+Gemintronic Posted August 16, 2012 Share Posted August 16, 2012 (edited) This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) http://creativecommo...icenses/by/3.0/ I'm entering the Neoflash Retro Coding Contest 2012 http://www.neoflash....pic,7435.0.html I've got less than half a week to complete my entry (contest ends on the 20th) I've already come up with a title screen kernel logo as required by the contest: http://www.neoflash....3.html#msg53073 Today at lunch I brainstormed a concept for the game: Boss Rush Schmup Style! Instructions: Press fire to shoot boss. Your HP bar is to the left. The boss has an HP bar to the right. Evade the boss mass cannon and fireballs. When you have depleted the bosses hit points a new round will ensue! Each round has a new boss with increased attributes including size, speed and movement pattern. If all your HP is depleted the game will end. Press fire at game over screen to begin a new game. Anyone who has seen the last boss of Nitebear on SleepyStreet will know what I'm going for here. Decided to name the game and main hero/player Cyber Willy in homage to Chilly Willy of homebrew development fame. As noted in my sig I've completed a Ludum Dare contest before so I at least have a taste of what 48 hour development is like. No, the contest technically isn't a 48 hour affair. I just completed a project so I didn't allow myself a huge amount of time for this contest Needless to say I've got a real chance of failing to meet the deadline. Wish me luck! UPDATE #1: Real screenshot of Neoflash shoutout screen! UPDATE #2: In-game mock-up (in code) UPDATE #3: Broken alpha demo (just to show things are happening!) UPDATE #4: Declared done at 11:50pm just before deadline! Special thanks to GroovyBee, RevEng, PAC-MAN-RED and Gateway for encouragement and SeaGtGruff for his new horizontal scrolling library! It goes without saying that without BatariBASIC and AtariAge this would never happen! A homebrew 2600 game from design to finish in a week! cwilly.bin CyberWillySource.zip Edited August 20, 2012 by theloon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted August 16, 2012 Author Share Posted August 16, 2012 Here is a mock up of what I expect the title screen art to look like: 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted August 19, 2012 Author Share Posted August 19, 2012 Okay, it's getting down to the wire. The Neoflash contest ends at midnight tonight. I only had a week to go from concept to art to code. Half of my friends said it couldn't be done. The other half said I'd try anyway! If I fail to complete then at least I tried. Any game making is a lesson and act of creation. If I succeed then a new little homebrew is born and BatariBASIC gets a little more exposure Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gateway Posted August 19, 2012 Share Posted August 19, 2012 Looks awesome so far! Good Luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted August 20, 2012 Author Share Posted August 20, 2012 The game is DONE! 8 minutes to midnight (deadline was August 20th). See first post for binary and instructions! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted August 22, 2012 Author Share Posted August 22, 2012 (edited) The reviews are starting to come in for my game. I'd say the feedback from reviewers is AMAZING! http://www.neoflash....8.html#msg53248 GAME: Cyber Willy What can I say? Yet another game for the 2600 where thin lines of pixels destroy huge blocky pixels. It's like breakout if breakout hated itself and desperately wanted you to kill it with fire. Cyber Willy (the blob of pixels on the bottom of the screen) only gets one shot at a time. The boss (huge pixels toward the top of the screen) gets at least 1 to 4 shots and a fireball constantly harasses you from above. The bosses bullets take forever to hit you and the fireball constantly requires dodging. This is akin to your grandparent and wife both throwing punches whilst you explain how the house was sold to pay off a gambling debt. If you do manage to whittle away the bosses hit points you are rewarded with a full screen command to "GO!" followed by yet another slightly dissimilar boss. If I wanted to "GO!" I'd simply pick the lock on my ex-wife's boot and take a steamer. Maybe the developer had to "GO!" and never finished fine tuning the gameplay. Who knows? What is clear is that this game wants you to unplug it and yourself if possible. There are NO hit point restoration bonuses at all. No level completion bonuses. You will eventually die either from daft movements or intentional self immolation in the fireballs path. This is the most realistic part of the game, really. Someday you'll die but if you play this game you can learn to not only accept death but welcome it! The developer claims that this game proves a complete 2600 game can be done in a week. I say it proves you shouldn't try. GRAPHICS: 0 If you can identify what the single colour blocks are meant to be on-screen your friends should take the car keys and bottle of scotch away. SOUND: 1 There's a little ditty on the Neoflash logo that can be vaguely identified as music. Although Katy Perry fans would identify the farting noises when you get damaged as music as well. GAMEPLAY: -1 Any game that can seamlessly advance from title screen to game over by itself should be considered a demo fit for a kiosk rather than a proper game. As long as that kiosk is also stationed on Venus and about to be destroyed by several asteroids. Edited August 22, 2012 by theloon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gateway Posted August 23, 2012 Share Posted August 23, 2012 So, my question is has the reviewer of the game ever programmed something in a week or less? The Angry Video Game Nerd has nuthin' on this guy! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted August 23, 2012 Author Share Posted August 23, 2012 (edited) So, my question is has the reviewer of the game ever programmed something in a week or less? The Angry Video Game Nerd has nuthin' on this guy! I offered to do more faux reviews but no one has taken me up on the offer. I get possessed by SeanBaby at times So far the feedback I've gotten is: * Abuadrand thinks it's "nice and quite tough" * Gateway, RevEng and Groovybee understand what extreme deadlines are like * PAC-MAN-RED gave a "like this" to my Neoflash contest logo. Coming from him that's a real complement. * mag.mo5.com notes that this game is a tribute to Chilly Willy and the time frame I had to complete it (less than a week) * allgamers.fr thinks that the flying fireballs are ghosts. They were the only ones to link (or even note) I provided source. * Filetrip.net has a member called Another World who (without a single peep from me) kindly mirrored my game * DCEmuUKs wraggster posted a description and link of my initial entry into the contest. * I had a friend with a near ADD personality actually play through an entire game without getting distracted or bored. I was worried about the pacing but that's a good data point. * Another friend noted the 8 increment hit point bars were confusing and felt either deceptively low or high at times. EVERYBODY but myself has encountered a quad headed boss but me! I made the dang game! So far I still have the high score (about 5000) Edited August 23, 2012 by theloon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted August 23, 2012 Author Share Posted August 23, 2012 The first real review is in and it doesn't look good: 6 out of 10! The reviewer thought the first boss was invincible and thus assumed firing was pointless. This is not a failure on his part but a failure on mine. Which means: * There should have been a better indicator than the boss hp bar to the bottom right * The GO! intermission screen was insufficient to indicate a new round (and a new boss) * The changes in boss speed, size and movement was insufficient to indicate it was a new enemy. Remember kids: Hard critiques of your work are SOLID GOLD. Use them as tools to hone your game making skills. 10$man's Reviews Cyber Willy Reviewed with Stella When I first started this game I thought, yes! This really feels like an atari game! I played for around 5 minutes and the game got rather repetitive. I think it could use more then one type of enemy or something. Also, you have the ability to shoot. As far as I can tell, shooting only gets your score up but in the long run won't help you in the slightest bit. (I think it was intended for this, but it's still a weird choice of a way to get your score up in a survival game were the enemy is invincible). So, let me break this up into Pros and Cons. Pros: Authentic. The game feels like an Atari Game Graphics. It looks pretty good as far as Atari goes Sounds. The sounds are ok as well Cons: Repetitive gameplay. You would expect some of this from a survival game (I made one too, and I'm sure mine is repetitive) Shooting for almost no reason. When you shoot it gives you a higher score, bit I think that would be better achieved through surviving for periods of time instead. 6/10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted August 23, 2012 Share Posted August 23, 2012 Its tough doing anything in a short amount of time. This is my entry for the coding contest held live at AC2012 back in April this year :- http://www.formatwar.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=282 It didn't look like that when it went to the judges . But it was good enough to be placed 3rd. Then in the evenings last week I made a version of the Mars demo on the jag. That was effectively written twice. The first version was written in pure "C" which ran at a very low frame rate (we are talking one frame every few seconds) but it proved the concept. The display routine was then recoded to run on the GPU which along with other optimisations along the way gave it a major speed boost. It can be fun to set yourself time based challenges just to see what can be done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted November 25, 2013 Author Share Posted November 25, 2013 Cyber Willy got some longplay love from our very own Dragon Princess Yushira http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z82jUsF2fUQ&list=UU3j2VCt0q1ldL3NeM-n7nMg She actually managed to get to a SIX CANNON boss. That's farther than anyone I know (including me). I'm not even sure it's possible to beat such a boss. UPDATE: Just tried to comment on the video and was blocked by a message that tried to get me to use a real name and sign up for some additional Google+ feature. No thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinMos3 Posted November 28, 2013 Share Posted November 28, 2013 UPDATE: Just tried to comment on the video and was blocked by a message that tried to get me to use a real name and sign up for some additional Google+ feature. No thanks. That happens to me all the time. It's really annoying. I just refresh the page and it gets rid of it so I can continue what I was doing... until the next time it happens. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Random Terrain Posted November 28, 2013 Share Posted November 28, 2013 That happens to me all the time. It's really annoying. I just refresh the page and it gets rid of it so I can continue what I was doing... until the next time it happens. I do this: atariage.com/forums/blog/120/entry-10189-how-to-get-rid-of-the-use-your-real-name-youtube-popup/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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