It's Christmas ... Time to Follow that Starfysh

25th December 2017
 
First of all, Merry Christmas (Happy Birthday to me ;o)) and a Happy New Year. This will be my final Blog for 2017, and I have decided to talk about the production of my LATEST game release Starfysh. This is basically a horizontal scrolling shoot 'em up - which is not a SEUCK game, although I have released some enhanced SEUCK titles as well today.

Starfysh is a simple 4-level scrolling game, in which Earth has been severly damaged by an alien battle. Humans and dogs have been transported on to rescue stations. The stations are now being attacked by aliens. You are a commander of the Starfysh Elite. Your mission is simply to battle through 4 different zones, fighting the aliens. After you reach the end of one stage, you'll move on to the next. This game has no particular power ups, but it was inspired a little on some classic games like Hewson's Subterranea, and Mastertronic's Star Slayer. The player can be controlled using a joystick plugged into port 2. That's the fun part. Now for the production notes:

Programming

The game was programmed using C64Studio, while I had a lot of free time spare between October - November in the evenings, and weekends (Excluding Sundays). The game consists of only 4 different maps which are quite large and caused me to play around with moving data to different areas of memory. 256 tiles in fact. All levels were transformed from bitmap format to charpad, using the map importing option. At first there were some technical problems. There were too many tiles and chars. I wanted a limit of 256 tiles/chars. The tile + charset compression option was a very good help.

Graphics and Design
 
I managed to fit 3 levels in, but adding the fourth stage was really challenging.  Each level was squeezed down using the Exomizer level/memory compression mode (exomizer.exe -l mem $xxxx source.prg -o dest.prg. The example decompression source was used to extract the compressed graphics source. (Charset, tile set and map).

Before I had the game sprites by Shaun, I created some test sprites of my own (Which were created in Sprite Pad, and then imported into the C64Studio source code). The sprites later got imported into my little weekend SEUCK project 'Space Crumpets' (Along with test sprites for Cruiser X-79, which I also drew ages ago). Creating the sprites wasn't much of a problem, but moving them was quite a challenge. I could have used the Alien Formation maker, which I wrote about a year ago, but I didn't want to make this another X-Force type of game. Instead, I worked hard on programming sprite movement patterns, based on timing and sense of direction. Some aliens will just move across the screen, but some aliens will move in a different formation. Also, unlike X-Force, I added alien firing. I also wanted to do something different to the game. The player should have a shield at the start of the game, or every time a life is lost. Shaun came up with an idea, which was to create a damage count before the penultimate death for the player.

Shaun did some new sprites for the game. The sprites were designed and created using the Shoot Em Up Construction Kit. Shaun used this editor for sense of a purpose (Not for creating a SEUCK game this time). The sprites were imported inside sprite pad. Sprite animation had separate subroutines to animate at different speed. Shaun's sprite example in SEUCK had to be followed. This was so that I could match the actual speed of the alien sprites.

Designing the front end with logo and scroll text was pretty much straight forward. Shaun sent me some bitmap mockups, and I was able to port them to C64 charset and screen format, using CharPad. This helped me a lot, however the title screen data had to be split into two separate charsets. The reason being was that manually creating the HUD design was a really difficult and painful task. I had to find a way to cheat and save time doing this. So I captured first the text charset snapshot, which included the HUD design. Then I capatured the main title screen presentation mockup. I imported all of the graphics assets into the source code, and programmed a new front end, and a working score panel, which uses the HUD. EXCELLENT!

Music

Sound and Music was done using GoatTracker V2.7. The in game music style was slightly inspired by some tunes from the demo scene in the very late 1980's - early 1990's (The Dutch USA Music Assembler/Voicetracker era). This time round I didn't want to make any techno/trance music. I wanted to try a different style. The title music was a slight remix of one of my older tracks, I originally composed in the 2000 year. (Space Techno I think it may have been called). I made the remixed title tune sound more disco style, rather than techno. For the up scroll ending music, I went for an epic space ending theme.  Sound effects were also created using Goat Tracker.


Mastering (Tape+Disk)

The final mastering of the production. Before I could do that I asked Shaun if he was able to make a loading picture. He suggested that I contacted JonEgg. I spoken to JonEgg and asked if he was interested to draw the loading pic, JonEgg was. However Shaun drew me a temporary loading picture for the mastering - also just in case there was no loading picture at all.

I decided to do the first master, using my pre-built C64 tool 'Tape Master Pro V3.0'. Before I could do that I imported the assets 'Loading music', 'Shaun's picture' and game, and used a black screen with thin dark blue loading stripes scheme. This was Shaun's suggestion. A good result. However, when I was on the 1541Ultimate 2 page, I discovered that someone else used Tape Master Pro V3.0, on a C64 game, but the loader caused a few problems. I contacted Martin Piper to find out, and he introduced me to a new version of TapeToolBuild.

I had to recreate the tape loader using the TapeToolBuild source in scrollermusicloader.a as the source code had no ability to display a loading picture or use any additional code I would have wanted it. So I re-programmed some of the features from the Tape Master Pro V3.0 tape loader (The flashing text, scroll text, picture display and PRESS SPACE option). I also created my own source files to import/relocate the game and picture data through a PC. Also a custom loading stripes scheme. The result turned out how I wanted it.

The disk loader was pretty much straightforward. I used the exact same loader as I did for Let's Invade (A Space Invaders game, which I wrote last year). I placed a loading picture and music for Starfysh into the game. Bolted a TND intro before the loader. I chosen the latest intro I created earlier on this year (Rippled Dreams), and added a brand new tune to the intro. I imported the main game and used Excess' Dir Master V7.1 in VICE to change the load address of the main game to $2000.

Eventually I received an email from JonEgg, which he attached a new loading picture for the game. I loved it. :). This replaced Shaun's loading picture, but I felt that Shaun's pic should still be used. So I made a timed splash screen which quickly display's Shaun's pic and run i through the Exomizer.  Not a bad result.

I showed the Disk + Tape version of the game. He suggested that the disk version should have loading stripes. He wanted dark blue loading stripes. I tried implementing this feature into the .D64 version of the game. Sadly adding the function to the IRQ loading code LDA #$06 : STA $D020 : LDA #$00 : STA $D020 caused the Exomizer decruncher to crash instead of decrunch. Instead I replaced the border flash with INC $D020 and DEC $D020. That made a huge difference and the program worked absolutely fine. :)


Starfysh can be found and downloaded on to your C64 1541Ultimate2, Turbo Chameleon, CCS64, VICE or whatever at:

THE NEW DIMENSION - GAMES PAGE - STARFYSH

other presents (new releases) can be found at:

 THE NEW DIMENSION




Also, to support SDIEC users, the game has a kernal loading option (With stripes), but you still will be able to listen to the loading music after loading has finished.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, Enjoy the presents, see you in 2018 and have a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Back with a STING!

7th March 2015

Okay, so last time, Honey Bee was left alone for a bit in order to get the main Trance Sector Ultimate finished in time for GubbData. Since I have nothing else to do for Trance Sector. I decided to move back on to finishing off the final version of Honey Bee. Would you like to know what has been happening so far this month? Well, fear not, here it comes.

Last time when I was working on the final version of Honey Bee. I imported Steve Day's status panel into the game code, and worked on the new front end, made amendments to it and flipped the screen, added the game sprites. The style of the front end is pretty similar to what I did for Woolly Jumper, except for it is on a light blue background, with a static colourful effect on the scroll text chars.

After I was happy with the new front end, I wanted to add an intro sequence to the game. So I designed the intro background (as well as the end background) using Jon Well's Multi Screen Construction Kit. Then captured the screen to import into the source code. The background was basically the outside world. Similar to the in game graphics. Honey Bee comes on to the screen and introduces himself, and asks for help from the player to do a job for him. He also declares himself to be a very clumsy bee.

After completing the intro sequence, I decided to work on the end sequence. Where Honey Bee meets queen bee. After successfully completing his task. He gets a big surprise. Which I won't tell you what it is. You'd have to wait until the game is completely finished. ;)

Finally the End Screen was complete. I decided to work on the high score table name entry. Once again, it is the same type of joystick controlled name entry. The screen looked rather boring at first, as I did that many times. I decided to add a bit of fun animation. Where you have 8 Honey Bee sprites whizzing across the screen, while wrapping downwards. This made the name entry screen look more attractive.

Since the Hi-Score routine is now finished. My next job this week will be to create a BONUS game, in which involves a horizontal background scrolling trick, some random rocks, and some gems. This is so that Honey Bee can collect objects in order to score points, increasing the possibility of gaining extra lives.

After that, if there's still enough memory. I'll be making sound sound effects and add an option for in game sound effects as well as music. Followed by the final testing and disk + tape mastering. Hopefully by the end of this month Honey Bee should be finished, and released.

Keep watching my blog to find out what happens next.

X-Force is out!

31st October 2014


Over the past few months or so. I have been working hard on my first ever horizontal scrolling futuristic blaster in co-op with Saul Cross. We are very pleased with the overall result. X-Force is finally finished and has been released on the Commodore Format Archive Power Pack tape 63 project. If you want to know where to get it from. Here's the link:

Commodore Format Archive - Power Pack 63

or for the Trance version on Disk or Tape image, please visit this page below:

The New Dimension - Games-X

What is this game all about?. Well basically it is a horizontal scrolling shoot 'em up, in which you have are on planet Darx. You were mining for minerals in which could be used in the future to build a shield to protect Earth from future alien invasion. Unfortunately, after a hard day's work you decide to fall asleep in your X-Force ship. Suddenly a mother ship approaches over the X-Force fighter and beams it up. Assorted aliens carry you out of the X-Force ship and seal you into a large glass cell. After you wake up, you find yourself trapped. Rather than panic, you unzip your jacket, and reach for the inside pocket. You pick up your laser and blast yourself free. Alarms start going off. You find your X-Force fighter ship and flee off to the exit. As you escape the alien HQ, the aliens follow you ... big time.

Talking about the tape loader:

The first version of the game uses the CF Special tape loader, which I created exclusively for the Commodore Format Archive Power Pack project. I also turned this loader system into Thunderload 7, on the latest TND contributors releases. In which uses the TND logo, and a bit extra programming.Darkland used Halloween themed sprites over the scroll text, whereas the game Rabid Robots used animated stars.

The second tape loader for the second version was in fact a rushed done job today. Since there was no loading picture available for the game. I decided on doing a very simple loading presentation. I took a look at Mastertronic's Dynamix tape loader. It used a simple loading screen with a black border with light blue thin loading stripes. So I decided to base the idea on a similar style. The X-Force logo, with credits. I used Martin Piper's usual turbo tape loader source, worked on a quick tune, for loading and then put it all together. Boot loader with black and red thin stripes, and main loader with black and dark blue thin stripes. The loader plays some trance music in the background, quite similar to the Trance Sector loader theme tune.

The front end:

Saul had originally sent me the front end graphics and suggested that I should use raster bars over the text. I always hated coding raster bars, due to the fact that I have to spend a lot of time timing them. Sometimes I can hardly see the flickering of each raster on screen since I used an LED TV for a monitor. The raster bars scroll up through the text giving a nice effect. Luckily the effect turned out pretty smart, but thankfully the raster bars got fixed by NTSC fixer, Dirk Schmitt.

The music:

There are actually two different music versions of the same game. The first version features the music by Feekzoid which was originally written for horizontal scrolling shoot 'em up, Breakthrough by Jon Wells. After playing the game preview, I was really desperate to hear the news about the game becoming a full release. Sadly it never happened. So I asked Jon nicely if I could use the music for this game. Permission was granted. The second version featured music composed by me. It featured thumping trance sound tracks in the game.

Playing the game:

Using a joystick in port 2, you must guide your X-Force ship across 16 different underground zones of the hostile planet Darx. In order to escape, you must cross through each treacherous zone. Each zone is heavily powered by laser gates, which will switch on or off. You won't be alone, as the aliens will be ready to ram into your ship, should you or an alien crash into each other. Or you crash into any power gates or other background, you will lose a ship. If you have more than one ship at your disposal, at losing a ship. You will be able to quickly construct a new ship. Otherwise if the last ship explodes, you will die.

 


During the journey through each zone, there are pods with some form of mineral in which will help you improve or reduce the abilities of the ship. The coloured pods are as follows:

Pink - Single bullet power up/power down
Green - Double bullet power up/power down
Blue - Power up shield for a short period of time
Yellow - Warp distance activated for a short period of time
Grey - Avoid those at all cost, it will cost you a life. It's a deadly mine.

At the end of each stage will be an end of level boss. You can either kill it (requires 30 hits) or let it move past. Should the boss spot you, it will fire lasers to get you out of its way. Each levels boss has a different sequence of firing lasers. If you destroy it, an extra life will be rewarded. Should you let it pass, level will complete, but you won't receive any extra lives.

The worlds:

Saul Cross suggested that for each level each world should have a BEFORE and AFTER theme to it. The first and second worlds contain the mine theme, but then enters the ruins. Level 3 and 4 takes you through the ruins, to a technological world. I do remember asking Saul for some worlds based on crystals and vegetation. Level 7 has a nice crystal world, and levels 10 and 11 has a world of vegetation. The final level is a final mine before the player can escape. The colour schemes for each level were set according Saul's example maps which I received near to the time of the submission deadline for the Power Pack 63 project.

Inspiration:

X-Force was inspired by Hewson's Subterranea, where as the enemy boss stage was inspired a bit by Powerama by The Power House and Hewson. Although Powerama was a vertical scrolling shoot 'em up. Some alien ideas were inspired by Gradius/Nemesis by Konami.