Stay Frosty, Part 5

Entry posted by SpiceWare July 9, 2016

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Nathan and I had a discussion about the fire color, nose and melt trail:

Nice work! I still need to get back to the sprites on this.

Question regarding the fire: can their color be cycled to give a firey effect (in addition to animation)? I'm assuming the fireballs have to be single colored.

Not sure which I'd rather have - the nose or the melt - if one can be kept. I think I'd go with the melt though. Fits with the theme of the game better.

Thanks!

Yep, the scan line with the ice are timing constrained, though I think the scanlines above the ice could multi colored.
If not, the color can be cycled.

I agree on the melt and came up with some ideas to make it happen on my drive in to work this morning. I won't have time to try it until Tuesday evening.

Color cycling for the fireballs did not pan out, we'll see that in the next update, though the idea of changing color above the ice would eventually be used to great effect in Stay Frosty 2 as seen by these early renditions of the ice chest and carrot:

My ideas for the melt trail panned out and only used 1 byte of RAM:

FrostyMeltY       ds 1 ; 76543210                       ; 6 = Melt on level 0                       ; 5 = Melt on level 1                       ; 4 = Melt on level 2                       ; 3 = Melt on level 3                       ; 2 = Melt on level 4

The melt trail is drawn using missile0 so FrostyMeltY is stored into ENAM0 then bit shifted to the right before being used for the next level. When I pointed out "One tradeoff is that Melt is only visible when the snowman is on a platform." Al replied "I think it's fine that it's only visible on the platforms. It would look funny, otherwise, in my opinion."

I'd also put forth a summary of game ideas. Some ideas made it while others, like the differing jump heights, did not - and that one was probably for the best

ideas for the game:

Putting out fireball melts snowman. A melted snowman can't jump as high. Collecting ice rebuilds snowman, restoring jump height.

Referencing the platforms as A, B, C, D then E for the bottom section - one of the levels has Platform A that's too high to normally reach. Putting out the 2 fireballs on Platform B causes Platform B to become an elevator platform. Putting out the fireball also = melting = reduced jump height, so must delay clearing the ice blocks in C, D and E until after eliminating fireballs on B.

Platform could be both elevator and side-to-side moving.

If you get stuck then RESET will restart the current level at the cost of a reserve life. If playing the last snowman then RESET restarts the game on level 1.

Moon = no auto-melt, only melt if collision with a fireball.

Sun = auto-melt, rate determined by how much of the sun is visible, effectively giving a time limit on the later levels.

Double Jump?

Sun melts ice - melted ice does not rebuild the snowman as much as non-melted ice.