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avatar_reidrac

New CRPG (development)

Started by reidrac, 14:42, 26 July 21

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reidrac

Wow, it was harder than I expected!

https://twitter.com/reidrac/status/1423365508603289604

I mean, considering what is shown in the video... it wasn't easy to get everything in :)

The good thing is that the data structures to drive that are real, so I can represent the PC in the game; or most of it. Anyway, I should move faster, and don't spend too much time on things because *a pixel*.
Released The Return of Traxtor, Golden Tail, Magica, The Dawn of Kernel, Kitsune`s Curse, Brick Rick and Hyperdrive for the CPC.

If you like my games and want to show some appreciation, you can always buy me a coffee.

reidrac

Important milestone: loading content from disc! :D

https://twitter.com/reidrac/status/1426668623985266695

With a little help from my friends here: https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/programming/using-disc-via-firmware/

I still need to do some bits (including saving to disc), but it is looking promising!
Released The Return of Traxtor, Golden Tail, Magica, The Dawn of Kernel, Kitsune`s Curse, Brick Rick and Hyperdrive for the CPC.

If you like my games and want to show some appreciation, you can always buy me a coffee.

reidrac

Slow progress is progress!

I'm still working on internal structures, 5-bit text support, and things like that.

Also reviewing the UI to make it readable on a green screen:

https://twitter.com/reidrac/status/1429455867527761926

Nothing fancy but works also in monochrome, and probably better for people having issues to "see" colours.
Released The Return of Traxtor, Golden Tail, Magica, The Dawn of Kernel, Kitsune`s Curse, Brick Rick and Hyperdrive for the CPC.

If you like my games and want to show some appreciation, you can always buy me a coffee.

reidrac

#28
I have the essentials for inventory management. Implementing menus isn't really the most fun, but hey!

https://twitter.com/reidrac/status/1430284611079311365

Now that I can equip and manage inventory, it is probably time to tackle the first part of the combat.

EDIT: I've read reports that it is possible that twitter may start requiring login to read tweets. When (if) that happens, I will stop sharing videos here via twitter; probably will use a different place for that, or may be it would be the end of WIP videos. In any case, I don't like that and nobody should need a twitter account to watch these short clips; despite being convenient to me.
Released The Return of Traxtor, Golden Tail, Magica, The Dawn of Kernel, Kitsune`s Curse, Brick Rick and Hyperdrive for the CPC.

If you like my games and want to show some appreciation, you can always buy me a coffee.

Gryzor

Haven't heard about it and nothing is impossible of course, but I find it a bit improbable... it will break all those tons of embeds everywhere for many people...


Oh, also: great job, it's amazing how much info you can stuff into this low resolution :)

reidrac

#30
I finally rewrote the wall of text and is fast and smooth now!

https://twitter.com/reidrac/status/1431709445944401936

I put back some code to add colour that I had removed to make the old version less painful  :picard:

[attach=1,msg206454]

Equipped a dagger, but then tried to equip a shield and is not allowed by class (Isolde is a wizard).

This is looking good!  ;D

EDIT: oops! that screenshot is a bit large; will be more careful!
Released The Return of Traxtor, Golden Tail, Magica, The Dawn of Kernel, Kitsune`s Curse, Brick Rick and Hyperdrive for the CPC.

If you like my games and want to show some appreciation, you can always buy me a coffee.

arkive

Looking great already, and as it's my favourite genre, and rather under-represented in modern gamedev, I sincerely hope you can get it over the finishing line. But I can imagine it might be a long and arduous quest :)

reidrac

Quote from: arkive on 11:47, 04 September 21
Looking great already, and as it's my favourite genre, and rather under-represented in modern gamedev, I sincerely hope you can get it over the finishing line. But I can imagine it might be a long and arduous quest :)

Yep, and by the looks of it, with many many side quests as well! :D
Released The Return of Traxtor, Golden Tail, Magica, The Dawn of Kernel, Kitsune`s Curse, Brick Rick and Hyperdrive for the CPC.

If you like my games and want to show some appreciation, you can always buy me a coffee.

reidrac

Quick update after a month+ being very quiet.

I made some optimisations and I've started cleaning the code a bit after moving forward very quickly, and now that I've been researching cartridge, I'm having second thoughts on supporting disc using the firmware on/off: it is hacky and messy.

Yes, it works, but it also makes some things super awkward. So I'm considering moving to cartridge now: targetting both Dandanator and CPC+ cartridge, so it will be easy to play digital or in real hardware using some add-ons supporting CPR files.

The question is how to save progress; but then, I guess I could support different strategies (like I abstracted the bank change code). With Dandanator seems easy enough, and I could explicitly support some of the existing add-ons (like the M4 and probably USIfAC II -even is not too common for now-).

Anyway, just thinking now before it is too expensive to change my mind!
Released The Return of Traxtor, Golden Tail, Magica, The Dawn of Kernel, Kitsune`s Curse, Brick Rick and Hyperdrive for the CPC.

If you like my games and want to show some appreciation, you can always buy me a coffee.

dthrone

Quote from: reidrac on 14:05, 26 October 21
targetting both Dandanator and CPC+ cartridge, so it will be easy to play digital or in real hardware using some add-ons supporting CPR files.

The question is how to save progress;

Anyway, just thinking now before it is too expensive to change my mind!




Excited to hear about a plus cart version!  Can you include a password system for saving or is there too much save data to encode into a password?

reidrac

Quote from: dthrone on 14:19, 26 October 21
Excited to hear about a plus cart version!  Can you include a password system for saving or is there too much save data to encode into a password?

Likely to be too much data, if I want to do it properly!

I haven't discarded saving to disc. If is save only, that would remove most of the awkwardness. Saves should be less frequent, or that's what I think at least!
Released The Return of Traxtor, Golden Tail, Magica, The Dawn of Kernel, Kitsune`s Curse, Brick Rick and Hyperdrive for the CPC.

If you like my games and want to show some appreciation, you can always buy me a coffee.

ago

I have no preference on the format as I could play any of them on real hardware. That's said, from my point of view the choice is clear: DES/Dandanator, as you could do saves to the cartridge.
I understand the dilemma, as PLUS carts are "real" Amstrad stuff and more users could play the game. On the other hand, more games being released in DES format would motivate more people to get the hardware. Or you can use the original Dandanator, which does not need any extra hardware to be used (but it is more expensive).

Truth is that any format which is not 64kb CDT/DSK will leave people behind.
Whatever the choice you make, thanks a lot Reidrac for sharing you thoughts and for your nice games!!!

andycadley

Disclaimer: I've not looked too deeply, but maybe a QR code?


https://github.com/leiradel/qrc1


Although, depending on how much data you need to save (and how much can be derived) there may be other ways of building a suitable passcode generation tool.

Gryzor

But how could you pass the qr to the CPC then?

ajcasado

@reidrac If you are targeting most of the community, supporting also tape savegame would be useful for people with just the plus2cpc from @abalore and an old 464 or people with the 464+.

I guess that you might have thought about that, but just in case.

Anyway this game looks very promising, I always loved its kind. Thanks for the effort.
CPC 664

Empiezas a envejecer cuando dejas de aprender.
You start to get old when you stop learning.

ajcasado

Quote from: ago on 16:09, 26 October 21Or you can use the original Dandanator, which does not need any extra hardware to be used (but it is more expensive).

I bough one dandanator here: https://www.va-de-retro.com/foros/viewtopic.php?t=9113#p162367

Is quite cheap, 17€ plus post. If someone want to get in contact with the dealer and has problems loging or signing in va de retro, send me a PM.
CPC 664

Empiezas a envejecer cuando dejas de aprender.
You start to get old when you stop learning.

Devlin

Quote from: reidrac on 14:05, 26 October 21
Quick update after a month+ being very quiet.

I made some optimisations and I've started cleaning the code a bit after moving forward very quickly, and now that I've been researching cartridge, I'm having second thoughts on supporting disc using the firmware on/off: it is hacky and messy.

Yes, it works, but it also makes some things super awkward. So I'm considering moving to cartridge now: targetting both Dandanator and CPC+ cartridge, so it will be easy to play digital or in real hardware using some add-ons supporting CPR files.

The question is how to save progress; but then, I guess I could support different strategies (like I abstracted the bank change code). With Dandanator seems easy enough, and I could explicitly support some of the existing add-ons (like the M4 and probably USIfAC II -even is not too common for now-).

Anyway, just thinking now before it is too expensive to change my mind!


USIfAC ii overrides firmware commands from what I gather, so if you use those to load/save it should work just fine on there as a "direct load" - but also supports a DSK buffer too


Though, my big big desire that it runs on an unexpanded 464 (since it's all I have!)
CPC464 & CPC6128 + USIfAC II + Revaldinho 512k(universal cpld ver) - Schneider CRT TV
Administrator of Amstrad Discord : https://discord.gg/ksWvApv

reidrac

#42
TL;DR: 64K is OK, but vanilla 464 is not enough :(

I could go 128K and disc to simplify things, but I want to support 64K machines (including the GX4000); considering that cassette isn't really good for this type of game, expecting an add-on is reasonable (a physical release on Dandanator wouldn't need anything extra, but I'll try it to be playable on an M4/USIfAC II).

Using the firmware to access disc/tape (and let M4 or USIfAC II do their thing) is a option, but quite tricky because I need all the memory available so I disable/enable the firmware (see https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/programming/using-disc-via-firmware/ ). Although I'm not sure how difficult it will be now that I'm moving to use cartridge (my main code runs from lower ROM). I can always move that lower ROM to RAM and allow re-enabling the firmware, but there are some issues with that. Anyway, here be dragons!

I'm starting to think that it would be easier to explicitly support load/save using specific add-ons. E.g. code for Dandanator is OK, and if you're running from CPR I can detect M4 and USIfAC II (the more popular ones?), and use specific code to interact with them.

Anyway, for more info I wrote about this on my blog: https://www.usebox.net/jjm/blog/cartridges-for-the-amstrad-cpc/ :)
Released The Return of Traxtor, Golden Tail, Magica, The Dawn of Kernel, Kitsune`s Curse, Brick Rick and Hyperdrive for the CPC.

If you like my games and want to show some appreciation, you can always buy me a coffee.

reidrac

Quick update!

I finally completed the port of the codebase to cartridge.

It includes a sprit screen for the message wall (now on 0x0000), and moving most of the data to ROM. It was harder than expected, because turns out I had written more code that I remembered :D. I will provably give it another review to see if I can make the code more space efficient (because the ROM is great for data, but not that good to have code; but we'll see about that).

Anyway, the game is pretty much where it was, but running from ROM.
Released The Return of Traxtor, Golden Tail, Magica, The Dawn of Kernel, Kitsune`s Curse, Brick Rick and Hyperdrive for the CPC.

If you like my games and want to show some appreciation, you can always buy me a coffee.

genesis8

I (re)discovered Times of Lore (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_of_Lore) which does exist on Amstrad CPC and other platforms. It did inspire some versions of Ultima.
Maybe it can be useful to you ?
____________
Amstrad news site at Genesis8 Amstrad Page

Gryzor

Never played this, looks nice enough.


https://youtu.be/L_B6aNF3tOw

Sykobee (Briggsy)

Yeah, ToL is a nice game, bit jerky on the scrolling, nice presentation. Played it a lot on my 6128 when I was younger. I've seen it described as a starter RPG, not a lot in it for more experienced players.

reidrac

I didn't know it, thanks for the pointer.

Those graphics looks very nice, probably better than anything I can draw myself!
Released The Return of Traxtor, Golden Tail, Magica, The Dawn of Kernel, Kitsune`s Curse, Brick Rick and Hyperdrive for the CPC.

If you like my games and want to show some appreciation, you can always buy me a coffee.

genesis8

Quote from: reidrac on 19:58, 18 March 22I didn't know it, thanks for the pointer.

Those graphics looks very nice, probably better than anything I can draw myself!
Maybe ask for help about graphics, so you can focus on programming ?
____________
Amstrad news site at Genesis8 Amstrad Page

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