Goat game

[freewheel]

This version just crashes when I try to run it.

 

I think if you have a nonstandard config you need to give us the config file - or make a .rom file.

 

Crap you're right, thanks for pointing that out. Here's both files. *slaps head*

 

You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me. AA will not let me upload a .cfg file extension. You know, those things we use to play a lot of the games that this entire community revolves around?

 

I'm just being stupid and can't remember the syntax for generating ROM files at the moment..

goat.cfg.zip

goat.bin

Edited November 2, 2014 by freeweed

[catsfolly]

Looks good. Nice ending! Well done.

 

Has the fall background color changed? I found it harder to see things.

 

I like the game over screen too, but I don't know who that guy is...

 

Catsfolly

[freewheel]

Fall has not changed. What things are hard to see? The bone and pumpkin? What about the goat? I'm a bit iffy on that stage as well; this is the sort of feedback I'm wanting. Although I guess one could argue that harder to see makes it a bit more challenging, but I'm not a big fan of that concept. Seems cheap and almost like cheating.

 

The game over screen is a callback to a classic 80s game. But the guy has a trucker cap on, so it's the farmer. Consider it a bad gamer's in-joke. I don't want to spoil it quite yet, for anyone who will get it and laugh.

Edited November 3, 2014 by freeweed

[intvnut]

I'm just being stupid and can't remember the syntax for generating ROM files at the moment..

 

Just include the extension ".rom" when specifying the output file to AS1600. ie. as1600 -o foo.rom -l foo.lst foo.asm

 

Or, if you leave the extension off, it'll make both .rom and .bin: as1600 -o foo -l foo.lst foo.asm

[freewheel]

Gracias. You told me this weeks ago and I've been meaning to fix my compile/assemble/run script. Now I'll just always have the .rom handy

 

 

goat.rom

[mthompson]

I like the way this game is evolving. The kick timing seems good. The progression of seasons reminds me of Frog Bog, but in this case it indicates real progress, not just time passing.

 

One thing I noticed is that it's possible for the goat to be a little too high to kick a black object, but the object can still kill you when it gets beneath the goat. Is this on purpose?

 

Very cute ending to the story!

[+Tarzilla]

Finally has some time to test. Kicking feels "right".

 

When the goat gets hit, maybe push the goat back a few pixels and have the black object change direction 90 degrees up or down to basically show it bouncing off the goat and going straight up or down off the screen. The ending screens are cute (I can't place the game the Farmer is based on, to me it looks based of the Space Invaders side art) things like that are quite often missing from a lot of homebrews, excellent job.

 

In later levels I'd like to see obstacles like bales or such on the background so you have to manoeuvre around them instead of just gliding over like you can with the grass.

 

Also, the level change once you read the end of a level is too abrupt. Maybe a little tune, have the goat dance, a message "Level Complete" then switch to the Season indicator screen.

 

Great progress.

[+Tarzilla]

Also, it might be ok if the top limit of the goat is about 6 pixels higher (overlapping the score) it would look better when trying to line up with a block object at the top of the playfield

[freewheel]

Many suggestions added. I do love how the goat kinda rocks back as he falls now. Great idea! The rock just drops off the screen right now - it's better than before but I'm not sure if I'm 100% happy. I may tweak with this a bit. Maybe have the rock bounce off and towards the farmer. I'm limited in what I can do with the animation here. Top of the goat will now overlap the score. I did 6 pixels because I'm feeling uncreative. Seems too high to me - maybe 4 would be better - but let me know what you guys think. It definitely opens up the game a bit more.

 

To make fall and winter more challenging, I definitely would like some tiles you can't walk over. Just not sure how to implement the movement code at the moment without seriously mucking things up. I want to avoid too much collision detection handling as it'll either slow things down, or lead to glitches. And yeah, the stage endings are VERY abrupt right now, because there's nothing there yet. That whole part is just roughed in for later.

 

The ending screen is gonna make *someone* laugh, eventually.

 

 

Oh - and to answer an earlier question: yeah, the object should be able to kill you when it just brushes your legs, but when you're kicking the legs are higher up - so you do need to be a bit lower. That's accidental-on-purpose because of how collision detection works, and it makes sense to me in terms of real-world physics. Unless it's glitchy for people, in which case I'd want to tweak it.

goat.rom

Edited November 3, 2014 by freeweed

[+DZ-Jay]

OK, I just played the latest game. It's come along very nicely. Of course, I have some feedback.

• I don't really understand the season boundaries. I'm playing along and all of a sudden, the season changes. Sometimes it's soon, sometimes it takes longer. Is it by points? In any case, the transitions are too close together, making the game much shorter than it needs to be.
• Personally, I would reduce the kick time a bit, making it shorter. It feels just a tad too long.
• After the game over screen, when you restart the game, the text on the screen is always read instead of white.
• The game over screen looks cool, it's a neat drawing. However, I don't get the reference (and apparently not many others in here do either). This makes it a strange selection, especially since it doesn't seem to have anything to do with goats.
• The ending also looks cool (it reminds me of one of the Mrs. Pac-Man intermissions). However, again, it doesn't seem to relate to anything in the game. I believe you mentioned that you were adding cut-scenes, so perhaps there'll be an introduction were the farmer takes Mrs. Goat away. That would complete the story arc nicely.
• I left the ending song play long after the credits, and when I hit the fire button again, it just re-played the ending. It did this over and over after the scene.
• The game is very cute, and it looks very nice, but it lost some of its challenge. It feels less like advancing through the game and more like skipping to the end. I barely get a chance to miss something, and I always can get to the end.

[freewheel]

DZ: all of this is because the game is in "skip too the good parts" mode. The progression is intentionally fast, to the tune of 20x faster than it should be. And yes, it's by points Same thing with the ending replaying. It just repeats, for testing purposes.

 

I'm kinda with you on the kick, however until the final difficulty level is hit, I may leave it. Trust me, this thing got HARD when I was testing.

[+DZ-Jay]

Ah! I just got back from holiday, so I probably missed it if you said the latest built was in "skip to the end mode," so thanks for explaining it.

 

The game looks very good so far. The Winter colours are a bit too jarring--especially after coming from different shades of green, but is not bad in and of itself.

 

I'll wait for the next build with a more balanced game-play progress to gauge the difficulty. However, I still recommend making the kick shorter: it's a matter of response; it makes the kick feature feel a bit "laggy" by taking just a few extra frames too many.

 

Cheers!

[freewheel]

The Winter colours are a bit too jarring--especially after coming from different shades of green, but is not bad in and of itself.

 

I live in Canada. Winter arrived on Saturday after an absolutely gorgeous fall here, and it was more than a bit jarring. Complete coincidence as I had the colors programmed a while before that, but... it's very fitting for how we all feel here.

Edited November 4, 2014 by freeweed

[freewheel]

OK, shortened the kick down from 10 ticks to 7. I tested as low as 5 and it seemed just a bit too fast to me. Let me know how this feels. The "cool down" period between kicks is unchanged.

goat.rom

Edited November 4, 2014 by freeweed

[+DZ-Jay]

OK, shortened the kick down from 10 ticks to 7. I tested as low as 5 and it seemed just a bit too fast to me. Let me know how this feels. The "cool down" period between kicks is unchanged.

 

 

The new timing feels great. I just have one more suggestion... I think the kick should start whenever the kick button is pressed, even if it already in progress. In other words, allow for "rapid fire" kicking action if the player presses the multiple times quickly. This is similar to how many old-school games implemented similar actions. It gives a sense of speedy responsiveness, and intensifies the action quality of the game.

 

What do you think?

 

-dZ.

Edited November 4, 2014 by DZ-Jay

[+Tarzilla]

 

I live in Canada. Winter arrived on Saturday after an absolutely gorgeous fall here, and it was more than a bit jarring. Complete coincidence as I had the colors programmed a while before that, but... it's very fitting for how we all feel here.

What part of Canada? Edmonton somehow is still in Fall. Supposed to get up to ten degrees later in the week and no snow in the near future.

[+Tarzilla]

Many suggestions added. I do love how the goat kinda rocks back as he falls now. Great idea! The rock just drops off the screen right now - it's better than before but I'm not sure if I'm 100% happy. I may tweak with this a bit. Maybe have the rock bounce off and towards the farmer.

 

 

 

Maybe a different bounce depending on location of collision, black object goes up if higher than centre of goat, down if lower. Or go 45 degrees back towards the farmer (north east direction or south east), but not directly at the farmer, that would look odd.

[+Tarzilla]

Maybe a different bounce depending on location of collision, black object goes up if higher than centre of goat, down if lower. Or go 45 degrees back towards the farmer (north east direction or south east), but not directly at the farmer, that would look odd.

Or maybe the black object continues moving to the left but continues south west or north west, it might look more natural.

[freewheel]

Tried it. Without forcing a "cool down" period,

 

 

 

The new timing feels great. I just have one more suggestion... I think the kick should start whenever the kick button is pressed, even if it already in progress. In other words, allow for "rapid fire" kicking action if the player presses the multiple times quickly. This is similar to how many old-school games implemented similar actions. It gives a sense of speedy responsiveness, and intensifies the action quality of the game.

 

What do you think?

 

-dZ.

 

Tried it. The problem is, immediately allowing a kick means you can just hold the button down, which results in the kick being permanent. People didn't like that.

 

I can shorten the "cool down" period to simulate what you're talking about, and see how it handles. The problem is there's no easy way to read "button down" vs "button up" on these controllers, at least not for a particular button, at least not that I'm aware of, at least not that wouldn't slow the game down to a crawl. You can read the controller state at any time and interpolate from that but most of the time it's just "button was pressed? take this action". And the polling is quick enough that it would just end up with a perma-kick.

[+DZ-Jay]

Tried it. Without forcing a "cool down" period,

 

 

Tried it. The problem is, immediately allowing a kick means you can just hold the button down, which results in the kick being permanent. People didn't like that.

 

I can shorten the "cool down" period to simulate what you're talking about, and see how it handles. The problem is there's no easy way to read "button down" vs "button up" on these controllers, at least not for a particular button, at least not that I'm aware of, at least not that wouldn't slow the game down to a crawl. You can read the controller state at any time and interpolate from that but most of the time it's just "button was pressed? take this action". And the polling is quick enough that it would just end up with a perma-kick.

 

 

Hmmm... Yeah, you would need to somehow manage the state on your own in order to require a full RELEASE before the next button press.

 

I don't know how you would do this without changing IntyBASIC, or implementing your own I/O handler in assembly.

 

Perhaps nanochess could incorporate a call-back interface for I/O events? I don't know how much this deviates from the BASIC philosophy, though.

 

-dZ.

[freewheel]

OK, it's worse than I thought. Right now, you can essentially hold the button down and just keep kicking. At the slow speeds, you will eat everything and successfully kick the rock every time. So rather than shortening it, I'm probably going to LENGTHEN it.

 

It seems more realistic, too. It's not like a goat can just sit and spinkick quickly all day...

[freewheel]

DZ: you can now kick to your heart's content. I figured out a quick and dirty way to do proper button polling in IntyBASIC without slowing things down. It's one of those "duh" things but hey, it works. So now you HAVE to release the button in order to kick again. I kinda found it amusing to watch the repeated kicks as the button was held down, but I suspect this is better for gameplay. Definitely interested in feedback on this.

 

It also gave me an idea to up the challenge a bit. That's next.

 

 

goat.rom

[freewheel]

OK, that idea will not work without some serious thought. In the meantime, a suggestion from Tarzilla implemented. When the rock hits your head, it'll angle off upwards. When it hits your body/legs, it'll angle off downwards. At least I think this is what he meant. Test and see

 

 

goat.rom

[+DZ-Jay]

DZ: you can now kick to your heart's content. I figured out a quick and dirty way to do proper button polling in IntyBASIC without slowing things down. It's one of those "duh" things but hey, it works. So now you HAVE to release the button in order to kick again. I kinda found it amusing to watch the repeated kicks as the button was held down, but I suspect this is better for gameplay. Definitely interested in feedback on this.

 

It also gave me an idea to up the challenge a bit. That's next.

 

 

 

Great! It works just as it says on the tin.

 

By the way, when the season ends and the goat is in the middle of a kick, the next season starts with the goat kicking. You may want to reset the play state of all objects on the start of a new level.

 

It may be a good idea to reset all I/O state and expect the level to start with the controller release. This means that if I leave the action button pressed during the transition, it won't be registered when the next level starts.

 

OK, that idea will not work without some serious thought. In the meantime, a suggestion from Tarzilla implemented. When the rock hits your head, it'll angle off upwards. When it hits your body/legs, it'll angle off downwards. At least I think this is what he meant. Test and see

 

It works, though I would recommend that the rocks fly off at a significantly higher speed when kicked. Otherwise, it looks less like they have been kicked out of the way, and more like they are just cruising.

 

Also, do we get a bonus if we finish a level having eaten every single item and kicked every single rock?

[freewheel]

I do reset the game state, just forgot to include a few variables

 

The rocks don't currently fly at any speed when kicked. They disintegrate Still debating on that one.

 

A bonus for getting everything, eh? Hmmm. Seeing as a stage will be complete once you reach a specific score, I'm not sure what the point would be. In theory everyone will finish the game with the exact same score. Although I suppose... hmmm.. it does give me one idea. Lemme think on it.