March 2021 Cruiser-X Progress Update #2

 27th March 2021

A couple of weeks ago I had left you with where I last left off. It was mainly based on the power ups based system. Now 2 weeks later, more work gets done. Last week, I finished off fixing the SEUCK Title Screen Maker disk, by fixing a bug in one of the example games (Which wasn't the fault of the title screen maker).

This session was mainly based on level setup. Of course I may not have the level graphics yet for level packing, etc. First I have to set up different sound effects for each bullet type the player carries.

I can still start on setting up the level scheme and enemy selection. Last time I managed to get all enemies to appear in order of sequence. Today I have been making a sequence for level 1 of the game. This is now based on the colour scheme table read, and also the alien selection table (based on levels).

After setting up the level routines, the enemies are able to fire bullets but the bullets do not collide into the player. So in order to fix this, a subroutine is programmed in to read the X, Y co-ordinate range of both sprites, and if inside the collision area. The player will die, unless a shield is in place. Then the player respawns.

Well, that looks good, but not really good enough. When shooting at aliens or shooting destructable background characters, The player should score points. A subroutine reads pointers for the player's score, lives and level. Then it copies it to the score panel on screen. I decided to do it this way this time round, because it is a way to prevent the player cheating by freezing the game with the Action Replay cartridge and editing the score/lives value with the screen editor. I cannot code protection routines, plus I cannot be bothered with those anyway :)

The enemy scoring should be based on the enemy sequence value that is used. I set a new table which creates the new score values for each alien, after it has been shot. The values are based as 1-5. Where 500 points is the maximum score which the player can score. Shooting background and collecting power ups also gives the player some points.So can the activation of the player's smart bomb (Which is triggered with the fire button).

The player's lives indicator also needed to be updated to decrement, and when lives have reached 00, the player will lose the game, and GAME OVER commences. Of course even if I was updating score, lives and level pointers (or restarting the game) I would need to update the score panel via a subroutine.  I am happy that it all seems to be working.

Now on to one final problem. The alien spawn sequence is set based on the chosen level, the enemy bullet can now kill the player, the score panel is working. The final problem for today - the aliens are firing too rapidly. How can that be solved? Simple, before randomly selecting the enemy to shoot a bullet. A delay pointer, and delay expiry counter should be set. Adding one of those makes the enemy fire bullets less rapidly. There is a chance I could make a table like with the scoring table, where I could base the enemy firing rate. That might be some time next weekend. We will have to wait and see. But for now, here's an updated video of my work in progress.