[Final] Monkey King

[Coolcrab]

27/11/2018: game done!

25/11/2018: Invisible players were not invisible. They are now.

24/11/2018: If playing in 'Keep going' mode the losing player becomes a controllable ghost that does not interact with anything but can move.

18/11/2018: Fixed the sound glitch and some minor things.

18/10/2018: Added upgrade and fixed framerate. There seem to still be sound glitches though. Almost final!

29/9/2018: Found more bugs! (And fixed them) AI is a bit smarter and can get to about 2-3k on its own. ALso added reset delay for firebutton when player dies.

16/9/2018: Fixed all bugs that I am aware of! Now I just want to tweak the speed, power up frequencies, etc and then I would say that its done!

15/9/2018: Major AI overhaul (it now chases the stones) and US change. Made possible with smart space hack by Isposta

13/9/2018: Fixed scrolling of tree to make it more realistic after getting a great tip from Karl G

11/9/2018: Added box and cart label. Art by Steve Hammond

9/9/2018: I think that all errors are gone now. Still have ~50 bytes of ROM so could add some small things.

6/9/2018: Higher max speed, fire button starts game, flipped game modes to emphasise its a multiplayer game.

 

Monkey King is an endless runner with a strategic twist. Made for one or two players, played with the joystick controllers.

 

Manual in attachments!

 

 

Comments welcome!

 

Thanks to: RevEng, Random Terrain, Karl G, Lillapojkenpaon, Arenafoot, StanJr.

Uses minikernel by CurtisP edited by Karl G, score graphics kernel by RevEng and music example by RandomTerrain.

score_graphics.asm

playerscores.asm

MonkeyKing_NTSC_rc6.bas

MonkeyKing_NTSC_rc6.bas.bin

MonkeyKing_PAL_rc6.bas.bin

Edited November 28, 2018 by Coolcrab

[StanJr]

Hitting the branches increases my score. I cannot imagine that is on purpose.

 

Is there intention to flesh this out with other features or is this it?

[Coolcrab]

This still needs work. It's a proof of concept now mostly

[Coolcrab]

I updated the game to be 2 player and rewrote the scroll mechanics. Each block now has a 50% chance of having a branch. If there is a branch diagonally below it (making dodging the new branch impossible) then it will not draw it.

 

I was wondering how people deal with player vs PF coordinates. I'd like to remove the branch that hits the player, but IDK how to map that.

[Coolcrab]

I gave it some updates to make it 2 player and even added some power-ups. But I can't seem to figure out how to fix the collision in such a way that a branch 'falls off' when touched.

Collision with PFpixels can be sort of replicated but for some reason this only works when the player moves into the block, not if the block scrolls into the player..

Also any suggestions for power-ups? I got one that removes all branches one one side and one that gives a life. I was thinking of one that switches P1 and P2 and maybe one that mirrors the branches?

[+Lewis2907]

Do think you can do the option of one player. That way I can play it on my cell phone or AFP, thanks.

[Coolcrab]

If there is space left I might do some AI. Otherwise I'll probably allow to turn the second player off.

 

I'm glad you like it at any rate

[JC Software]

Simple but Fun! also quick question, how do you add your own games to javatari.org?

Example: http://javatari.org/...s/climbV0.1.bin

[Coolcrab]

Upload it somewhere ( I put it on my site) and then just say javatari.org?ROM=url

[+Lewis2907]

When I contacted Javatari the email I got back was ppeccin/javatari.js not sure if that is even a true email. Basically I submitted a help ticket and they respond.

 

Also try virtualatari@gmail.com which is another website that will publish games at http://www.virtualatari.org/

 

Hope this helps, thanks.

[Coolcrab]

Where did you upload your rom?

[+Lewis2907]

They have trouble with DPC+. The only 2 games I have worth playing. From talks with both Standard and Multisprite Kernels work. The same outcome as the AFP. I really like DPC+, but not working on their sites and AFP has deterred me from making stuff in DPC. Thus I am trying to tackle Multisprite (which is cumbersome with the mirror playfield).

 

***edit

 

I attached some screen shots where I settled to go Standard Kernel and Multisprite. I still have a ways to go. Making some progress on City Combat. It uses Bogax Code and RT Sprite and other stuff, but off my topic. I hope you or someone can get something published on there. It would be an easy way to send a link to friends and they can access and play your game.

Edited January 24, 2018 by Lewis2907

[StanJr]

Right now, for me, the game is too slow and there isn't much challenge. If the game moved faster you could add power-ups to slow the action down a bit, or become invisible for a brief period. Not sure how to implement, but a power-up that could hinder the other player? Also, since the score is also slow, bonus point power-ups would be great.

 

Currently when you lose all of your lives, the game just keeps going. I think the final branch should take the monkey off the tree and the remaining monkey declared the winner.

[Coolcrab]

I plan on making it speed up with time. Some potential power-ups would be to slow it down again. but then it slows down for both players, but that might add strategy.

 

However, right now I'm still stuck on the branch collision and like you said that is quite important to get working. Does anybody have experience with this?

The problem being that if I say something like this. (don't have the code on this PC, so the coordinate transformations might be wrong)

if collision(player1, playfield) then px = (player0x - 16 ) /4 : py = (player0y -16)/4 : pfpixel px py off

Then it works when I collide with the PFpixel but it doesn't if the PF pixel collides with me. Is there a fix for this? Could it be some misalignment?

[Coolcrab]

I added the newest version to the main thread. As can be seen there are some weird bugs.

 

1) the collision works poorly. Even if I delete the wall upon contact,somehow it still takes away more than 1 life.

2) the speedup is not very natural yet.

3) The room sometimes 'shakes' and I have no idea why.

 

Bas file is included in main thread, if anyone can look at it that would be great!

[Coolcrab]

New version added that should be playable. The speed is a bit higher and the power-ups work. Collisions also work now, as it removes all branches on one side when one is hit.

I wont have much time to work on this the rest of the week, but should upload more next week.

[StanJr]

I like the speed. Much more challenging.

 

What do the power-ups do? I cannot determine through play.

 

The screen shakes when you hit a branch, yes?

[Coolcrab]

At the moment:

1 removes all branches on your side

2 gives you a life

3 slows down the level

4 (not in yet) might switch the players around

 

I'd also like one that flips the tree left to right, but not sure how to code that.

 

And of anyone has a suggestions on how to stack the bonuses better (currently it's player Color and both healthbars are used) (maybe healthbar Color) I feel like it should be displayed better.

Is there some assembly code that ads more ticks?

 

And the asking started as a bug but I decided it's a feature now it basically does too much in one draw screen and lags for a moment.

[StanJr]

I'm not sure what the score does. Since there are two players, but one score, who is the score for? What if this is one of those rare cooperative games where you and another monkey try to work together to reach the banana horde at top of the tree?

 

Definitely need a GAME OVER of some kind.

[Coolcrab]

The plan was to count how many steps they did and save the score once a monkey died. Then it can blink after the game between monkey 1 and 2.

 

I figured that 1 score was enough as they both climb the at the same pace.

[Coolcrab]

Does anybody know of a good way to display the power-ups? I am using player color now, but I want something else because I want to make the monkeys blue and red.

Is there some mini kernel that could add ticks above the lives or something similar?

[Coolcrab]

Now that astronomer is out I plan to return to this soon.

 

I'm still looking for a good way to display the powerups. One of the ideas that I had is to use the score bar like 0 0000 0.

Where the first and last zero is the # powerups and the middle 4 are for score. Is it possible to put a space in between the zero's like that?

 

The powerups currently are:

1 removes all branches on your side

2 gives you a life
3 slows down the level
4 (not in yet) might switch the players around

 

But I was thinking of maybe doing something more competitive. Like make the opposing player invisible like StanJr suggested.

 

Maybe like:

1) slows down level

2) removes all branches on your side

3) gives a life

4) makes opponent invisible

5) switches with opponent

6) ads a branch to enemies tree at hight of player

 

How does that sound? Is the order good?

Edited August 15, 2018 by Coolcrab

[Arenafoot]

Does anybody know of a good way to display the power-ups? I am using player color now, but I want something else because I want to make the monkeys blue and red.

Is there some mini kernel that could add ticks above the lives or something similar?

I like the idea of blue vs red.... though I have no programming skills so I'm no help.

 

Now that astronomer is out I plan to return to this soon.

 

I'm still looking for a good way to display the powerups. One of the ideas that I had is to use the score bar like 0 0000 0.

Where the first and last zero is the # powerups and the middle 4 are for score. Is it possible to put a space in between the zero's like that?

 

The powerups currently are:

1 removes all branches on your side

2 gives you a life

3 slows down the level

4 (not in yet) might switch the players around

 

But I was thinking of maybe doing something more competitive. Like make the opposing player invisible like StanJr suggested.

 

Maybe like:

1) slows down level

2) removes all branches on your side

3) gives a life

4) makes opponent invisible

5) switches with opponent

6) ads a branch to enemies tree at hight of player

 

How does that sound? Is the order good?

Glad, you returned to it. Yeah those ideas sound good.

[Coolcrab]

Thanks, I'll probably have a new version going up soon. I like making this things but I had too many things going on at once so I told myself not to touch this until astronomer was out.

[Coolcrab]

Update V0.5: Updated the game with player score minikernel by CurtisP edited by Karl G. The power ups are now displayed as numbers instead of monkey colors. I also changes the monkey colors to red and blue.

The power ups have been changed to: (Only for player 0, player 1 still needs implementation)

 

1) slows down level

2) removes all branches on your side

3) gives a life

4) makes opponent invisible

5) ads a branch to enemies tree at height of player on the left for Player 0 and on the right for player 1.

6) switches with opponent

All work apart from (6),that needs more work to implement correctly. Need to think on how to do that without wasting a million variables.

I'd say that its all skill based but with (5) you can kill the opponent by blocking the way up.

 

The tree also slows down by 1 when either monkey bumps into a branch.

 

Feedback welcome