C64 :: Whoosh!!

Here's a screenshot taken about thirty minutes ago with some "real" attack wave data in place and the status bar pretty much working as it's meant but on test pictures - there's also a video to see it moving on YouTube:

C64 :: GR9 under way

Okeydokey, so i posted to Facebook, uploaded video to YouTube and mentioned it on a couple of forums whilst forgetting my own dev blog... the new C64 project is under way and called GR9 Strike Force; it's another horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up, being written for Retro Reunited and the overall theme is more current than most of my previous games. According to the finite "research" i did, the GR9 Harrier is the model in service with at least some of our military right now.

Here's that video i uploaded:



The status bar has been drawn and installed, along with a six by six character area for a digitised picture - the idea is that at the event someone'll win a door prize, be photographed making themselves look a plum and be inserted into the game as an avatar during play and on the loading screen "live". Today was spent writing a very specific converter that takes four blocks of 24 by 48 multicolour pixels and converts them into a six by four character block in the status font, two sprites with the extra sixteen pixels that are in the lower border and six high-res sprites that are horizontally expanded and used as overlays to give a total of six colours for the image.

And yes, the code running in the video already has the upper and lower borders open and is handling the masking as sprites leave vertically itself to within a couple of cycles - of course, nobody'll notice these things unless i bloody point 'em out [mutter, mutter!]

C64 :: Armalyte menu sorted

The disk menu for Psytronik's release of Armalyte was finished yesterday; i recycled the loader from the Mayhem In Monsterland menu (try saying that three times when you're drunk!) and at Kenz's request added keyboard-based selection since i hadn't even noticed the option in the original!

C64 :: More menu manipulation

Yup, i've been asked to do some more disk menu coding for Psytronik, this time for the release of (wait for it...) Armalyte! How could i refuse, it's one of my all-time favourite games f'crying out loud...! Anyway, the brief was to produce something similar to the original disk menu and Kenz sent over a lovely mock-up with the text nicely placed (i changed the position of two words so that one of the raster effects was closer to the original) and this is a fully-functioning menu that just lacks the loaders for when something is selected.

Oh, before some smart-arse says anything, the code was written from scratch without once looking at the original, even the colour tables for the bars were worked out by grabbing screenshots and squinting - i even had to create half the numerals in the font since they weren't there on the original and even managed to get a couple of sprite overlays onto the raster bars in order to enhance the Psytronik logos that took over from Mr. Thalamus in the top corners (it's been ages since i did anything even approaching timing-specific demo code, that took a bit of remembering on it's own...)



There's been a little progress on Co-Axis 2189 an' all (the code itself changed a few weeks back but the tile re-colouring happened just a few days ago) - it now has a full colour-per-character scroller as opposed to the colour-per-tile one it was running previously and the fourth level's backgrounds are in but for the moment are running with attack wave data from the third as test. Here's the "before and after" images and pause for just a moment to consider how bloody hard it must have been to pause the game on exactly the same frame twice like that!!

C64DTV :: Blok Copy DTV released!

Further to my previous post, Blok Copy for the C64DTV has "officially" been classed as done and dusted; i've literally just written it up for the main Cosine website, added a news item to Oldschool Gaming and uploaded an entry over at the CSDb. Phew!

Thinking about it a little bit, i'm not sure if this counts as the first DTV-specific game - there's a mod of Boulder Dash using 8BPP graphics, but in this case i wrote the game code as well as did the visuals so it's some kind of first! Anyway, it's got a superb tune in by Sean "Odie" Connolly called "Sporting Chance", some 8BPP graphics i'm quite pleased with and plays pretty nicely too (i hope). Here's a screenshot and enjoy!

C64DTV :: Blok Copy just about done!

Just a quick update really, i've just removed the loader and included the two 16K 8 bits per pixel fonts into the main file (the beta version is still under 17K when compressed) and a couple of days ago Sean talked me through a work around to get the music playing correctly after compilation, so Blok Copy is ready apart from the final beta testing. Yay!

C64 :: copy of more blockage

Well, as promised here is the video footage of Blok Copy... and the cryptic nature of my previous post might be explained since it actually runs on the C64DTV version 2 upwards, using an 8 bits per pixel display mode. i didn't quite get all the cosmetic glitches out and the music (by Sean Connolly and to date unreleased) has a small hiccup when it starts because the EMS compiler seems to have an issue but... well, it goes at least!