Building pipes

7th June 2011

I originally started to do some graphics for the "Pressure Pipe" game yesterday, but for some reason after saving the VICE snapshot in V2.23, I ended up with VICE crashing. So today it was back to the drawn board - Literally :) Okay, don't laugh. We do make mistakes I must however admit. Anyway, today while I was listening to some C64 media on the "Armalyte" CD, and Remix.Kwed.org, I have decided to work on the in game graphics and character sets. I had second thoughts about designing everything on Multi Screen Construction Kit, as it would take me longer. Also I had feeling that VICE may have a popup which could shut everything down.

I loaded up the cross-platform tool, "Cuneiform" and worked on the charset and graphics data. Then saved everything and exported the stuff in PRG format. Once I exported the .PRG file and imported into the .D64, I loaded up Jon Well's Multi-Screen Construction Kit and then loaded up the D64 with the graphics charset. It was then time for me to design and save the objects data, which I did. I had to play around with some of the graphics, as they didn't quite look like how I would have wanted those. So after a few alterations, I succeeded with it. Now all I had to do was for the screen, put everything together. Well, yet again, I succeeded with that. A screen's built and stored, and here's my result for the first level. Maybe I could do some more level designs later on in the project. The programming of the game will be more important now I have a graphics mockup ready for the game. I just need to paint some balls in a Sprite Editor (Might do this tomorrow) and then start programming the game.

Here comes Mario :)

5th June 2011

It's official. Mario is coming to the Commodore 64. Okay, I fibbed there. I bet that caught you attention huh? Well, I guess so, who else would be reading this? So then, I have a week off work this week (as I have to use up ALL my annual leave before 30th June 2011). I decided to work on a brand new game project, which should hopefully be a free download from my web site once finished and tested.

This time round it's a new genre puzzle game (or probably not new) for the good old Commodore 64 called "Pipe Pressure" (Probably would sound a lot better if it was called "Pressure Pipe". You decide for yourself :o)). The concept is a very simple concept, which could probably become an addictive puzzler if all goes to plan. The idea I come up is a very simple concept and was sort of an inspiration from those PC flash games you tend to get on line.

Anyway, the concept is pretty much straight forward. (Yawn). When you start the game, a series of four balls of a different colour will appear on to the screen for a few seconds. You must then memorize what colour balls should go into which pipe (indicated with arrows). Then you get to play the game. You have to race against the clock to get 40 correct coloured balls into the pipes within a certain time limit. To increase the confusion. There will be additionally different coloured balls appearing. If none of those match the ones which you had to memorize. The user would have to throw those into the disposal chute at the bottom (simply by pressing the fire button). To make the game idea more confusing if a wrong ball ends up in the disposal chute, or a wrong ball enters the pipe. A life will be lost. At the moment, it is planned to have 10 levels, but if I find that 10's not enough, then levels can increase later on in the game. Tomorrow, I shall work on the game's graphics. Then maybe later on, I shall program the game.