Enter the Huntress

4th March - 11th March 2012

I have been enhancing too many SEUCK games, but I just can't really help myself when a good looking SEUCK arrives, I can't resist to touch it. Yet again, I have done it again. I really should have done more to Up in the Air this week, but this SEUCK really surprised me :)

Anthony Burns created a new game using the Sideways SEUCK mod called "The Huntress of Midgard", and the concept of the game was inspired by the nineties classic game, Shadow of the Beast, a classic arcade adventure which was by Ocean software and Psygnosis. So then what's the game all about? Well it is a continuation of Magess of Midgard. The villages of Midgard are in trouble by new forces of evil. The creatures of Morrigan. They are searching for the missing pieces of the holy talisman, so that they can run Midgard under their power. The Queen, Malexia sends in the Huntress of Midgard. She's out on a quest in which is to collect all three pieces of the holy talisman and bring peace back to Midgard. This is just a brief story as Anthony made a large story in the instructions file.

After taking a look at Anthony's game I was very impressed with the idea which he came up with. So the first thing that I did was composing some music for the game.

After I loaded the game in I noticed a trick not used in a SEUCK game before (Wondering if this was possible). The main player was split into 2 players, but you had to use both joysticks to move the object. To improve this situation in the game, I added a POKE into the M/C monitor to set up the correct stop positions for both player 1 and player 2, then bolted them both together using another POKE. Both player 1 and player 2 sprites could move about at the same time. I programmed some additional in game routines, in which would allow the player die (both players at the same time). How was this trick done? Well, I searched for the player getting hit routine, added a subroutine that would detect it and also added a routine where the collision with character 0 would kill the player instantly (Then disabled that after respawn.) The trick worked quite well, but I still had a problem with the player's starting positions. The legs were out of place at times. To solve this problem, I added a routine that would scan the death position of the player (Like I did with Action Def) and reposition the player sprites at exactly the same place where they were killed. This trick worked :).

Other programming that was implemented into the game was the removal of one of the scores. I programmed my own mock scoring system, which then gets stored on to the SEUCK scoring system. Also I added a routine in which the player could pick up bottles of potion or a piece of the talisman and award 1000 points. If 4 bottles were picked up, I made the side borders turn grey, prompting the player to use the smart bomb trick. Then I added a routine which detects the RETURN/ENTER key to activate the smart bomb trick (Which Jon Wells helped me with last year when I was working on SEUDS 2). To give the effect, I added a flashing border as well. I also added a routine that would fix the raster position, to iron out the top screen flicker, but it caused problems for the sprite positions. It moved the pixels up by one. So I left the raster position hack out.

The game has a brand new front end, get ready/game over/well done/end sequences, but for part 2 a correct pass code would need to be entered to see Anthony's excellent end sequence. Now for the final mastering. :) DONE!

Huntress of Midgard is available to download to you C64 at: The New Dimension

The sheep invasion starts - THIS WEEKEND!

Friday 10th February 2012

Believe it or not, we have finally finished the final full version of Woolly Jumper. It's quite a miracle that this game's finished and I will be taking a break from 6502 programming for a week or two before I work more on the Up in the Air project, and also a secret game to spring a surprise on folk for RetroVision 2012 on 5th+6th May 2012.

Anyway, I am pretty much relieved that Woolly Jumper has finally finished. The game has took a few months to produce. We had excellent graphics, I came across various problems with the game, which Shaun pointed out to me. We both worked really hard on this production rather throughout December 2011, January 2012 and the beginning of this month and finally we have made it.

So then what improvements have been made for Woolly Jumper, compared to the RGCD

cartridge version. Well for a start off the game consists of an extra 8 levels, in which Pepito the sheep's nightmare is even bigger and wilder. We have also added some additional in game features which improved the look of the game. I have Achim Volkers to thank for the ROL scrolling char routine support :). We also have added high score table, with name entry routine, new in game music for various levels. There is even a much better ending compared to the 16K version of the game. There's also a power up which will give the player a shield for a temporary time.

Shaun and I have been working really hard to bring a quality game production, although the size of each level's very short (But more difficult and challenging) but that couldn't really be helped. The idea was that each of the 16 levels were 32x blocks long, but the last level was one or two blocks less (but still hard enough). We have added as much challenging game play into the game as much as we can.

I feel that WJ feels like a game in which may have been commercially sold back in the late 1980's early 1990's. Budget quality wise :) First of all the upward scrolling intro, which gives a brief background story, game instructions and playing tips. Then on to the main title screen in which looks completely different compared to the 16KB version. I wanted to make a quality production - rather than rush everything (Like how I used to in the early 2000's - proves that quality beats quantity). The front end starts with the credits, then it displays the top 6 high scores (with names), followed by the power ups, followed by the animated enemies. The main game itself is exactly like the 16KB version, apart from the additional bug fixing and improvements I have worked on (Suggested by Shaun) and also the new protection feature (for the sheep), in which is activated for every Sheep Shearer collected. I added a routine which would reward the player an extra life for every 5,000 points scored to help the player get a bit further across the game. I also updated the rocket taking off (You'll see after you download the game). There's much more in store the full game, compared to the original title. We also added one or two surprises into Woolly Jumper as well which we will not tell you about. You'll have to play the game to find out what they are.

After finishing the main game it was time for the mastering. You may say that this is probably the biggest headache of them all. WRONG! The tape mastering was plain easy. As I used Visiload to do this (WHAT?!?!?!). Of course I didn't. I used the same IRQ tape loader as I did for the 16KB version, with some minor modifications, such as updating the load error routine, and using LDA $D020 : EOR #$00 : STA $D020 for the boot loader, then for the main IRQ loader I used LDA $02 AND #$0F STA $D020 to make it look like the Rack it Loader stripes scheme. The loader uses a different loader tune, which sounds sort of JCH like :). The loader still looks a bit like the Rack It Loader, but I can assure you - I did not use the original Rack It loader.

Mastering the the disk version of the game was somehow different but still very presentable. I wanted to make the production look like commercial quality program (although the game's going to be free). So I used an IRQ disk loader source which Martin Piper released in Codebase 64 (and his web site). I modified it to display Ste86's awesome picture and play music, while the data was being loaded from disk. I also added an auto-boot loader by using Joe Forster/STA's auto-start installer program. So that instead of having to type in RUN. Type LOAD"*",8,1. Like many commercial C64 disks :) If anyone tries to validate the disk, then they're stupid as the boot loader will not boot once validated or the *PRG file is deleted :)

Over all Sheepoid 2 - Woolly Jumper has been great fun to produce, despite some of the problems I came across during the production stage. It got sorted out at the end. I probably played this game over 1,000 times to make sure things were right, and finally we've made it. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who has been involved with this project, or who's looking forward to seeing the final version of the game released this weekend.

Woolly Jumper is NOW available to download for the Commodore 64

http://tnd64.unikat.sk/s.html

2011 - A year of C64 productivity

5th January 2012

Well as 2011 has passed by, 2012 is here. I want to reveal some of the highs and lows of the C64 and TND in 2011.

1000 Kung Fu Maniacs

Before 2011, I was working on Kung Fu Maniacs. A sideways scrolling SEUCK game, which Alf Yngve created. The game was bloody awesome. Who would have thought about making a beat 'em up with the Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit?. I worked on a new front end and also additional enhancements to the game. Jon Wells did the music and helped me out with SEUCK questions. This game turned out to be commercial, although one drawback is the score/panel looks too much like SEUCK, but I didn't know (and still don't) how to make a new look scoring panel. When it come to the tape mastering, I made a loader that looked a bit like the Wild Loader, using the usual TND tape loader source. 1000 KFM turned out to be a loved SEUCK game. :)

Sheepoid

First off the start of 2011 was remarkably busy on the TND production front, although there were hardly any game releases at all made by me. That was mainly because I have been working on a game for the Retrovision 2011 all format beer and gaming party. I wanted to make a game for the Llamasoft Jolly. That game was of course Sheepoid. Kenz took interest in doing a Psytronik Software release of this production as well, which I was pleased to hear about. Sheepoid took a few months to create and my fingers took quite a battering working on this production. Well, 2-3 months to be exact. This was because I had to enhance the game a lot and changes were imminent. I also had problems, which involved the explosion routines. The char explosions were assisted by Achim Volkers (Thank you for your help). The game worked pretty well. Extra features were added as well. Frank Gasking and C64Endings.co.uk took the reign of play testing Sheepoid. I was informed that I should make a *special* competition version of the game for Retrovision 2011, in which players will only play the game with one life only. More about this later.

Sheepoid loader and Disk Menu

Making the Psytronik version of Sheepoid took quite a lot of battering keys. We wanted a loading picture for the game, and Ste'86 jumped in to draw the loading picture for the Sheepoid loader (Thunderload). The tape loader used a the colour cycling method while loading str

ipes were shown. The cycle represented the no. of blocks loaded, and the flashing sheep represented

the loading progress. I also programmed the disk menu, and was very pleased with the result.

Retrovision 2011

I already wrote a blog in May about Retrovision 2011. This event was great fun. It took about an hour and a half to get to the pub where the event was held. I drunk plenty of pop, but only had one pint of lager. I didn't feel like drinking, but felt like gaming. At the event I met Retromarkie, Kenz (They were the first two people at the event), Frank Gasking and C64Endings.Co.Uk. I also got interviewed by Paul at Retro Gamer, and was shown some WIP games. Those of which were OutSpace, a C64 game which I played on Colin's laptop. Also an unfinished game of Aquarius, which I am looking forward to seeing finished.

Hyper Viper

As I was busy with Sheepoid, I also was very keen to do some tape mastering for Psytronik Software. Hyper Viper by Jamie Howard was an excellent port of the classic MSX maze game, in which you pursued around the maze, guzz

ling the snakes from behind. Scoff in between a snake and it will multiply. :) Interesting concept. I was involved with the tape mastering for this production. Yet again, Ste'86 did another nice job with the loading picture. I composed a tune specially as an exclusive for the game's loader and disk menu. I quite enjoyed this.

Sideways Scrolling S.E.U.C.K Competition 2011

After the success of the SSSC 2010, I decided to launch another one back in 2011. Unfortunately although people posted on forums, etc that they're quite interested to participate in the compo, only a few entrants made it to the compo. Only 3 or 4 different entrants had participated in the compo. The first two games by Anthony Burns and Alf Yngve, opened the competition, except for one person entered the competition. Most entries were quite good. One entry was

of course a fake entry. It may have caught your attention that DeffEnder by Pav Loda / Deff Soft was in fact the fake, which I wrote to see if anybody caught out the fake from the genuine entries. Well not many people thought DeffEnder was fake. The funny thing was, when the voting had taken place, DeffEnder made it 3rd place :). WHAT? I just couldn't believe that DeffEnder actually made it to 3rd place before I disqualified it as a one-off joke. Some people actually thought the fake entry was Escape from the Annoying Chavs. :) The competition wasn't all that successful but we had a clear winner, which was Alf Yngve's excellent Forgotten Forest. I didn't release the enhanced version of the game on to the TND web site because it was part of a SEUCK compilation (as an extra) for Psytronik Software (As suggested by Alf and myself).

Shoot 'Em Up Destruction Set 2

What a busy year it has been for me on the productivity slot. SEUDS 2 was actually the project that had me, Kenz and Ste'86 really busy. I had 5 unreleased SEUCK games to add in game enhancements and new front ends to. The games turned out really well. Super Tau Zeta was a pure epic of last year's Sideways SEUCK competition. There was also Bloodwheels. Games that Weren't originally launched the unreleased version of the game, and I was getting the urge to get this one done. Well, it got mastered with a new front end, some in game enhancements, such as linked explosions, and also a high score table. The next game was one of my favourites. It just had to make me laugh. 2000 Kung Fu Maniacs - Way of the Exploding Fish. This game was quite a pain to update and enhance, but I managed to get the power ups working, the end screen animation, and also the main game's animation. It was purely great fun to have enhanced. The power ups made me laugh, especially the spirit of un-chen as one of the power ups. The storyline really amused me. Trojahn was a quick update. Looked impressive. Finally Forgotten Forest, the game that had won the 2011 Sideways SEUCK Compo. This game had music with SID screams and also linked explosions and power ups, special effects, etc. The tape mastering and disk menu were done and everything was ready for release. It was great fun working on this compilation. Alf Yngve's got some more SEUCK titles for me to enhance in 2012.

Sheepoid 2 - Woolly Jumper

This game took a while, but working in co-op with S.Pearson, made this game a real pleasure to work on. The game was built for the 16K game compo run by www.rgcd.co.uk. The idea of the competition was to create a full game, that would fit a 16KB cartridge. It was hard work to create and I made an 8 level version of the game specially for the compo. To be honest it was something completely different to what I have been making in the past. I attempted my first ever platform game, and it wasn't too hard, nor was it easy either. After the game was entered for the 16KB cartridge competition, it had quite a good result. It came 6th place out of 11 - due to so many stunning entries :) I did a special release of a non CRT version of WJ on 24th December. Now I am working on the full game.

Contributor's games

I was involved with the music for contributor's games, which came in 2011. We shall start with the non-SEUCK titles.

Space Trip

Achim Volkers did a nice platform game, inspired by some classic C64 titles. The player could also enter the console and select which level to board. This console part was inspired by Paradroid.

I had the privilege composing the music for this game. The title music was inspired by many of David Whittaker's classic C64 tunes. Using DMC V4.0 I had a go at doing a Whittaker style soundtrack, which worked out well for this game. Space trip also had it's own exclusive loader, which I made using the IRQ Tape Turbo source by Martin Piper.

On the Farm 2

Achim surprised me yet again with another fun game. This time it was an idea which Wayne/Art Ravers come up with. It was a sheep herding simulator, in which you played a border collie (Shep) who has to herd sheep into the pen within a time limit.

Shep had to be adjacent to the y-position of the sheep and he has to bark at the sheep too. The music and jingles were of course composed by me :)

Happy Blocks (Loader game)

Back in 2010 I did a tape loader game called MooTilation. I did promise people a new loader game for 2011. It turned out to happen in December 2011. :) Happy Blocks was the loader game. It was inspired by a PC flash game in which you dodged blocks, and after a certain number of blocks passed, the game got faster.

You also had to avoid crashing into the blocks. I originally wanted to add a scrolling message to the tape loader during the loader game. Sadly due to timing errors, I had to do away with it, and just use a static title screen. The loader game turned out as how I wanted it, and it was fun to play during loading. The HB loader was first used on the RGCD tape version of C64anabalt :)

As well as being involved with Psytronik Software and a couple of competitions. I also been enhancing a few SEUCK titles. There was Grayhawk by Alf Yngve, a great shoot 'em up inspired by Firebird Software's Warhawk. The game featured some really old-school title music. The title music was inspired by Mastertronic's Sidewinder 2, but of course the composition for Grayhawk was my own work.

Purge 101 by Anthony Burns. This was quite a challenge for me to enhance. I imported this game into the SEUCK Redux source code then created a brand new front end for the game. All worked out quite well, and Anthony has yet another surprise in store for 2012 :)

Strike Team Alpha by Carl Mason. This game took most attention. It was inspired by the Commando and Mercs games. I saw ST 1 and ST 2 back in the late 1990's, and it was a breath of fresh air to see some new tricks and tactics added into the SEUCK. I worked on a brand new front end specially for this game making it look sort of like a commercial production.

Some stuff that never made it to 2011

Up in the Air

I was literally fed up with this game project and felt as if I was getting nowhere with it. Mainly because of the graphics update and packing / depacking everything. I even wrote too much code, whereas there's not enough memory for adding more code for levels, due to the graphics data taking over the memory. At the time I decided to leave the project for the time being and work on finishing SEUDS 2, Woolly Jumper (Which the full version of the game is still not quite finished yet), and keep all of the source stored in a safe place for just in case I decide to go back to the project (Although I don't really want to, to be honest. It's just another Sub Hunter style game, which is nothing new). :)

Evil Wizard 2

It's a game which was originally planned by Pingo to be ready for Christmas. Unfortunately the game's not ready yet. The main levels are finished, and the title screen's set, but we are now awaiting some music from a well known C64 musician to fit the front end.

Ultimate Stunt Boat Challenge

It's a horizontal scrolling Shoot 'Em Up which I left for several years now. To be honest, I forgot that I left this project behind. Whether or not I would come back to it is anyone's guess.

Tape Master Pro II

In 2010 I did a tape mastering utility, which used the autoboot IRQ turbo tape loader by martin Piper. Well, I originally planned to get this tool done during the production of Woolly Jumper, but I just didn't get around to it. It will be made some time in 2012, and I've got some extra ideas to add to the tape loader. Such as use of AND #xx or ORA #xx on the flashing border, and also to make the loader run programs that use KERNAL routines for keyboard input, etc. Which V1 didn't use. Sadly I never got round to fixing a BASIC run in the tape loader source, due to it always failing.

Woolly Jumper 16K - Finished :)

19th-20th November 2011


19th November 2011

As predicted Woolly Jumper needed a bit of tidying up and fixing. It wasn't a major problem, but a minor issue. It was related to the front end / get ready, etc. flipping to the next screen, showed visible mess. The mess was mainly to do with sprite positions not being zeroed before all sprites were correctly positioned. So I added a routine in which cleaned this issue up (Like with Sheepoid). As soon as that was fixed, I had one more little thing to fixup, and that was just the screen flipping showing mess for less than a second before starting the game. Well, I found a perfect way to solve that problem. That was to switch off the screen, using $D011 and then allow the IRQ interrupts to switch it back on again, so that you could see no mess during the process. The good thing about it ... It worked.

20th November 2011

Last night, before I went to bed, Shaun replied back to say that my updated version of the game code worked perfectly, but there was just one more thing that he suggested that should be changed. The Vaccinator sprite didn't really suit the game, so he decided that I should replace the Vaccinator with the Cattle Prod, a sprite which he originally removed. As the Cattle Prod was originally used as a deadly object. Now the yellow Cattle prod will give the sheep better fire power (bigger bullets) and the light blue drencher will remove the power ups which the sheep has.

Finally, the 16K version of the game is finished (I hope) and if it is, then the .CRT build file is ready to be sent to HeavyStylus and I can work on enhancing the game even more for the 64K version. I came up with ideas in which is to remix the existing levels, making them slightly longer, so instead of 8 levels we have 16 levels and also extended according to the levels in the game.

There will be NO blog updates for the 64K version, as I am going to work on it as a big surprise. But there are some plans for the enhancements in the game, which are top secret. We will not tell you what they are, but one thing for certain, it will feature a neat loading picture by STE'86, which he specially drawn for the production. :)

Those darn bugs

13th - 19th November 2011

Well, WJ didn't seem to be quite finished yet, as Shaun spotted a few bugs in the game, in which had to be resolved. After I moved the status panel at the bottom of the screen to somewhere else I ended with the player getting an extra life, instead of the level counter going up. This kept on happening during the level complete phase. So after updating this problem, another problem came, regarding the same status panel. The score didn't work properly. A simple mistake was made, and that was corrected.

The next bug was a major bug, Music. After the end of the level (The rocket) there was a droaning noise, which Shaun could hear, but I couldn't. So I found a way to resolve this problem, simply by creating a new instrument which silences the note and imported the music back into the compiled source. It worked a treat :)

The next bug was a minor one. On level 6, the sheep was walking on top of the snow on the barrel. This looked very odd indeed. I loaded up Arkitec and browsed through the utility to take a look at the value of the characters of the snow on top of the barrel. Then I removed those collision values, so

Shaun came across a major bug, in which the sheep died for no apparent reason, while it was jumping in thin air. The problem occured when the enemy sprites were all offset and still moving when not visible. So I had to program a little routine which compared to the position in which the player was. If the player's Y position was lower than the upper border, no sprite to sprite collision occurs. Otherwise, the poor sheep gets hit by the bad enemies. :)

The next issue was a graphic bug, in which level 2 kept looking quite odd. Well, the start screen. Some parts of the background was missing. Lawks. Not good :(. So I loaded up Arkitek to try and solve this silly problem, thus yesterday (Friday 18th November) I had an email back that the background still needed sorting out. So that I dealt with this small glitch today. I just hope that it is correct.

The final things were a couple of things which Shaun suggested to me to improve the game a bit. First of all, the falling power up / add. score objects could be seen leaving the screen below the status. This was originally intentional to me. Instead to make things better for the project I added a splash animation, for every time the collectable reaches the water. This makes a much better effect in the game. The other thing missing was the Game Over message, which has now been added. :)

I sent the new version on .D64 to Shaun to try out. If he's happy, then the 16KB build is finally finished :)

Could the 16K version be finished now?

14th November 2011

Well, I got up early today about 8am (As I am working an 12pm-8pm). Checked my email and found that Woolly Jumper needed a small minor fix, which was mainly to do with the rocket animation. The flames on the rocket looked pretty odd, as both used the same frame. So I called the second sprite frame table (for the flames) so that the rocket flame looks more accurate. The good thing is that it worked out quite nicely :)

I have also been told by Shaun some good pointers about the game. The shooting reminded him of playing Space Invaders. Where the game gets difficult if you miss an enemy. The falling whistle reminded him of Ghosts and Goblins, and finally level 6 looked really arctic, especially with the penguin aliens on the loose.

Hopefully now the 16K version of the game is finished, and I can then work on the 64K version (Which will be the same game, but with extra features) which I hope to release in time for Christmas 2011. To be honest I won't really take all that long to add the extra features. Probably a few days to be precise. After that's finished, I can finally take a well earned rest from this game project. :)

Fixing phase! ARGH!

13th November 2011

Okay then, most of today I have been working on trying to get the game to be finished. First of all some adjustments needed to be made to the game code. First of all, the front end logo needed to be updated as Shaun sent a much nicer looking version of the same logo, which I originally resized. That really made a huge difference. How on earth did I forget about Shaun's logo?

Most of today was a frustrating session. I kept getting more problems (or probably causing those in the game code). I adjusted the player's shield so that the player didn't flash, when it was wearing a workers helmet. I also updated the get ready text and positions of the rocket. The end of levels 2 and 3 looked very odd. I also had to fix the start screens for levels 2, 3 and 8. After fixing those, Shaun gave me an idea where scoring points (after shooting the enemies) should be based on the size of the bullets. So I added a routine that can work out how many points the player can score according to the following:

Weak bullet = 100 points

Medium bullet = 200 points

Mega Bullet = 500 points

Shaun didn't like the idea of having the cattle prod in the game, which caused the player to lose a life, so I removed it and replaced those with the other 3 collectables that are used in the game.

To finish things off, I added a routine in which drops a whistle to the central of the end platform. After the player picks up the whistle, a rocket will appear on screen, with yellow flames and pick the player up. I also had to find a way on how to get those enemy bugs moving in a different sinus wave to the other enemies. Well, the solution was finally found. I used Elwix/Style's WixBouncer tool, in which allows you to chose the sinus mode you want. Then you manually type in the start / end and length of the sinus. I then imported the sinus data into the source code. It made the pink bugs' move quite more different and interesting. Much better now.

Hopefully now I have sent a new .D64 to Shaun, we could say that this game is finished. If it is, then all will be revealed on this blog. The game will be sent to RGCD for submitting to the 16KB cart. Then I and work on expanding this game in time for a Christmas 2011 release.

Tried it on my C64C. It works great on a real C64 with joystick in port 2 :)

I've got the power

12th November 2011

Today's been quite a long session (Drinking lager, oops, no. Wrong!) working on finishing off Woolly Jumper, 16K version. I have been working on making some tweaks and improvements and also added some power ups to the game, which will enhance game play for the player. Especially when he collects power ups. I also added a random table so that we have different power ups appearing on screen. The powerups are as follows:

- Vaccinator (Power up fire power)

- Sheep Shearer (Award 500 points to the player)

- Drencher (Restore fire power to the weakest bullet)

- Cattle Prod (Avoid at all times, it will cost a sheep's life)

The firepower is something as follows:

- Tiny ball of fluff (Small bullet, slow)

- Medium ball of fluff (Medium bullet, moderate speed)

- Mega ball of fluff (Huge bullet, ultra fast)

I have also been working on upgrading the collision to see whether or not the player can respond to the stopping chars. Sadly this feature didn't work properly for level 8 (The great white rock) and it ended up pushing the player all over the place. This caused an unknown bug, which I don't really know what has been causing it. The level design for just the final stage needs a rethink.

Well, we are nearly there. Hopefully the game will be ready a week before the deadline.

We are on whistle blower alert

6th November 2011

It's just a short one today, because I have been working a very early 6am-2pm shift at my local distribution centre. And right now, I feel very tired, especially after going out last night. 5 and 3 quarters hour sleep (Although there was a party next door full of youngsters partying with fireworks). Anyway here's what has happened today.

I received an email from Shaun about an object which the player can collect, so it can move on to the next stage. Brilliant, that's helped me a lot. I imported Shaun's whistle (And painted it cyan) into the game source code. Then I programmed a simple box collision, where the player picks up the whistle. If the collision occurs, the rocket will appear on screen and pick the player up.

The second and final thing I did today, due to tiredness was added a little routine, to stop the player from holding the fire button, making the player constantly shoot, also to avoid the title screen skipping sensitivity.

Well, it looks as if the game is nearly finished for the 16KB cartridge compo. I just need to tidy a few things up, which I should hopefully get round to doing this week. One of which is to create random power ups through a timer, and also fix an additional sprite/background detection in which (during parts of the game) the sheep cannot walk through the rocks of level 3 and 8. If the game turns out to be larger than 16K then I'll have to compose some music for just the 16K version of this game, using the John Player. Toodloo, until Friday!

It's getting there ... :)

5th November 2011

Things are getting on pretty well with Woolly Jumper and I feel that I could be nearly finished with the 16KB CRT version of this fun game project. Well, estimated time for finishing the 16KB cartridge is probably between next week and 20th November 2011. I am dedicating myself to at least one hour to this project during my spare time all this week, as we are coming closer and closer to the deadline.

So then what has been happening today? Well, basically I have been concentrating on some minor bug fixing and also getting the enemies to roam across the screen with their new attack patterns. So how did I go around to working on those? It started with some experiments with sprites. Before I could build the sinus patterns, I had to work out the starting and ending position for where to put the enemy sinuses. To be able to do this, I did a little poke that would display a square sprite. Did a little maths to work out the: start and stop position of the sprite sinues for the top, middle, and bottom portions of the screen. These mainly took effect on the penguin ships, green alien saucers and chickens. The meanest enemy of them all were the pink bugs. The bugs have a different kind of behaviour compared to the three aliens (penguin, green saucer and space chickens) . The bugs shall also be appearing less frequently, compared to the other aliens.

After programming and storing the new sinus movements for each enemy, I restored the sprite/sprite collision and discovered a silly bug. For every second enemy shot, you could see an explosion appear again after the death animation had finished. That was one heck of a daft mistake I discovered today. To to fix that problem, I added a routine that switched off the enemy dead mode, so that the enemy is offset. I also made it so that the enemies don't appear on the screen, or move in a Y-axis if they are supposed to be offset - and it worked.

The last thing I did today was added a little ending to the game, for after the final level was complete. It was something too basic, but because of size restrictions, I was unable to do a very good ending - but the full game will of course have a better ending than what I did for this version.

The hobby project continues through to December after the .CRT version's finished!

Sheep enters a high risk site

4th November 2011

First of all, it was quite an embarrassing bug fixing session, due to the fact that I tried so much to try and fix a problem with the platform jumping issue, which Shaun pointed out. It turned out that I didn't need update the code by retyping the sprite/background collision detection. It turned out that I had forgotten to reset the timer which controlled the player's jump. How dumb was that huh?

Anyway, I imported the new graphics update of Shaun's into the game code. It looked much better. Shaun also did some very nice in game sprites as well. The sheep now wears a builders/warehouse high risk helmet when in Shield/Invinicibility mode, and the rocket now shows the sheep inside. Once the shield wears out, the loses helmet and is no longer invincible.

Hopefully either tomorrow or Sunday, I will concentrate on updating the enemy attack patterns, according to Shaun's diagram illustrations. Re-enable the sprite/sprite collision and then work on an ending for when the player completes the game. Just under 4 weeks until the deadline. ARGH! Hope I can make it :o(

Get ready for take off

29th October 2011

Arrrrgh! 1 month to go. Woolly Jumper's deadline is coming near, otherwise it won't make it to the compo on time. I have to be quick, but spare time has been cut even more due to my full time job. Actually to be honest, I will not be under pressure to get this game finished, as there isn't really much to be done.

Shaun has got back to me about how the game should be improved. For a start off, he thought that it would be miles better if I removed the colour washing routine over the status bar. So the first thing done earlier on this week was to remove that score. I made it yellow, but after yesterday's email. A yellow status bar looked very odd. So I changed the status bar to white. The second niggly thing was the way the sheep was dying. The speed of the sheep bouncing off the platform falling straight into the water looked very odd. So I slowed down the speed slightly, so that it looked less daft. :)

Shaun also mentioned to me about the enemy formations. Although I worked quite hard on making a variety of enemy formations, it turns out that those formations do not suit the game at all. Therefore it would have been better if I just let the enemies fly across the screen, but I will need Shaun's help to do a quick enemy formation for each group of enemies during the game. Oh ... hang on .... I just got an email from him to illustrate how the enemies should move. I guess I didn't need to use SEUCK again then :)

While I was waiting for Shaun's reponse, I decided to work on the level complete sequence in which the player enters the rocket, and then the rocket takes off with the sheep inside. Unfortunately I found it to be impossible to have the player's face appear in the rocket, as the player sprite overlaps the rocket's sprite. However to solve this problem, I just removed the player sheep's sprite after the rocket picks the sheep up. Then the rocket takes off again. I also added the animation at the bottom of the rocket where the flames are burning from underneath the rocket. The animation was pretty smooth and looked great on the rocket. It would have been great to have the sheep peeping through the rocket window, but the only solution which I can think of to this little problem would be to have two more sprites that build the left/right part of the rocket with the sheep inside. This will be up to Shaun.

Tomorrow after my 6am-2pm shift at a Distribution Centre I might rework on the enemy movement patterns as illustrated by Shaun's rough examples. Now I think I shall have a spot of gaming :)

Here comes the bugs!

22nd October 2011

I have been working pretty hard on improving Woolly Jumper. I captured the logo supplied by Shaun and loaded it up into Amica Paint. The logo's based on the loading picture logo by Ste'86. I then loaded up the Charwandler to convert the full sized logo which I received. BUMMER, loads of chars missing. Therefore it was impossible to have a proper logo. I did however come up with an alternative solution to the problem. I resized the logo in Amica Paint, so that it would fit all characters after conversion. Then I converted the characters with the Charwandler and succeeded with the conversion. I also imported Shaun's charset into the source as well. Looks really nice and chunky :)

The next thing I did was programmed the new front end. Looked quite nice, but it seems that the colours of the text looked a bit odd in grey (According to Shaun). Perhaps I should update this so that the colours are white. I also added a flashing "Press fire to start".

As soon as the little front end was done. I worked on building the start maps using Arkitek. I captured every single start map I created, then I used the Exomizer to compress each and every start map separately. Then I imported the source (and Exomizer decruncher) into the code. I feel that for the official release of this game, Magnus Lind deserves the credit for the Exomizer source.

The next thing I did was added some new enemies. The flying propeller bugs. They look kind of funny and suit the backwards. Then I worked on the get ready and level start phase. Now what did I do? Well, I made it so that at the end of each level, the scroll routine stops, and the player can exit the level by moving to the right of the screen. However, I still need to polish the end of each level by adding a rocket for the player to enter. Then the rocket will take off once entered. The player will then go on to the next screen. I also named the levels suggested by Shaun. Looks slightly much better, but for some reason. It's getting late now, so I shall pass another preview of this game over to Shaun and Heavy Stylus and do more on it some other time this week. Possibly Monday!.

Lucky Seven

8th October 2011

Today I have been importing the new level data into the game. While I was playing through the game, I noticed a slight glitch in the background. The last part of the platform looked garbled up. I originally thought to myself that it must have been a corrupt file during exporting from the .D64 to the assembly source. It turned out to be the case where I actually forgotten to complete the map data table, in which uses 255 blocks. So after filling up the block data table, all turned out well.

I also set up the colour pointers for level 7 and imported Shaun's awesome new explosion sprites. Then I inserted a customizable character set which I did myself in 2009. Well, I ripped it from Bomb Chase 2009 to be honest, but that's just a temporary thing.

Finally I have been working on trying to fix an annoying enemy explosion bug. For some strange reason when the second enemy gets shot, it first explodes then it appears at the top of the screen visibly exploding until the next batch of enemies come on screen. Really annoying stuff, but I shall one day get this glitch fixed up :)

Anyway a snapshot of level 7 for you :)