+SmittyB Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 (edited) Surprise release! Plumb Luck is a side project I've been working on that I've just happened to finish first because of its simplicity. The difficulty is not particularly well balanced, there's no audio at the moment, and I want to randomise the start / end tile locations at some point as well as add obstacle tiles. You initially get 30 seconds before slime starts running through the pipes but a second is deducted for each stage down to a minimum of 5 seconds. You can freely place tiles over any other tile as long as the slime has not yet reached it. Enjoy. Controls: Directions = Move cursor Button 1 = Speeds up cursor and starts game Button 2 = Place the left-most tile in the 'Next' queue at the current cursor location Pause = Pauses (as one might expect) Select = Skip the delay before slime starts coming out of the pipes, hold to speed up the slime and release to resume normal speed HUD: Hi-Score = Your highest score so far (scores are not saved when the console is turned off) Score = Your current score this game up to a maximum of 9999 Next = The next four tiles you can place in order from left to right Stage = The number of X marks indicate the number of stages you have completed up to 20 Scoring: Slime moves through an additional pipe section = 1 point The stage is complete and the Slime runs down the drain = 10 points ~~Edit~~ As of the 2nd July release you now get 0 points completion bonus for 'Simple' mode, 10 points for 'Normal' mode, and 20 points for 'Expert' mode. PlumbLuck.a78 PlumbLuck.bin PlumbLuck_02_07_17.a78 PlumbLuck_02_07_17.bin Edited July 2, 2017 by SmittyB 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 Good fun, SmittyB! It definitely needs sound-effects... and music. I noticed that after 3 or 4 boards the display messes up. Maybe there's an unmatched gosub/return? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted June 9, 2017 Author Share Posted June 9, 2017 It's probably something I didn't clean up when I took out the random obstacle blocks. I'll tinker with it a bit more and see what I can improve. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted June 10, 2017 Share Posted June 10, 2017 Excellent!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted June 10, 2017 Author Share Posted June 10, 2017 I noticed that after 3 or 4 boards the display messes up. Maybe there's an unmatched gosub/return? I've tried playing through 6 stages and I haven't seen anything wrong. I've double checked my program flow which looks okay. The only things that don't have returns are the game over and win states but I'm jumping directly to these with goto and never from within a subroutine. I've also checked to see if I'm accidentally redrawing something over and over but this too looks okay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gambler172 Posted June 10, 2017 Share Posted June 10, 2017 Hi Smitty great idea,but damn hard.Cannot beat just one round.I prefer the Dungeon Game greetings Walter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Trebor Posted June 10, 2017 Share Posted June 10, 2017 You initially get 30 seconds before slime starts running through the pipes... great idea,but damn hard.Cannot beat just one round... Perhaps a configurable difficulty setting can be added: 60 seconds = Novice 120 seconds = Novice 45 seconds = Standard OR 90 seconds = Standard 30 seconds = Advance 60 seconds = Advance 15 seconds = Expert 30 seconds = Expert If considered, maybe a different color slime can represent each difficulty setting as well: Novice = Blue ($97) or Aqua ($AA) Standard = Red ($33) or Pink ($47) Advance = Green ($D7) aka current default Expert = Yellow ($1C) or Orange ($27) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted June 10, 2017 Share Posted June 10, 2017 SmittyB, I was also thinking that you could use separate commands to plot the 6-character strip on the right side, and/or the 1 character margins. That way you could assign them separate palettes, and make the whole thing a bit more colorful. Hi Smitty great idea,but damn hard.Cannot beat just one round.I prefer the Dungeon Game greetings Walter You can overwrite a tile by just tapping the fire button until you get the one you want. This makes it a bit easier. I did finish once or twice, but I agree it's tough. I also like the idea of there being board after board, and the difficulty increases. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted June 10, 2017 Author Share Posted June 10, 2017 I'll see what I can do about different difficulty settings, the difficulty is something that I've not been able to get feeling right so I'll try and give a variety of options including a sandbox mode with no time limit. The whole thing is fairly heavily inspired by 'Pipe Dream', the version of 'Pipe Mania' that was part of the old Windows entertainment packs which is why there's the fairly bland green / grey colour scheme but I think maybe it could do with a bit more colour here and there. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted June 11, 2017 Share Posted June 11, 2017 Never can finish a level tried 10 or so times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted June 11, 2017 Author Share Posted June 11, 2017 Until I can make more improvements here's a version with an adjusted timer. You start with 120 seconds delay which is reduced by 5 each stage down to a minimum of 30 seconds (the previous delay). This means you have to beat 18 stages before it gets as difficult as it was before. plumbluck.bas.a78 plumbluck.bas.bin 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+TrekMD Posted June 11, 2017 Share Posted June 11, 2017 Cool game and not an easy one! Thanks for the version with the adjusted timer. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted June 11, 2017 Share Posted June 11, 2017 I've tried playing through 6 stages and I haven't seen anything wrong. I've double checked my program flow which looks okay. The only things that don't have returns are the game over and win states but I'm jumping directly to these with goto and never from within a subroutine. I've also checked to see if I'm accidentally redrawing something over and over but this too looks okay. I can still recreate this in mame, after repeating this about ~5 times: press the joystick button to start a game, do nothing and die. After 5 times, In the mame debugger I also detected it's trying to write to other registers above the palettes, in rounds before the palette gets messed up. It seems to be getting messed up during the plotchars routine, though possibly that's plotmap calling plotchars. Any chance you have a plotchar/plotmap with a y value larger than the number of character rows on the screen? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted June 11, 2017 Author Share Posted June 11, 2017 That's quite possible. I'll have to look into that tomorrow. I've been playing around with the times and I've been able to have a good game by setting the delay to 30 seconds but halving the speed of the slime. That way it'll appear before you likely finish your layout but you'll have time to add things in front of it. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted June 12, 2017 Author Share Posted June 12, 2017 I've fixed that bug. It was down to a combination of an unnecessary call to my plotScreen subroutine and a leftover call to plotchars. I completely forgot that plotchars uses line numbers for the y position so when I changed my first version that had the next tile on line 0 I gave it a bad value then never removed it because I replaced the way the next tiles are drawn. My plotScreen routine then used plotchars every time the game moved from the title screen to a stage. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toiletunes Posted June 13, 2017 Share Posted June 13, 2017 Do you have ideas for sound, or are you looking for submissions? Or is it too soon to think about it yet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted June 13, 2017 Author Share Posted June 13, 2017 I haven't thought about sound beyond there being a couple of bleeps in places Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted June 13, 2017 Author Share Posted June 13, 2017 New version. I'm now happy with the overall difficulty with the timer being 30 seconds but with the slime speed halved. On the menu you can now select a difficulty with up and down on the joystick. I've been playing around with a few things so each difficulty has its own palette but these will change. Sandbox = A blank stage with no timer, you need to hit the select button to start the slime Simple = A single basic stage that never changes Normal / Expert = Both of these are the same at the moment and they will currently play through a small selection of challenging stages. It is possible to beat them as shown in the screenshot. plumbluck.bas.a78 plumbluck.bas.bin 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gambler172 Posted June 15, 2017 Share Posted June 15, 2017 Hi Smitty plays muuuch better now...... I am the champion,i made the Sandbox level greetings Walter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted July 2, 2017 Author Share Posted July 2, 2017 New release, this time with 20 different maps and some basic sound effects. The Sandbox mode still gives you an empty map with no time limit to play around with Simple, Normal, and Export cycle through 20 maps with the 20th being a bonus '!' map that's already completed, just to give you free points. Simple mode give you a 60 second slime delay and no points bonus for completing a map Normal mode gives you a 30 second slime delay and a 10 point bonus for completing each map Expert mode give you a 30 second slime delay and a 20 point bonus but the slime flows twice as fast once it appears. I've tested the maps and have completed them on Expert mode (and got a score of 874). I don't intend to update this further as it was always a side project to my dungeon crawler and I don't want this to become a big distraction so please enjoy. Maybe I'll make an improved version in the future if there are things that definitely need changing. PlumbLuck_02_07_17.a78 PlumbLuck_02_07_17.bin 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dauber Posted July 2, 2017 Share Posted July 2, 2017 (COMMENT WITHDRAWN: NEW ROM POSTED RIGHT AFTER I POSTED THIS!!) Put me on the list for a cartridge! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dauber Posted July 2, 2017 Share Posted July 2, 2017 Aaaaaaand....your latest version was posted seconds after I posted that response. Still...it would be nice to have more contrast between the floor and the pipes. Hard to tell where the tiles are versus the pipes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cousin Vinnie Posted February 2, 2021 Share Posted February 2, 2021 Dude, you are crazy for not finishing this. I just played it and I love everything about it. Excellent job Smitty B. I'll do a review on www.Atari7800Forever.com about it in the near future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted February 2, 2021 Author Share Posted February 2, 2021 Thanks very much. I do consider this version 'finished' as it was just a small project to avoid burning out on Spire of the Ancients so early and besides extra levels there's not much I can do with it, but I intend to start over one day using all I've learned since. Like a 'Plumb Luck DX'. I actually learnt recently that there was an arcade version of Pipe Mania that does the same with having to reach a drain tile, so while Plumb Luck might not be as original a spin on the idea I thought it was, I have something I can compare it to when I come to remake it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Muddyfunster Posted February 2, 2021 Share Posted February 2, 2021 This is really good mate, I hope you do get around to the "DX" version at some point 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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