Cruiser-X 79: Fear the Freeze

 First of all, a quick note to let you know that during may, this project will be paused for a short period of time to make way for my 4K game for the Craptastic 2022 game development competition. It is unknown how long it will take me to write my 4K game. I'm hoping about 2 or 3 weeks or so.

Secondly some fantastic news about my levels. Saul has been working on updating my level designs, and they have been turning out pretty well. I am really pleased with the overall result from levels 2-5 (As level 1 needed nothing updated). Out of all of the levels so far, "Level 5" is my personal favourite.

On Thursday and Friday, I started with designing Level 6 and yesterday I did some more updates to the level and finished making the map. Level 6 is a freezing cold stage in which contains plenty of ice. I used Level 3's graphics data, as there was a nice cube in the space background, which looks pretty good for this level. The colour scheme uses cyan, light blue and white. However, Saul might decide on some different colours. The player ship is cyan, but it still can be seen (thankfully). I wanted to make level 6 harder than level 5, so more deadly background was added.

Today I worked on adding the music and putting the test level together. The music which I have chosen for level 6 is a rendition of one of my trance tracks, Ice Dream, which I originally did for Scene World about 2 years ago. I did a PC remix of the same tune (See: Nucleo448 - Trance Remix) and also in Nucleo 448 as in game music. I liked this composition a lot, so I decided to do another version for Cruiser-X 79. 

The level data got exported as character set, tiles, map and music data. Then crunched through the Exomizer V3.1.1 (in V2 mode). The level table got modified once more. I compiled and run the game into VICE, and played all the way to level 6. Argh, I think I have made the level too difficult with all those big walls, which the player has to avoid. However, I will give those a tweak next time I go back into the game project, and of course before I work on level 7 (unless of cource Saul has done it already). However, I do like the ice-blue theme in that level and the wonderful in game music. 

That's it for now with Cruiser-X 79. The project is now paused for a short term until after my 4K Craptastic Compo 2022 entry is finished and submitted. Then I'll be back onto it.

Cruiser-X 79: Having green fingers

 This week was almost a week that wasn't for Cruiser-X 79. I was using the weekend to make a V1.2 of the SEUCK Title Screen Maker. However, I wanted to improve the utility and created a V1.3. Basically SEUCK Title Screen Maker is a utility that allows you to create a brand new front with a nice logo, with optional hi score table and music in the background without needing to code. Then replaces the old SEUCK title screen with something more colourful. After I thought I was done with V1.2, I replaced it with V1.3 by fixing the music player bug, and SFX missing channel bug. Everything else was working and I was very pleased that it was final.

If you fancy trying out the SEUCK Title Screen Maker V1.3 please check this link below:

https://richard-tnd.itch.io/seuck-title-maker

Anyway, this blog entry is NOT supposed to be about the SEUCK Title Maker. Instead it is about “Cruiser-X 79” and its progress. I had a week's break from it last week, as I felt a bit unwell with a heavy cold. It is more or less the Easter holiday, and I thought I should work on level 5 for the game. I have been thinking about it for some time. So far I had a level based in space, a level inside an enemy base, a diamond world, and also a bubble world. What was in store for level 5? … Vegetation.

Yes, that's right. I wanted to make an inner alien base, which also contains vegetation. Due to the limited number of collision characters. I did not want the vegetation to become a deadly background. Instead, they are background. I also created some brown zig-zags as the main background, rather than space. This is because I want that part of the background to have a static effect while the rest of the background was scrolling over it.

The design of level 5's base is based on the very first level. However there are to be some form of vegetation/plants bordering some parts of the background. The enemy base is also a mixture of green, brown and grey. I also wanted to add some boundaries, in which the player should avoid crashing into. Loads of them in fact. After I scanned through the whole map in Charpad. It took me about a couple of hours, if not more to carefully construct the level. Unlike level 4, the boundaries which the player can crash into are thicker and nastier.

After feeling very happy with the level design. I saved the background graphics and then exported the character set, tile and map data as a raw binary file for compiling and testing in the game. Before I compile and test everything, I decided to work on the music. I loaded up Goat Tracker V2.76 (enhanced version) and I worked on the main in game music. It is a thumping in game trance soundtrack. You can hear the whole tune (without the sound effects) in the video below. I think it fits into the level of this game quite nicely. The music was then imported into the game project source.

I modified the build parameters of the game code and the build batch file. Then I compiled and executed the project and gave the game a test run. The result turned out great.

If level 5 is cool. Wait until I work on Level 6. It's going be a cold themed level that is for sure. For now, enjoy the game play video of level 5 and also the music uninterrupted by SFX.

Cruiser X-79 - Popping the bubbles

 On this rather chilly week, I have been working on the fourth level of Cruiser-X 79. Level 2 started where the player entered an enemy base. Level 3 was a crystal space world. I wanted to do something slightly different and quite unusual for level 4. 

I wanted to make level 4's stage "Bubble World". I replaced all of the character sets that formed the stars and transformed them to form bubbles. Next I wanted to make some alterations to the enemy bases. The previous three levels had straight plain bases and seem to be too much the same thing. I wanted to try and make the bases look slightly different. So I edited the characters that formed the plain bases, and added shades of two multi-colours to them.

After carefully working on the shades, I felt that something should be done about the parked space ships background, which the player can shoot. Wouldn't it be nice if those alien ships in the background are changed to something more interesting. I replaced the chars that formed alien ship chars into robotic bugs. As a bonus the player can blast those. 

After editing the chars, I got myself busy and worked on constructing the game maps. I started off by clearing the whole map of the previous level. Then edited the tiles with the updated characters and built the bubble world. After I finished designing the bubble world, I imported everything into my game project. I also created additional Exomizer commands to level crunch the new graphics for level 4 and then I adjusted the level parameters in the game code. Then I compiled run the game in cheat mode.

I was playing through all of the four levels, but I realised that there were two things wrong in the game. The first was that the player and the bullet did not die after shooting the deadly tiles that formed the high light bricks. The second problem was that level 4 did not play the correct in game music. It played level 1's in game music. It turned out that I did compose level 4's music in Goat Tracker V2.75, but it didn't get exported to the game project. After fixing the music issue, I edited the game code to allow collision detection with the rogue char (242). Then I made the player die if it hit that particular character, or remove the player's bullet if that character is shot.

The overall result for level 4 looked great, but really could have looked better. I passed Saul the 4 levels I constructed along with the preview of the game in action. 4 levels done, 12 remain to be built - hopefully another 1 or 2 levels should be built next week.