Cosmic Prison Commando

[Carnivius]

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.

[mr_lou]

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.

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.

[Carnivius]

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.

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.   

[Carnivius]

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.   

[arnoldemu]

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.   

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.

[Carnivius]

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. 

[Carnivius]

Update on the shop screen.

[image removed cos I updated again]

Hm.  Just realised it's 8 pixels too tall.  Need to push the status panel up right under the bottom row of item boxes.  I think the message area is too cluttered so may remove the tubing from at least the left and bottom of it so the text becomes a bit easier to focus on.   Ahhh... design work never feels quite finished... 

Ok this is better.


Given the message area some room to breathe and it gained another line to put text in for longer messages.  Also have put in the old green pulsating icon from the ancient demo which basically just appears at the end of a message to tell the player it's ok to press the button now cos the message has finished appearing.

[Gryzor]

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...

[Carnivius]

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. 

[Gryzor]

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?

[Carnivius]

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.   

Will 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.

[Gryzor]

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...

[Gryzor]

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

[Gryzor]

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

[Carnivius]

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.

[Gryzor]

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///

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

Yesssss I knew it'd work

[Carnivius]

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.

Yesssss I knew it'd work

Never underestimate gryzor-powers!

[Gryzor]

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

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

[Carnivius]

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).

[Gryzor]

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

[Carnivius]

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.

[EgoTrip]

I hope he is not going to shoot poor Dizzy 

[Carnivius]

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.

[CraigsBar]

I hope he is not going to shoot poor Dizzy 

looks like the perfect day for some scrambled eggs!

[Captain Past]

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