Sheepoid - Progress so far

Saturday 27th January 2011

Bleatings everyone :)

This shall not be a big blog, as I have a little update for you - or probably a huge update of my progress with Sheepoid and some other news about this game. Just for now as there's not really any new designs, etc to show you but here's some stuff I have to mention about this game so far.

Well today I've mainly been drawing the sprites, and manually typing in the sprite frame tables inside the ACME cross assembler. But I could get more done later on today :) So far I managed to get 4 levels active - as I have been struggling with the Laser Zone char-style explosion routines, which thankfully were working correctly after a week or so. With special thanks to C64 programmer and TND's contributor, Achim Volkers. The explosions of the enemy are starting to look a bit like laser zone, but I added some additional enemy disappearance sprite, which was an animated diamond/star that shrinks (while the chars fly through the screen diagonally).

As well as the explosion effects, I started implementing random X-Y directional speed, delay and colour of the enemies (according to the levels which they are on) and silly 1-liners. This made the game feel very Jeff Minter like and ideal for a Llamasoft tribute game. The other things I added were the enemy types as well per level. I only have 4 levels working right at the moment, but there's plenty of time for me to implement all 24 levels of game play. :)

Today I have just finished drawing all of the sprites (From $80-$FF) using Cellux/Face's Sprite Editor V1.2. All of the captions have been typed down in the source code. I also extracted the Sprite Data and imported it into the source code, ready for compiling.

There's some other things I have in store for this project but I shall not tell you. You'll just have to wait. ;)

The Cyber Sheep are coming

Friday 7th January 2011

Laser Zone. What a classic game that was for the Commodore 64. It's quite a memorable little Arcade classic, which was on a compilation of crazy and really fun games, called "Yak's Progress" by Llamasoft. After playing Laser Zone, I came up with a nice idea for a tribute game. The game's name is Sheepoid, and last night I was just playing around with some raster splits and experimenting. Okay, so no game yet, but I ended up building a front end for the production instead. Probably a wrong move.

Anyway about the game. Laser Zone had two satellites in which had to blast aliens that appeared on screen before they reached to right or bottom surface and captured one of the satellites. The plan for "Sheepoid" is pretty much similar, except for that the game will have some differences. The starting levels may be quite similar, but the actual game itself will have some differences in attack waves - causing this game to be more zany and psychedelic than before. Instead of satellites, the player will be controlling laser powered sheep. Also instead of a small screen area being used. The sprites will use expanded positions. Therefore the game area's going to be pretty much big.

The official release date of this game is not really known as there's quite a bit of work to do, but I doubt that it'll take longer than 2 months or so. I will not be rushing on this game for a sake of a quick release, as there is seriously no point in rushing it for a sake of a quick release. Hmm. :)

When the game is finished, it will feature a variety of different aliens/psychedelic objects to battle against, wacky sound effects, bizarre get ready , level complete, life lost, game over messages, a possibility of an end sequence. Plus a nice looking psychedelic IRQ tape loader system as well. The final production will be uploaded on to my web site at: http://tnd64.unikat.sk.