Sunday, 31 July 2022

Cruiser-X 79: A touch of glass

I am back in action working on Cruiser-X 79. The next level is once again based in space. I wanted to make another ice-themed level for this game. I loaded up level 6's map in Charpad V2, and created a brand new map from it before adjusting the character sets to make a rough design.

Well, Level 14 is still ice themed, but this time round, it is based in space, rather than inside the original base. I wanted to make some glass windows for the base, so that it looks as if it is some kind of glass-ice base. Also I adjusted some of the background charsets to make the base look slightly different. Yet again some more deadly obstacles with an incentive have been added. This time the obstacles/full blockade is a further distance than the shield. It is up to the player to pick up the shield and try to fly over the blockade otherwise the player will die.

After completing my rough design of the game map and altered the character graphics. I went onto working some music. This time, I decided to do a spacey themed tune. It is still up-tempo, but quite moody. In some parts of the tune, there is one part which reminds me of the theme tune to the 1980s TV show, Street Hawk. But of course the music in the game is definitely not that.

After finishing the music I exported all of the charset, tiles and map data into the project source code, and then compiled and run a new D64 with level 14 added. I am very pleased with how the music turned out during play of the game build. As for the game graphics, it is just temporary until they have been given the magic touch by Saul.



There are only 2 more levels for me to design before I go back to the game code and make some minor improvements. The project is shaping up really well. I am confident that this game will be finished and released some time this year.

Friday, 15 July 2022

Cruiser-X 79 vs Spore

 Well then, another week nearly over, and the rough graphics designs and maps I have been making are close to completion. Today I focused the mid morning - afternoon developing level 13 for Cruiser-X 79. The idea this time is based inside another base, which contains spore. The spore will not be deadly for the player ship, but there are to be quite a lot of obstacles for the player to watch out for, such as the usual high walls.

There isn't really much I can talk about, where it comes to this level. Except for that things look a bit messy at the moment. However S.C should hopefully be able to tidy things up with my rough level map design.

More music has been done for this game, and yet again another up tempo soundtrack, but this time more moody, but still trance like. 



Thursday, 14 July 2022

Cruiser-X 79 - Ultra Violet

 Wow, there has been quite a delay since I last did my last level design on Cruiser-X 79. Well, it was due to working between other game projects. I had the PONG jam, also Alf Yngve's Captain Ishtar project (Which is nearing to completion). Finally a secret game project I was working on for an upcoming covermount for Zzap! 64. Unfortunately the game project has been very problematic so close to the deadline. 

Anyway, moving on forward to Cruiser-X 79. This time it is level 12. It is also the return of the vegetation zone, but this time, I called it "Ultra Violet". This is because the game uses an ultra violet blue scheme instead of green. The idea sounds quite weird but the colour scheme has actually turned out quite good. Also yet again, the music for the game is trance music, similar to the style of level 5. I have added less walls for this level, as the enemies for this stage are getting quite harder and faster.





2023 at a glance

2024 is here, and 2023 has been a really quiet year on the production front due to everything that had gone back to normality. The year has ...