Omnimaga

Calculator Community => Other Calc-Related Projects and Ideas => TI Z80 => Topic started by: AngelFish on October 02, 2010, 12:51:56 am

Title: Builder
Post by: AngelFish on October 02, 2010, 12:51:56 am
Here's the beta release of Builder! I know everyone has been extraordinarily eager to get advance copies even though I haven't really announced that it even exists before now ;) Run it with the Asm( tag from the home screen.

Note: I'm just looking for feedback. Builder was not designed to be a full fledged game, hence the bad graphics and and gameplay. It's a test bed for routines I'm planning on using in a couple of other projects that ARE being designed for interesting gameplay. So, any optimizations anyone would recommend for the overly commented source would be much appreciated. At one point I actually had the game under 2kb, but the scoring system put it to where it is now.

EDIT: How do you insert screenshots into posts?
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: meishe91 on October 02, 2010, 04:00:43 am
I'll check this out :) As for screenshots you can either just upload the .gif or put the .gif on a file hosting site (like {AP}'s RFG Image Uploader (http://img.removedfromgame.com/)) and then put the URL in [img][/img] tags.

Edit:
Tried it. Could you explain the game play and all? I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing really or anything.
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: AngelFish on October 02, 2010, 04:33:00 am
The basic goal is to last as long as possible before your life bar runs out. You start out with 96 Life. Dropping a block (2nd) reduces your life by one while letting a ship past reduces your life by ten. To prevent you from simply holding the 2nd button down and automatically getting the highest possible score, the "crane" is shifted a random number of places to the left or right every time you press the drop button. Your final score is [conveniently] the number of cycles the code went through before you lost. Pressing Clear at any time exits the game.

Here's a quick screenshot from wabbitemu. The actual game runs faster than what is shown.

(http://img.removedfromgame.com/imgs/1286008091-Builder.gif)
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on October 02, 2010, 09:43:49 am
Nice, I'Ll have to try this out when I have some time :)
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: JosJuice on October 02, 2010, 10:02:33 am
Pressing 2nd while a ship is onscreen makes the crane move a bit (or quite a lot if you hold the button) without dropping a block. I don't know if that's intentional or not, but I find it a bit odd. Other than that, nice game :D

edit: typo
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on October 02, 2010, 10:07:39 am
Yeah this is intentional actually.
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: AngelFish on October 02, 2010, 03:21:14 pm
Pressing 2nd while a ship is onscreen makes the crane move a bit (or quite a lot if you hold the button) without dropping a block. I don't know if that's intentional or not, but I find it a bit odd. Other than that, nice game :D

edit: typo

As DJ said, it's intentional. The movement routine runs whenever the 2nd button is pressed without consideration of whether or not a block is dropping. Do you think it should run only when a block is dropped, though? That's a really easy thing to change.


EDIT: Rather than create a new thread, I'm simply going to post the screenshot for SpritEdit here:

(http://img.removedfromgame.com/imgs/1286048341-Hex.gif)
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: JosJuice on October 02, 2010, 03:24:40 pm
Do you think it should run only when a block is dropped, though? That's a really easy thing to change.
Yeah, that would be good.
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: AngelFish on October 02, 2010, 03:53:50 pm
Here's the modified source and Assembly.
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: meishe91 on October 02, 2010, 04:19:51 pm
Ah ok, that's what I thought. Was just making sure since you didn't really give much of an explanation. It is a pretty cool game. Good work.
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: AngelFish on October 02, 2010, 04:23:30 pm
Thanks. Oh, and by the way, a perfect score is approximately 2190.
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on October 03, 2010, 04:42:46 am
Hey nice sprite editor you posted there. I assume it does all levels of grayscale?
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: ztrumpet on October 03, 2010, 03:35:10 pm
That's a unique game, and very cool.  I'd recommend putting a ClrHome at the end of the game. :)  Nice job! ;D
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: AngelFish on October 03, 2010, 05:58:08 pm
Hey nice sprite editor you posted there. I assume it does all levels of grayscale?

Yep. The last few seconds of the screenie show the implemented greyscale. I'd post another that shows what you can do with the greyscale, but Wabbitemu doesn't seem to be perfectly emulating the program and some of the buttons aren't working, although they do on the actual calculator.
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: Deep Toaster on October 03, 2010, 05:59:29 pm
Here's a quick screenshot from wabbitemu. The actual game runs faster than what is shown.

(http://img.removedfromgame.com/imgs/1286008091-Builder.gif)

To speed it up, you can go under Options and change the frame rate to something lower. That way, it wouldn't have problems in many browsers.
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on October 04, 2010, 01:41:03 am
Hey nice sprite editor you posted there. I assume it does all levels of grayscale?

Yep. The last few seconds of the screenie show the implemented greyscale. I'd post another that shows what you can do with the greyscale, but Wabbitemu doesn't seem to be perfectly emulating the program and some of the buttons aren't working, although they do on the actual calculator.
Strange, you may want to report this to BuckeyeDude in his topic, with the Windows OS you are using.
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: AngelFish on October 04, 2010, 02:12:02 pm
I'm not sure it's Wabbitemu that's the problem. SpritEdit is loaded with so many features at the moment (48 different tools) that it's within spitting distance of the 8kb RAM limit.
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on October 04, 2010, 03:40:50 pm
I see, but recently someone reported another issue with Wabbitemu behaving differently with his program than the real calc. BuckeyeDude or Spencer may have broken something in recent versions x.x
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: Builderboy on October 04, 2010, 08:52:05 pm
Very well made in my opinion.  It definetaly is lacking in terms of gameplay but from your first post it doesn't sound like that is what you were looking for in the first place :P  What are you working on?
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on October 04, 2010, 08:54:30 pm
Mhmm suggestion now that I think about it: I think the thing at the top should move no matter if you are dropping blocks or not. it might add more challenge to the game. ALso make it move more often as the game progresses so difficulty slowly increases.

Also I think some weird things occurs when it's on the complete left of the screen and it randomly goes out of it.
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: AngelFish on October 05, 2010, 07:28:44 pm
Mhmm suggestion now that I think about it: I think the thing at the top should move no matter if you are dropping blocks or not. it might add more challenge to the game. ALso make it move more often as the game progresses so difficulty slowly increases.

Also I think some weird things occurs when it's on the complete left of the screen and it randomly goes out of it.

Well, the difficulty increases so slowly because it doesn't increase at all. I never added that feature. But I could have sworn that the screen jumping was fixed. Looks like I'll have to take another look at it. Thanks for pointing it out.

 What are you working on?

A game called Black is my primary project at the moment. TI-Explorer, which basically lets you look at every area of addressed memory in the Calculator, is taking shape very quickly though. I'm debating whether I should continue a game called Swing, which isn't terribly promising, or the development of a physics library that was kind of killed by Zedd :P
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on October 06, 2010, 01:08:16 am
I wonder what are the Black and Swing games?
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: AngelFish on October 06, 2010, 12:49:42 pm
Black is for the moment top secret ;D
All I can say is that I'm not sure Axe is powerful enough to completely code it. I'll have to learn ASM to do parts of the game.

Swing is kind of like 2D Indiana Jones meets Mario. It's a sidescroller where you swing around on vines and kill enemies in a Mario style environment.
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: yunhua98 on October 06, 2010, 01:03:54 pm
that sounds really cool!  keep up the good work!
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on October 06, 2010, 01:44:31 pm
Black is for the moment top secret ;D
All I can say is that I'm not sure Axe is powerful enough to completely code it. I'll have to learn ASM to do parts of the game.

Swing is kind of like 2D Indiana Jones meets Mario. It's a sidescroller where you swing around on vines and kill enemies in a Mario style environment.
Ah ok, well I wish you good luck. Hopefully you can find a workaround in Axe to make Black (or when you are ready to announce it or leak some info, you can ask for help)
Title: Re: Builder
Post by: ztrumpet on October 06, 2010, 05:37:22 pm
Sounds like a neat game.  Good luck! ;D