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[fuedhq]

Here are the military.
As bosses on level 10, they will be acting together with side shooting drones.
Those drones are the original zappers.

I´ve decided the military man can also hide around the outhouse, makes more sense.
I still have to make the UFO destroy their bullets, but they are more or less complete.

As with the other bosses, I´m unsure if I keep them as a normal enemies after their shodown, maybe in shorter numbers and sporting slower speeds. Will see to that when I have all enemies done and get to construct the waves (levels). I currently designed for 15 waves, 3 bosses coming at 5, 10 and 15.

[fuedhq]

We have bats now, up to 20.
They fumble the trees before showing up and then slowly chase the ufos.
They don´t quite go straight towards you but tend to fly around you. Crash into it and loose a life.

One of the ideas behind them is that they might prevent the players into keeping flying low.
So, if you are over the tree´s area, one might pop out behind you, if you are lower than the trees, there is a lot of black and it can be hard to spot them, other than they showing up just above you and clutching your escape routes.

Hopefully it makes sense and works in game when I get to make the waves.
Now to create the drones.

[fuedhq]

Fine tuned the bats and decided to add the skylab (late) debris, think meteors, which will randomly fall from the skies.
They will cause a little explosion if they hit the ground and may kill a bunch of people, they may also hurt the outhouse for a shake and a few papers if they hit its center. While falling, they will kill bats, drones, drone bullets and military bullets without being destroyed, unless you lazer them of course.

See, that´s also something I didn´t foresee... the amount of connection/collisions my objects have with each other.
This brought me lots of work!
But this is really nice because you end up getting saved a lot by a shielding foe, adds a charm to the game and enriches the single screen aspect, me thinks at least.

Like said, I also added the drones for both sides and, contrary to the bats and military shooting guys, these drones will pester you if you are above the trees. They hunt your vertical position and after a red warning they fire 3 bullets. Their bullets can also kill bats, army bullets, drone bullets and other drones, for each, one bullet is destroyed. It won´t go through a meteor debris though.

With the drones done, I then made the bat boss.
Very simple big bat that shows up randomly from whatever side at first and dashes to the other side.
From this point on, he will always choose to fly back either targeting players, targeting outhouse or randomly and so forth.
It currently has 5 energy and each time you shoot it, it shakes and turns direction.
If you kill it, it won´t return from offscreen.

Seems easy to deal , but with him you have a swarm of normal bats, that makes it hard and surprising, will do a video about it later and also another from the military+drones combination for bosses.

Here is a mix of all elements created so far playing along on the same screen and on their high set.
It is just for fun as the game won´t put players on this kind of mix, but you get a neat idea.



I have to fix a few things like bat boss sometimes flying too low and the meteors hitting the ground and setting scrolling paper on fire if hits. Then I shall do Ctchullhu and should be done with bosses and objects.
 

[fuedhq]

Time has no meaning when Cthulhu has to go.


I think all living things in game are up and doing their stuff.
I will probably add another human though, more on him later.

Time to layout the game stages. Like I said, I first thought 15 waves a boss each 5.
But then, I don´t want to add a "WAVE 2" text over screen or do hard cuts on the game flow.

Maybe a game progress like Tree House: the avocado mayhem? Like a timeline and things get harder as time flows?
That may be a bit too loose here as I still would want a sense of waves.

So... a timeline with enemies additions that is controlled by 15 spots that freeze time until a minimum amount of enemies is met.
This may also force keeping the game screen uncluttered as nothing increases until you kill enemies to reach the minimum amount. This and introducing a new enemy type/speed should mark well through the wave change.

I think during spot transition a public servant in yellow/orange will pass by. He must be safely guarded until
 he gets to an EMPTY outhouse for he will refill its paper stock for +5. He will show up 15 times for a total 75 paper with which we add the initial 24 papers and get to the highest score possible, 99.
 

[fuedhq]

You can take cover behind the chthhulhu and the military dudes will shoot him.
While they don´t hurt him, they push him up, just beware not to be smashed! :D

[fuedhq]

Made a wave system like said before and the bosses, a victory screen is still needed, but will do that later.

Shot a game run with a friend yesterday, first time he saw the game, he played with me cooperatively but I´m  alias.
He got so far as the bat boss and I endured up till the military bosses.




I will go through every game element and controls again fine tuning whatever needs to be, will do so while adding sound and music I think there is a bunch to do. Controls are currently directions+action button. One has to move to a direction and then hit fire, feels awkward. Originally I intended to have 2 UFO´s speed, like modern shoot em ups, one speed is a bit too fast and the other is very slow and precise. I did implement it first as a keep-fire-pressed-after-shooting to be slow during the recharge time, it sucked, then I made the UFOs to always be slow during recharge and that sucked too. The reason could be that both cases are out of primary control from the player, it is not like it is a second button you can hold to slow down... but I want a one button game! ...but what of support for joypads with 2 sticks? Maybe arrows+wasd or numerics?  

Time and speed of mostly all objects needs to be a bit more worked out so they don´t clutch and wave´s layout sure needs more work so waves stand out.

Currently, when you fire, get destroyed or the outhouse takes a hit, the game freezes, that is because of sound and is intended
 but currently it feels it is taking too long. It should work as a slow motion/shock quick notice, it can´t turn the game into a slideshow.

So, let´s get started on sound and maybe that will help dictate the rhythm.
 

[fuedhq]

Still working the sounds...
While at that, I compiled a sequence of real coco game sounds.
They are from many different games and serve as an idea of what the machine is capable.
I hope to come up with sounds that are closer to what the coco can do.

If you know the coco or the dragon computers, you might get a flashback from hearing those sounds but, in general, many computers and arcade at the time did produce similar sound effects.





I have also been tinkering with producing my sound/music directly on the coco or emulator.
For that, Stevie Strow did a neat BASIC programming series and this one chapter here talks about a very powerful (unique?) PLAY command. Check it out:

https://youtu.be/gEhYfnAAsCY?list=PLDfh7JjQaSYA1fP5KwRiOwefFIIF1Alid

[fuedhq]

Here the 2 minutes of curated color computer game sounds on the top corner!
About possibly 47 sounds needed on the lower corner!
 

Needs to cut and scratch those sounds into new sounds + adding my own set of PLAY sounds.
Of course taking care not to do sound fusion or anything that deep...



edit:changed the whole fuck...

[JobLeonard]

Ah new fuedhq devlog = insta-sub

[fuedhq]

Thanks @JobLeonard!

Sound fx has been taking quite some time, I under estimated it for sure.
There is more or less possibly 50 sound locations.

So I went filling them up and code implementing it. Some sounds I was already sure about, many others are place holders.
There is also a lot of sound locations that are probably going to be dropped, I over made them for such.

Attempting to follow the TRS-80 Color sound spec is also a hard thing to do. Most of time sound is played the computer halts/pause, so it abuses fast sounds and with machine language you add a certain level of sounds together with little visual action. The sound itself is great, as you can hear from the last video, but one also has to consider no 2 sounds play together and a lot of other restrictions. Coding such is possible but I feel not necessary on a win based game.

While dealing with these ordeals, I realized my cheap sound routine would not cut for more sound channels. There would be too many sounds attempting to play at the same time, so that was redone.

Now I have to go through all sounds making each one final or nothing.

Here is a video of a squatter and a boss.
Some sounds are finals others are templates or fail.

I´m quite proud of the opening/close door on the outhouse, as well as the shitting sound and the scraping paper sound too. Might duplicate the later and bring the whole action a bit earlier on the event. 





And an extra about the bats in orbit...

[fuedhq]

Did a little pause as the sounds got me a bit burned. In that meanwhile, I designed a poster to go with the game.
It is a clone of the trs-80 color 2 tech manual´s wireframe exploded illustration.
I made it as a 13k x 18k resolution so it should print fine at 300dpi to a size more or less up to 1.5 meters.
Here is one of the work in progress tests, but that is now complete, I should be getting back to the game´s sounds today.

[JobLeonard]

  I did not expect to see a freaking exploded wireframe when opening this topic, hahaha

[fuedhq]

The game is pretty much targeted at those who had this computer (or the variations).

I thought to ask a $5 for the effort and that seems a bit too much compared to my other games.
It will look like I´m trying to cash in on the community! :D

Well, I actually am trying that, but not in an evil fashion, so I thought to add value to it and all together give away this neat illustration.

[fuedhq]

Fixed a bunch of stuff and fine tuned others.
Sound effects are complete and everything seems to be reaching the end.

Major stuff that needs to be done now is to tune the waves (which, when and how many enemies pop out) and exactly right now I´m busting my mind about score again.

I made the toilet paper count the general only score, but that feels like a waste.

I´m currently going to implement the usual per player score based on kills and keep the toilet paper for extra score in case one beats the game, but this last bit feels weird too, does not add to the competitive nature of score since if you beat the game in 2 players both gets bonus for that. I´m unsure about combo kills too, might keep only the standard score.

Anyways, Those things should be quick to deal and trailer and storefront should be done by friday nite, I hope the game is up for sale by saturday.

edit: aaaand while doing the score, it didn´t quite work as I wanted, will revert back to toilet count and work the waves so it becomes more important. The will render the game cooperative if played 2 player.
 

[fuedhq]

Oh my! All of a sudden, all is done!

Game is available here: https://ericomont.itch.io/the-outhouse

Trailer is this one:




There is a gameplay video here:




I will bring more news soon!

[JobLeonard]

 

[fuedhq]

Added another huge poster image to the bundle.
This time a solid one, here is a preview:


I will probably need to update the main game file this week too, spotted a bug on the score where it stops you reaching 99 score, just up to 94.

[JobLeonard]

Niiice

I will probably need to update the main game file this week too, spotted a bug on the score where it stops you reaching 99 score, just up to 94.

Isn't that the unofficial way to detect speedrunning fraudsters like Todd Rogers?

[fuedhq]

haha, yeah, I also recall some cracked games on the amiga had bugged stages to catch pirates.
Haven´t got around to update que fix yet but a friend tried the game on linux using those win vm and it works fine.

[fuedhq]

Plin!

Keys!

https://ericomont.itch.io/the-outhouse/download/7cN9dWruXqhpUtFgxYbKbfTTYP-eiBTFWj7HKFWydopwLpygJbYECws
https://ericomont.itch.io/the-outhouse/download/amd6wSqqARkdewpXsZbKbfTTYP-p7bQF2F4kV1xcjaHWnQBq9AhGWK
https://ericomont.itch.io/the-outhouse/download/Q7DgZTvKvyMbzEnmcubKbfTTYP-4D6fhX4vmf1jkorqcUZeRJX7QHR

share score
go for 2 players!

edit: friends told me it also runs fine on linux using vm stuff