... And the bonus ball is ...

27th June 2012

I only had 2 hours spare, which gave me some time to work a little more on Trance Sector, since finishing Escape from Zaphod  using the 3D construction kit last week (Hard work).. I took a look at the sprite data to work out what the ball's value should be, and created a frame table in which would indicate the colour for the particular bonus object. I created a few values to check the direction of which direction the ball should be bouncing. A few subroutines were also programmed in to get that ball moving according to direction. Yep, it bounced around the screen how I hoped, but was a bit too fast. So I slowed it down by adding a speed delay to it. I also created a sub routine that could cycle the colour of the bonus ball. The same was done for the frame type. Since I didn't want the ball colour and frame cycle to go too fast, I just had to sort something out to stop this. So I created a delay. Now the objects and colours are cycling to how I hoped they would. 

... and here's the result so far. :)

As you can see, I have a ball bouncing around the screen, but what use is it where there's no way of being able to touch the object to destroy it? Well, because of being short of time I had because of work. This will be resolved hopefully some time this Friday, if I don't get called or text into work that is :) The plan in general will be to get the bouncing ball to disappear if one of the seekers/missiles hits the ball. Whatever frame the ball last had will result 100 points, 200 points, 500 points, an automatic bomb to destroy all seekers or a lit up E-X-T-R-A (In which, when fully lit will award the player an extra life). I better work on the collision and checks for what's resulted from the ball.

Trance Sector - Continues

15th May 2012 

This week I decided to work more on the game graphics for Trance Sector I wasn't too sure what to draw the game levels with as I didn't want to experience another crash with MSCK. Funnily enough, I found that Charpad was unsuitable to build the levels, because putting the level objects (as single screens) was more difficult. Plus the type of tiles would have been too limited. So instead, I worked on MSCK V2.0 and hoping this time the program won't crash. I managed to rebuild the objects, opened my mind, and built 20 levels. That was Yesterday of course.I even did a new title screen, according to what was written on my little note pad, when I attended RetroVision 2012 Saturday, last week.

Today I worked on installing the new game graphics library into the game's source code, and updated the amount of pods for the player to collect. I even tested the whole game, hoping the library source wouldn't crash. Thankfully it didn't crash. After the 20 levels were fitted in to the code, nicely (Apart from some shield tiles which haven't been programmed yet) I tested through the whole game and found no problems. After I was happy with this, I worked on an ending tune using GoatTracker. Then I ported the music data to the game again. I tried to do some in game sound effects for Trance Sector using GoatTracker, but there were delays before a sound effect played. I think I should program my own sound effects instead, like I did with Sub Hunter and Sheepoid instead. It might be more helpful ;)

The last part of the day was programming the new title screen for the game. In which looks completely different to how I normally program a front end. I usually program a front end using a plain black screen with a logo on the top of the screen, with flashing text, and a scroll text at the bottom. That's nothing unusual. Instead, I decided to work on a more epic title screen, in which displays 1x1 char bricks forming the name Trance Sector on the screen, an upward scrolling ticker tape routine (Like Monty on the Run) inside the window, and also a sprite scrolling message at the bottom of the screen. I was unable to open the borders because for some reason, it kept flickering and delaying when the sprite was there ... So I left it out for the time being. The new title screen looks retro and hopefully the gamers will like it as well. :) 

More work on the game tomorrow or Wednesday. Well I have another 44 levels to build up, and probably add some brand new tiles as well, such as seeker switches. Also to get the shield working as well  ;)

Blackout!

9th April 2012

Quite a lucky day today. I had a little trick up my sleeve, which worked a treat. On Saturday I was struggling to get the whole set of lights go out in TranceSector, where the player could switch off the lights, but when moving across the screen. The lights are all switched on (Oh dear). . However, I came up with a clever little trick to solve this problem. I had 3 sprites spare, so I decided to use one as a ghost sprite (Trivia: A ghost sprite is a sprite which is being used, but is not visible in the game.).The ghost sprite was set at exactly the same position of the player's ship, but the Y-axis of the ghost sprite was positioned 8 sprites above the player's sprite. This was used to make it look as if the player is extinguishing all of the lights wherever it gets positions. Next. I copied and pasted the sprite/background collision routine to get the ghost sprite correcting the mistakes that were left to the player. Tested everything. It seems to working pretty good now.

Well, I got all of the lights to eliminate, but there is something missing. The concept of this game is simply to eliminate all of the lights in each level, without getting hit by the rockets that zoom towards you when you're spotted. There seems to be no detection of all lights being eliminated. So I added a routine that will check the whole game screen for any lights visible. At first it didn't work, but I found out why :). I made a silly mistake. After correcting it, I got the routine to work. Here's a little video of the game WIP 2 :)

I will be making some changes for the additional objects. :)

Blockers - They can destroy the player if the player crashes into those.

Compactors - These shall be converted into temporary forcefield prison cells. If the player touches the cell. It will be stuck there for a short period of time until it has been released again

Conveyor belt's ... Erm, well, they will be moving the player, although the player will be able to move over those.