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[fuedhq]

Here a gif with a game run on the new speed.
Should have some sounds going by tomorrow.

[fuedhq]

Polishing a bit took a while, here are 2 game plays, second one is ace.

[michaelplzno]

Looks cool, lovely pixels and music, and a lot of options for loot/enemies/power ups/weapons.

[fuedhq]

Thanks! A bunch of changes took place:

-controls now only happen when you release last move, no "auto-fire".
-player and enemy idle animation fixed.
-no more locked by tombs zombies.
-sound volume, mixing.
-other minor invisible feats.

I guess this resolves what game A is to be on this tribute.
Will pack an .exe and release it, then, time to look into game B.

[fuedhq]

Here is a link to the current PC version of the game:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=179qs2v8cFWUzgHeTFOl5D1AEabf3f88p

Use arrows+ZX or joypad+AB, ESC and menu button on joypad to return to title and again to quit.

On menu, first button starts. During game, hold first button to stay in digging mode, add a direction to dig, second button to skip turn.

What do you guys think of it?

[fuedhq]

Working on the game B finally.
First thing to deal is to make a richer level generator.

That is tricky for 3 reasons:
- my perspective is weird, wall fronts don´t work with diagonally placed top walls. Matrix fail.
- I don´t want fully enclosed wasted areas.
- I don´t want graves to pop out on the "outside" of the playable area.

Here is how it is working out, see the top right "illegal" positioning?



edit: damit it does not seem I´m going to escape doing a flood fill on the array to find legal places for the tombs and what not (key, maybe etc)... but that is for later.

[fuedhq]

Here we go with the metal fences and outside walls.
Rendered bit by bit.



It is funky that I have to treat the background tiles as double vertical pixels when there are walls.
The ones I´m first caring are the top parts of them, then I have to go about drawing their front side.
There is no front or top side alone.

That is about the choice I made when designing them, I wanted to avoid background tiles going over character sprites.
Now I have to deal with some perspective anomalies.

[fuedhq]

I think the map generator is done.
Let´s see:



- First, clear the whole map with clear ground tile 0.
- Snake around counter clockwise a wall path using 3 cells, tending to stay on the outside cell.
- Do an array clean up for loose holes and protuberances.
- Create a set of linear, maybe holed, walls from each of the sides, caring not to create more than 2 enclosed corner areas.
- Set gate position.
- Fix the inverted Y shape on the array, causes problems every now and then.
- Generate horizontal metal fences.
- Extrude walls and fences.
- Generate holes
- Do a flood fill starting from the semetary gate to generate a playable area array.
- If the flood reaches the borders, the map is a fail, do it again.
- Position tombs on the playable area.
- Position player and keys on the playable area.

There where lots of fine tuning hidden through the process and the hardest one was about positioning the tombs, as they already had a set of rules and would need to have another one over. Overall, the combined engines seem to produce neat safe levels!

-

[fuedhq]

I have planned a few set of changes for game mode B. Hard and soft changes. The prime, are changes that affect the core gameplay and mechanics while the later is more about content.

The very first hard change relates to the world. I want more challenging semataries in a way that accommodates the other changes.
And that is what we have on the last post. It is working fine and broken levels only pop out every 100s and they are easy to detect and recreate.

Another change is about the zombies. They now fall into holes but they do so like lemmings, they don´t account for where they are stepping on their AI. I could add hole detection and give it some chance to happen based on distance from player. A close by zombie is more likely to hunt you so avid that it makes sense to throw oneself into a hole. For now I will keep it as it is and tune that later if needed, it is already a lot of fun and dead zombies bring a different happening to the game. If the a zombie dies on the other side of the board, he has a chance to raise again on a tomb nearby you and so, put you in bad shape.

Thirds change is that I want a form of active attack, other than the passive "weapon" holes are (they are similar to mines).
So if a zombie is on a close cell, and you try to dig a hole in his direction, he will swing the shovel, hit the zombie and push him back a few cells with a chance of falling on ground.

This last change has been a bit tricky since I want a pushed back zombie to bump on another one that bumps on another one, etc.
I fail to code this part this weekend and will start clean again today.

On the soft changes, the player can now destroy the graves. It has two stages of destruction and if fully destroyed, the path becomes walkable (zombies will still pop out). Will probably use that to extend content later on. Zombies won´t raise if the location is dig, though you still can only do so 5 times (there are 10 graves), but attack with the shovel is infinite.

Here is a gif with some of the changes, all sfx and music in place and mixed now.

[fuedhq]

The domino effect is starting to work nice!

I want the shovel attack to be able to push a zombie 2 cells back, bumping his way into other zombies.
In case there is a blocked path, he may fly back 1 or no cells. In which case I want him to fall on the ground.
While on ground, a zombie will take a turn to stand up and will only attack you the next one.

I will see if that will work out, back to finishing the bumpings.

[fuedhq]

Bumping about working quite nice now as well as zombies falling into the ground if they hit back.
They spend 2 turns to stand up.

When you hit a zombie you push him back 2 cells, can be more, but 2 balances exactly with the zombies in a sense that you make room for some movement but you don´t gain area over them that you want to go around.You get a chance to dig a hole between but that also blocks your passage.

The advantage is not only freeing space around but if any of them trips, you get some free turns before they raise again, so targeting walls, graves and holes is a must. Holes always have the trouble of a zombie reincarnating by your side.

Made other adjustments to all animations so to try to keep the game as fast as possible.

As for soft elements, I plan to add objects/treasures to pick up, probably dropped from zombies, as you collect, more zombies
 pop about. I guess I can also get away with a score based on those.
I think some elements could add to the player stats, but in a way you would have to notice by playing, but I have to think about it, maybeit is too much.

Here is a test run with the current hard elements, no soft ones yet.

[fuedhq]

Hmmm, played the game many times since then.
I found the following happening every now and then, seldomly though.

- Game crash back to system. Most likely an array overflow, I´m not sure which but I suspect it has to do with a new one added to control zombies falling into the ground. If true, it sucks as I´m re-using a zombie state for that, but easily fixable.

- Turn hangs, it´s no one´s turn! :D Happens when there are a lot of zombies being pushed back and falling on the ground. It could be related to the problem stated before.

- Wrong push back behavior. The system works but there are flaws, nothing game breaker but stuff that could lead to both the problems stated above.

So it seems I´m not free from this bit yet  .
Damn it! There is a lesson to be learned though.

Anyways, I have to look again into this part of the code, but not now.
I prefer to advance the project instead, least one does not get burned by stuff that don´t work as planned.

So, time to look into the soft changes. There won´t be much and I want them to also double as stuff I can score players.
Score should be important to this kind of game, brings a "multiplayer" feeling.

So I´m going to change the cognac into a healing potion and keep it as it is, falling from zombies every now and then.
Player will also have maximum 6 lives, so you change "scary" animations every 2 scares you absorb. Will probably provide extended pinball combo on zombies attacking the player, and should be fun!

I will add zombie´s extra drops in many forms as treasures to be scored.
Each tomb, when hit once, will also place an object, like a scroll, on its outside cell. I´m hoping this objects can be the rogue element I´m still missing here, it might grant unknown powers or bad mojos. Doing this also scores and adds a zombie on the board. I´m not sure it will work out, but I will also have to add a time limit that adds zombies should you stick around too long. Should become a neat collect-all-you-can-and-get-out game.

I will be working on this part and then a last final polishing before facing the bumping code again.

[JobLeonard]

Ok, I'm just going to stalk your profile and see if there are any other quality threads you opened that I should sub to

[fuedhq]

Serious? Nice, there are a couple here on forums.
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=66169.0
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=68366.0

I´m unsure about "quality" through! :D
Thanks for following!

[fuedhq]

Some final fixes on the map generator.
I made it in a way that it generates some bugged maps every now and then.

It is designed to fail should the flood fill array touches corners, a tomb can´t be placed or player and keys can´t be placed, in this exact order of priority. The tomb placing also doubles as a way to check if the map is too small.

Ran some thousand-map-test and got a general of 5% fail on flood fill, 2.5% of the rest failed tomb placement and .5% out of the rest failed player and key placement. Tomb placement has to land 10 tombs but attempts 100x before quitting if can´t put them all. Player and key go through 200 attempts as they must be both valid at the same time.

It is a little bit over but all pretty safe generator.
Here it is, counting till 100, failed ones hold frame a little.



edit: looks like when holding the reset button on some games from the Atari 2600. :D

[fuedhq]

Lot´s of dev happened, I will bring it up soon, but most importantly, the bounce back code works.
I´d say 99.99% of the time
Here some domino going about:

[Claude Ruelle]

This project is absolutely fantastic! I will follow that closely. BTW regarding the falling animations, you posted about a while ago, I would say the second one is my favorite.

Regarding the music, you could maybe go for something that would be higher in range as the low rumbling bass and percussion are competing with the frequency range of your sound effects. Also, I'd love to hear a more retro sound palette that would match the graphic style and be congruous with the sound effects.

[Dune]

I really like your color scheme and character sprites. It's very simple but still quite expressive, especially the player character's cartoony sprites for when they're knocked back and fall into a hole. It's a very pleasant and delightful look overall that shows you can do a lot with a little. I look forward to watching your progress! (Also, your glitch gifs are really fun to look at. Wonky game bugs always give me a good chuckle.)

[fuedhq]

...BTW regarding the falling animations, you posted about a while ago, I would say the second one is my favorite.

Mine too, the anticipation feels funny, very road runner. I can probably bring it back since it is only for the main player. The zombie´s falling anim, currently a bit ugly, probably won´t be able to sport the style as it takes time and with many zombies about, there is just a very thin limit of patience a player may wait for its turn, but it´s testable!

Regarding the music, you could maybe go for something that would be higher in range as the low rumbling bass and percussion are competing with the frequency range of your sound effects. Also, I'd love to hear a more retro sound palette that would match the graphic style and be congruous with the sound effects.

You are right, the overall style considering audio and video needs improvement. I´d have to think about how to approach a solution. In short, I scanned online resources for music I could use in game, specially if from the same author. Chiptune is what I had in mind, few instruments. I could not find exactly it but I found sets that could work together although more realistic than chip. There are 5 music in game where 2 are pieces of the same.
Sound effects were more quickly done, mostly with generators but I hand made a few. There is about 30 sounds in game.

The sound effects will get more work as I finish the gameplay. I´m unsure about the music. I like the sets and melodies and everything about them but for what you stated. I could re-create the music on the likes of pixitracker 1bit but I´m uncomfortable wearing one more hat. I could also try some musician friends for that and also contact the original authors and check with them. Well the last I will do one way or the another if their music persists in game.

I really like your color scheme and character sprites. It's very simple but still quite expressive, especially the player character's cartoony sprites for when they're knocked back and fall into a hole. It's a very pleasant and delightful look overall that shows you can do a lot with a little. I look forward to watching your progress! (Also, your glitch gifs are really fun to look at. Wonky game bugs always give me a good chuckle.)

Some while ago I made mockups and sprites for an arduino handheld, a superb one called GAMEBUINO META.
It works with a very low resolution 80x64 and 16 fixed colors. I love retro limitations.
I ended up extending this mockup for various systems and resolutions and even coded a proof of concept for the Genesis Megadrive (and am tempted to do a COCO version).

Thank you both for the feedback!

[fuedhq]

Let´s summ the latest changes.
Well, I haven´t advanced into the polishing yet, had been stuck on the gameplay.
It is hard to balance it and this game style makes it very time consuming.

Objective is still to pick the key and leave. It should be trivial as if you just do that, and relatively fast, there may be 2 or 3 zombies about. Now, this part is tricky as it is not hinted in game, but should you crack tombs, each 2, will permit a zombie to drop a treasure. There are 5 treasures that appears in order and the later the more valuable though you would need all tombs at least cracked for it to show up (10 tombs in game). You will be scored based on the pickups most likely.

In game, there is a variable MZ that means maximum zombies. if at 10, lets say, there can be max 10 zombies but that does not mean they will all pop out instantly, it may take a lot of turns for that to happen. Anyways, this variable obeys the following rules, game starts with max 1 zombie, from turn 5 and beyond, max 2 zombies + 1 for key, 1 for each treasure in hand, + the number of broken tombs divided by 2. You also have a zombie count increase based on turns, it more or less adds a zombie every 30 turns. In total, if all evoked, 18 zombies will be dancing about, but you will hardly get to see such.

Your bat is now more powerful, it strikes a zombie 3 blocks back and, if bumped over others, push them 2 blocks back. You gain area if advancing towards a zombie, so gameplay feels less contracted. You also bump zombies into tombs and they crack or  crumble. Zombies that hit walls or tombs, or others that can´t be bumped back, will still fall on the ground and hold 2 turns before standing up.

Annnd I added a sort of time limit to spice up the tension. As the game reaches turn 60, 3 holes will appear on map, and from this point on, every adjacent block to a hole may crumble per turn. This creates great momentum! Brings me memories about the ALASKA board game, where I got this idea from.



Back to score, now that there is the time limit, maybe I could find a way to use the number of turns?
Say, one may get a point per each turn after the melt down. We will see.

Here is game run I recorded early today.