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[fuedhq]

Hey, time for a side project.
It is like that, you take a vacation from a project by making a faster one. :D

So I always enjoyed Joust(1982).
But not the arcade version as seen below:



For whatever market reason, I never even saw an original.
Instead, my love for it comes from the COCO port Buzzard Bait:

[fuedhq]

But my true obsession with it comes from an original COCO game with similar gameplay called Pegasus and the Phantom Riders:




So that is what I plan to do, Buzzard gameplay into Pegasus world, and a few more twists.

But let´s think of Joust and try to reduce its gameplay.
The strongest element of gameplay, for me, must be the "indirect" control of the player.
You don´t precisely choose your motion like in the arcade Pacman(1980) but you perform an "intention".

From this point, is there an older game that has this core element?
I think so, arcade Lunar Lander(1979).
On this one, you control the thrust acceleration of the lander against gravity, never its speed directly.
Your goal is to be able to land smoothly, so in sum, it is a vertical acceleration game, can even be done numerically(text) only, no gfx. :D

Joust adds multiple moving landing spots in the form of enemy birds, and your condition for "landing" changes to touching the targets from a higher altitude, and that is what becomes battle.

Here some old mockup geared towards Gamebuino Meta:


Since I´m looking at a higher res, might as well give a go on the GFX.
So I spent a week working them out before getting to code.

The very highest priority has to be the chicken motion and its controls, if this is not a pleasure to play, the game fails.
I carefully started by working vertical motion only. That is to be analog in a sense that there will be a rich variation of speeds, it can´t be Flappy Bird frenetic neither moon hoping, some balance must be found so that the players have some control on the motion arcs.


Gif is a bit slow, but not much. Seems like a nice speed so far

[JobLeonard]

Heyhey, a new fuedhq devlog, a new topic to subscribe to!

[fuedhq]

Got a good vertical motion going on, added a landing/take off frame too. You can also drop from platforms by pushing down.
Now the horizontal motion, I don´t want to have it analog as I suspect it will render the chicken hard to control, so I decided for 2 horizontal speeds for each side, slow and fast, if you are landed, walk and run.

While flying, on the exact moment you press flap, it reads left/right from joystick and add to horizontal speed accordingly.
Speed is like -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, each time you flap, you can step through them.

While landed, you tap left or right to start moving at those speeds, stooping or changing direction from speed 1 is fine, from speed 2, you will skid.

Both situations should connect, so if you land at speed 1 or 0, you land and halt. If at speed 2, your chicken keeps on running. Taking off is easier, the horizontal speed is kept.

Current version has autofire for flapping but I´m unsure of it, don´t know if I will keep it, probably.

Here 3 players moving about, 2 of them with a simple AI.



 

[fuedhq]

Added collisions that kill raiders, the empty bird flies away from screen.


The simple AI came out quite neat, I thought it was going to be way harder to code such considering the indirect controls.

[fuedhq]

As in Pegasus, when you joust someone, the warrior is bumped away and fall to his death. Pick him up in mid air gets you a neat score. On the ground they became a cross, which is collectible for some score, after a while, they either become an enemy that summons a bird to pick him up and get back in game or it becomes a carnivorous plant, instant death if touched.

I will keep that gameplay but players falling being picked up by another player will get you an extra life.
In my case, all warriors fall when jousted, the enemy will be a high score if picked up as the original.
The cross may rarely become a player, for an extra life, or more commonly become an enemy or the carnivorous plant. Enemy will work the same way, the plant will be a bit more hardcore as it can stretch a level to bite you up... can even catch fallen warriors mid-air. They will attack everyone but only munch the warriors. :D

Here a more advanced testing, I will try to record daily live dev updates on my FUED channel, so keep in touch.
Also, I sampled some of the Buzzard Bait sounds and placed them in (very sloppy), people who listen to it find it quite superb...makes one wonder how well done these sounds were made, specially on a machine without a sound processor.

[JobLeonard]

Nice! I'm always surprised at how quickly you develop this stuff, even if it is a bit more "low tech" than some other devlogs here

[fuedhq]

Yeah, using BASIC (GLBasic) makes coding simpler and its slow stigma is long gone early 90s.
It could be that, plus the fact I have being toying with game making since mid 80s I guess, always with BASIC.
But most likely I just had luck :D

One can now interact with the objects.
Players picking up mid-air falling other players gain a life, falling enemies score 100 pts
Enemies can capture any fallen dudes too, later I will probably make them harder each time they do so, or remove this.
Players can pick up crosses for 5 pts, after a while, it can become a player, an enemy or the plant, if it becomes the player, picking it up gets a life, enemy kills it, if it becomes an enemy, you can kill it for 15 pts.
Not yet fully sure about the score values but I had to have something.

Enemies also kill each other currently, but I will tune up its AI later so they take more care.
Added enemy gfx and coded their approach from the island, maybe it is a bit fast but came out quite nice.
Here some tests with plenty of enemies, it is quite a pinball.
 

[Beastboy]

Very nice aproach, i saw a documentary about this game on youtune, i think it was pat-man channel.
Good luck

[fuedhq]

@Beastboy Thanks!
I checked a few, also Joust 2, very underrated game.

Finally got to shoot part 4, had a lot of trouble with invisible stuff today and yesterday, but seems fine now.
I will text about it tomorrow, for now, here the new part

[fuedhq]

New one:




This and the other one were pretty much bugs being ironed out. Added all stages and their platforms.
I had a lot of trouble on chickens loosing player control and conditions to advance wave and stages, on the prime problem, I´m using a variable PLCT[] to dictate which player control method one is using, say keyboard or joystick, but I´m also recycling this variable for setting AI, say PLCT[0] to PLCT[4] are reserved for players and they go from 0 (key) to 3 (joypads), the rest deals with enemies and PLCT[]=5 means an unmounted chicken running away from screen, 6 is the standard dumb behavior, 7 is a chicken hunting their new cross born warrior. Problem arises when a player is killed as its chicken turns to PLCT[]=5, and making it come back, while sounding simple, was just horrible :D

The other problem, stage advance, was even worse for one has to deal with a lot of exceptions, say, what would happen if a stage is transiting and I kill another player? That sort of stuff.

Fortunately, all seem fine now. I need to work on the later stages where there is no ground (on the video, the waterfall stage shows an ocean where it should not be). Falling off screen is instant death, just as drowning. Needs to work the lava inside the cave and add proper burn animation. The waterfall needs to push player down and splash over one´s head. Approaching trotters should change as you get close to the cave, that is going to be a troublesome exception to deal, as well as figuring out where they come from inside the cave

After these little things are solved, I guess it will be time to add fearsome AI, probably 3 levels of enemies, as well as other elements and later bosses.

[bayersglassey]

The way player & enemies fly in from the background is super satisfying.

Also, QBASIC was my first language, so I did a double-take when I saw that bright-blue IDE background with blocky IF and THEN in the videos... takes me right back.
Never heard of GLBASIC before; their site says they support HTML5 too, which is pretty cool. I'm on Linux, so I rarely find indie games I can actually play. What do you think of releasing an HTML5 version?

[fuedhq]

It has been a while I haven´t tested the HTML5 output. I´m not sure it is in full condition nowadays, but worth checking. I will give it a go close to end of the project.
I can make a LINUX version but I think it will be 32bits. A friend here has a laptop with UBUNTU studio so I can give it a try there too.

[fuedhq]

Waterfall animations are in, all objects born/death sequences are working, enemies don't travel that long as you get close to the island, inside it they are born out of the lava, players are born from the sky, least the last stage players come from the outside of the cave (as camera is 180o flipped). Water pushes you down, fire born enemies burn you instantly, etc, etc.

Here another video, beware the popcorn sound, I will work that out later




@Jobleonard, now I know better why it starts so fast... bash coding, no pre production, now I have to twist myself to deal with a heck of a lot of exceptions, it will be worse to fit them in when AI comes into game

[JobLeonard]

Ah, yeah if you start coding without worries about structure and how everything fits together you can get a lot of things done quickly... until you can't 

[Beastboy]

@Beastboy Thanks!
I checked a few, also Joust 2, very underrated game.

I agree

[fuedhq]

Got into a little delay on this prod here chaps.
Having to relocate home busted my plans for somewhat 2 months, I'm just about to pick it up.
Should be back on it soon.

[JobLeonard]

You too? In August/September I was "between homes" for six weeks, living with my parents. You alright now?

[fuedhq]

Yep, new place, stuff is still half way set up but the "work" bits are functional.
Hopefully enough to release a couple games this years 

[JobLeonard]

whoop whoop!