would normally put at pen index 0, but any can be nominated and the mask table generated as appropiate. Then when I display the sprites I use the  single mask table.

Background tiles are not masked, so are not drawn using the mask table so are free to use the colour.

So in general 15 colours for sprites and 16 for backgrounds. A lot of games use this method.

Now, if compressed sprites were used, which contain mask bytes only where required (i.e. not for each byte), then you could swap and change as you need, because when the compressed sprite data is generated you can tell it which is transparent, or even give it a mask sprite to define it accurately - in this case the draw routine doesn't use a mask table and the mask data is embedded within the compressed data. Compressed sprites are more tricky to cut to screen dimensions when drawing.

It depends on the sprite drawing method used.

Hm. Ok cool.  So what about 'foreground' stuff?   Like the bridge pieces?  At the moment I have that pasted down as tiles but they have a transparent colour and are on top of the sprites.   I noticed games like SwitchBlade have foreground parts that the player character walks behind and can be seen through.

Quote from: Carnivac on 14:09, 29 March 15
Hm. Ok cool.  So what about 'foreground' stuff?   Like the bridge pieces?  At the moment I have that pasted down as tiles but they have a transparent colour and are on top of the sprites.   I noticed games like SwitchBlade have foreground parts that the player character walks behind and can be seen through.

They would need to be masked so generally treated like sprites. If it was rectangular and stopped the legs being seen they could be treated like tiles.

The draw order would be:

- tiles (no mask)
- sprite (masked)
- overlay sprites (masked)

Quote from: arnoldemu on 13:27, 29 March 15
Correct if:
1. that colour is not used in any other part of the sprite - because those pixels too would become transparent
2. there are no more than 15 other colours used in the sprite - because using 1 pen index for transparent means you have one less colour.

Well, if you store the sprite in a "pixel byte, mask value byte,.." format then you can use all colors for the sprite. But then the sprite data takes twice the memory and you can't share the mask data between sprites (like you do with mask tables).

Quote from: ssr86 on 16:27, 29 March 15

well, if you store the sprite in a "pixel byte, mask value,.." format then you can use all colors for the sprite. But the sprite takes twice the memory then and you can't share the mask data between sprites (like you can use one mask table for all).

yes.

The only way to know is to convert the sprites, tiles and map into various data forms and discover how much ram it will take.
Then take into account the space needed for the screen, music and code.

Added a couple extra small tiles & now the buildings can look fancier.

Really good...
Do you think to release this one?

Quote from: Carnivac on 00:07, 30 March 15
Added a couple extra small tiles & now the buildings can look fancier.

Holy cow that looks amazing!
Really, just absolutely magnificent.

Quote from: Ast on 00:58, 30 March 15
Do you think to release this one?

Release?  Well yeah when it's finished.  :)
Progress on all my projects has sped up a fair bit thanks to the new level maker I mentioned.   In Game Maker's default room editor that screen would have taken me hours cos it's so crappy (and mistakes have to be totally redone rather than simply moved).  GMare (Game Maker Alternative Room Editor) has all the crucial tools for making level creating fun and quick.  Made that screen in 20 minutes (including all the lil changes I made to improve the building).   :)

you're a mode0 magician.

Quote from: kawickboy on 21:40, 30 March 15
you're a mode0 magician.

Cute.  :)

Pm Carnivac

Quote from: Carnivac on 20:45, 06 April 15distinctive looking female character with wide-pixels.   :)

At least, she must have wide boobs  :P

Heh.  I introduce the female character of the game and the very next comment was about boobs.   Oh, internet...   ::)

Even more amazing, the comment wasn't from MacDeath :D

Bryce.

 :o 8)

WOW!!!

Nice, the filter is closer to real CPC than the usuals scanlines  8)

Thanks. I put far too many blue/purple rock tiles in the backdrop though.  Will cut down on those.

Ok updated the image.   Less clutter.   

Also left the black border in so you can see how much it would take of a real CPC screen.

Quote from: Carnivac on 22:40, 13 April 15
Ok updated the image.   Less clutter.   

Also left the black border in so you can see how much it would take of a real CPC screen.

The overscan screen or just the part of the screen inside the border?

overscan.

Really amazing screenshot and promising game :)
What is the global status of your project ?

Quote from: Carnivac on 18:08, 13 April 15
Exploring caves.

(http://i.imgur.com/y6v8lfg.png)

Very impressive, could you kindly describe how you got the filter effect, inspirational work.

Quote from: Kris on 08:26, 15 April 15
Really amazing screenshot and promising game :)
What is the global status of your project ?

Sorry for late reply.  Game is still technically in progress as again all my projects share a lot of the same code and when I improve it in one I copy paste it into the others.  Got some improvements I've made doing Roland of Sherwood that'll get put into C.P.C. :)

Quote from: invent on 13:34, 10 September 15

Very impressive, could you kindly describe how you got the filter effect, inspirational work.

The 'monitor' effect?   It's just this pattern:
(http://i.imgur.com/PygL6L7.png)
repeated across and down the screen with the magenta parts being completely invisible and the black parts being semi-transparent to whatever degree you want the effect to be showing ( .5 value for 50 percent, 1 for totally black and so on in between).  I tend to use simple scanlines but this pattern is included in my games as an option as it's about as accurate to a CPC monitor as you can get without going to higher resolutions (this effect is applied to the game screen after scaling up 200 percent.  So a 320x200 would become 640x400 and then you apply the monitor effect in the original pixel size so it appears a higher resolution than the game screen so simulates the monitor effect somewhat)

I hope that made some sense at least.  I am useless at explaining. :P

Quote from: Carnivac on 14:14, 10 September 15
The 'monitor' effect?   It's just this pattern:
(http://i.imgur.com/PygL6L7.png)
repeated across and down the screen with the magenta parts being completely invisible and the black parts being semi-transparent to whatever degree you want the effect to be showing ( .5 value for 50 percent, 1 for totally black and so on in between).  I tend to use simple scanlines but this pattern is included in my games as an option as it's about as accurate to a CPC monitor as you can get without going to higher resolutions (this effect is applied to the game screen after scaling up 200 percent.  So a 320x200 would become 640x400 and then you apply the monitor effect in the original pixel size so it appears a higher resolution than the game screen so simulates the monitor effect somewhat)

I hope that made some sense at least.  I am useless at explaining. :P

Yeah this one is far far more faithful  :)

Thankyou Carnivac, yes very helpful and clear, did a quick test (http://amstrad-pixels.blogspot.com.au/) on the first image (clay converted to mode 0), opacity set to 15%

Quote from: invent on 01:30, 11 September 15
Thankyou Carnivac, yes very helpful and clear, did a quick test (http://amstrad-pixels.blogspot.com.au/) on the first image (clay converted to mode 0), opacity set to 15%

Cool stuff. :)

Hey mate, how is yourwork progressing? When is it going to be ready?

...when it's ready :)