Out with a bang

24th + 25th August 2012

Yesterday and today I have been working more on the Trance Sector C64 game project. This time the end screen (As level designs will be the next phase :)). I spent most of today and yesterday programming the ending. I started off programming a routine in which displayed the screen background. A timer was added before the next scene had taken place.

After a slight pause, the explosions around the factory take place. A little man appears on screen. I added another pause before the next scenario, in which he runs to the space ship. Then yet another pause followed by the movement of the ship. Another pause, and something really cool happens - which you have to wait and see when you play the game.

I added an upward scrolling routine and added a subroutine that would do line spacing for the end text - so that it was much easier to read. I decided NOT to have just a plain black screen with nothing else happening and just a scroll text. So I decided to add some action behind the scroll text. I won't tell you what it is, you will have to wait and see when the game gets release.

I am very happy with the final result of the game's ending. It looks quite good, and hopefully it should get some good marks from C64 endings as well ;). I worked really hard on this ending, the way I wanted it to be in the first place.

Now all there is to do is work on all of the levels, make a few tweaks, beta testing and final phase fixing. Then hopefully this game should be ready in time for 29th September 2012. Stay tuned.

Into space we go

Monday 20th August 2012.

Missed us? Oh, I bet you did. I was on holiday for 2 weeks. Anyway this weekend I got started on working on the end screen for Trance Sector. Nothing has yet been programmed, but I am aiming to start on the main programming of the game ending hopefully tomorrow. So then what has been happening this time round? Well simply graphics, graphics, graphics. I came up with an idea in which was to get an apocalyptic ending for the game.

On Saturday I loaded up the Multi Screen Construction Kit on my 1541 Ultimate 2 device (Yep, I received that Monday last week and it has been a MAJOR distraction to me. Hahaha. Great piece of kit.) I loaded up the MSCK to draw the end screen (Oh I already said that), but I had to use the existing charset and I still had chars free for this exciting finale for the game. I drew a few stars then I drew a green ground using a single char (Nothing else was required). Then a factory was drawn. It took me a while to work on the factory itself. I added a little detail to the top of the factory, simply by giving it some pylons, and wires.I put the whole screen together and it looked great.

What about today? Well, I have been drawing a few more sprites, in which I felt would suit the end screen. I drew a few sprites which consist of a little man. The general idea for the little man is to simply appear from one of the doors of the factory. Then jump into a space craft and get the heck out of there, while the factory's exploding. I drew a few frames of the player's space ship which was difficult for me to draw. I took a look at a screen shot of Armalyte to give me inspiration. The space ship looks quite similar, but isn't the same as the commercial game. I didn't even rip the sprite out - that'd be bad. I added some flame animations to the sprite.

A second scenario has been planned, which has the player's ship going into deep space and escaped the planet. Then throws a mega bomb onto the hostile planet to destroy it. Since I didn't have enough chars in MSCK to draw the planet. I used 4 sprites for drawing the planet for the finale. Also a few frames for the game sprites. Starting to look quite good - I haven't even programmed the end sequence in yet - but I will start on this tomorrow. :)