Scroll it the hard way

18th May 2012

Something more interesting to be added to Trance Sector. A 4-directional scrolling field. Well, that's what I have spent most of today's Trance Sector session with. I wanted to get the scrolling movement to move according to the direction the player uses with the joystick. I created a new counter which can check which value will indicate the direction for scrolling background field. Then I stored values of 0 - 3 into the scroll counter. Where 0 = Up, 1 = Down, 2 = Left, 3 = Right, then I added a routine that could check for what value the counter is and added subroutines, which would scroll the characters that formed the background field, according to direction. This took quite a lot of programming to get implemented into the game, but I still have plenty of memory of additional code, since sacrificing the logo to build a new title screen. (The logo will be used for the intro instead). My next task (Possibly tomorrow) will be to activate the shield for the player, for any time it hits a shield tile. (On later levels), then hyperspace (Warping) to a different area on the same level screen.

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  ;)

Trance Sector Preview :)

29th April 2012
Well finally I have a playable preview of Trance Sector for the Commodore 64. Last Friday evening and Saturday morning, I updated several routines so that the player's background collision was more accurate. I didn't even need a char row/column table for the new sprite/background collision routine. Also got the player to be trapped in a prison for a short period of time. The prison turns into a normal tile after the player steps on it, which was intended. I also got the player to move along the magnetic conveyor belts. Finally I added (for the first time ever with my game projects) a keyboard option. This is so that if a player hasn't got a joystick to plug into port 2, they can use Q (Up), A (Down), O (Left), P (Right), Spacebar (Fire).

I sent a build of the preview to a few of my C64 fans/friends and they were pretty much impressed with the work that was done so far. Alas, I had bugs reported which were silly ones. One of which I forgot to restart the game on the very first level after the game was over, and also the playable demo crashed after completing it. Also the player moved automatically after being released by the prison tiles.

Today I worked on making some vast improvements and amendments to the game. First of all I fixed the major bugs/issues which were spotty last night. I also made some graphical updates to the game sprites. I could not resist programming a little objects display routine, so the gamers know what the objects are - before moving on to the front end. I also added a pause/unpause and quit game function. Then sent the final build (I hope it is the final build of the preview) of the game to my C64 friends/fans to test the preview. So far it seems to be working great. I am really looking forward to showing this preview at RetroVision 2012's retrogaming, beer drinking meeting. :)

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.