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General Category => Other retro => Topic started by: carlc27843 on 08:42, 11 April 22

Title: Nebulus in web browser via PICO-8!
Post by: carlc27843 on 08:42, 11 April 22
Here's a PICO-8 tribute/port of John M Phillip's 1987 classic Nebulus, playable in your web browser. https://carlc27843.itch.io/nebulus (https://carlc27843.itch.io/nebulus)

 (https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvMTQzODQwMC84NTM5MDAxLnBuZw==/original/hAlikI.png) (https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvMTQzODQwMC84NTM5MjcyLnBuZw==/original/xnWw%2FT.png)
PICO-8 normally has a 128x128 16 color square-pixel display, but there's some hidden tricks you can do to get 128x256 32 colors with double-wide pixels. That makes it a reasonable match for our beloved mode 0 CPC games.

In this PICO-8 fan remake you'll recognize many of the sprites from Chris Wood's CPC version, as well as an as-as-accurate-as-possible conversion of Dave Rogers' excellent CPC rendition of the original C64 theme song. Liberties were taken with the framerate as it's 60fps in PICO-8, as well as with other graphics like the tower and ocean. It was challenging to squeeze it into 32K even with the advantage of lua scripting, but there was just enough room for a variant of the C64's underwater bonus levels. The gameplay was derived from reverse engineering the CPC version, so it's pretty close but the PICO-8 version is a bit more generous (fair?) with collision detection.

Another concession to modern gaming is you can choose your starting level on the title screen, from all the levels you've unlocked by ever visiting them. So for the first time in 35 years I finally got to complete every tower. ;)

Hope you enjoy!
Title: Re: Nebulus in web browser via PICO-8!
Post by: ervin on 09:31, 11 April 22
This is brilliant.
Great job!
Title: Re: Nebulus in web browser via PICO-8!
Post by: eto on 10:18, 11 April 22
Awesome, with one disadvantage: it's unfortunately not well playable with a QWERTZ keyboard, as the Z key is quite uncomfortable.

If you can't use key codes but have to use characters, maybe consider using only characters that don't change depending on the keyboard layout (black ones in this overview), or maybe use SPACE instead.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Keyboard-recommended-Latin-layout-ISOIEC-9995-2.png)
Title: Re: Nebulus in web browser via PICO-8!
Post by: pelrun on 10:42, 11 April 22
Z/X are the normal keys, but you can also use C/V or N/M.
Title: Re: Nebulus in web browser via PICO-8!
Post by: eto on 11:13, 11 April 22
Quote from: pelrun on 10:42, 11 April 22Z/X are the normal keys, but you can also use C/V or N/M.
That helps a lot. thanks
Title: Re: Nebulus in web browser via PICO-8!
Post by: Gryzor on 13:14, 11 April 22
This is so nice :) 

Question: was it always so hard? :D
Title: Re: Nebulus in web browser via PICO-8!
Post by: merman on 19:03, 11 April 22
Great work, hoping as can squeeze a mention of it into Retro Gamer
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