Robot Zed New Version. Run through randomly constructed levels!

[Sprybug]

Hey guys, new update, and new version.

As you know I've played around with different ideas, and have made changes when I discovered that I can't do exactly what it was that I wanted to do because of one reason or limitation or another, but I feel that I have finally made the engine that's going to be the final make for this game.

Robot Zed will still be a Rogue Like and you will still get different upgrades and powers from the enemies you defeat.

Last night I got the engine working with Zed and you can run around all the randomly pieced together levels for a new experience every run until you get far enough to get into the boss room. Now there is no boss yet, and you can't do much once you get there, besides reset or turn off the game, but this will give you an idea of the levels you will have to run through to get to the boss. It will be good practice for when the demo comes out.

Have fun!

 

RobotZed_05.bas.bin

[+Karl G]

This looks good. I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays with the levels populated. The scrolling is smooth, and the level transitions look good visually. Great work!

[MemberAtarian]

I was really waiting for the first demo of your first own idea game, let's test it.

[MemberAtarian]

So here is my opinion:

1. You are one of the few programmers who realised there should be at least 3 frames to make a fluent animation of movement. (I used 6 for the girl in Fear of the Dark, but 3 only for the enemies to save up space). This is nothing new, but I really love they way you do it.

2. The fact that you can do a playfield in Batari Basic that can be scrolled backwards makes you the BB programmer right now. (I know that with sdata you can read not just music, but level data as well, but I don't know how to do it backwards )

3. The animation during level change is fascinating.

 

So keep up with the work!

[TheHoboInYourRoom]

Awesome! The movement feels pretty smooth, and as the others said, the screen wipe is really nice. Can't wait to see it when enemies and objects are added.

[+Gemintronic]

So here is my opinion:

 

1. You are one of the few programmers who realised there should be at least 3 frames to make a fluent animation of movement. (I used 6 for the girl in Fear of the Dark, but 3 only for the enemies to save up space). This is nothing new, but I really love they way you do it.

2. The fact that you can do a playfield in Batari Basic that can be scrolled backwards makes you the BB programmer right now. (I know that with sdata you can read not just music, but level data as well, but I don't know how to do it backwards )

3. The animation during level change is fascinating.

 

So keep up with the work!

 

1. Try making a 4k game where everything has 3 frames of animation. Being frugal with storage space is not a lack of skill - quite the opposite!

2. Not every 2600 game must ape the scrolling capabilities of an NES. Doesn't make bB developer who choose pre-NES gameplay worse.

 

I agree with your points in general and greatly appreciate Sprybugs work. Just don't appreciate everyone else's work being judged.

[MemberAtarian]

 

1. Try making a 4k game where everything has 3 frames of animation. Being frugal with storage space is not a lack of skill - quite the opposite!

2. Not every 2600 game must ape the scrolling capabilities of an NES. Doesn't make bB developer who choose pre-NES gameplay worse.

 

I agree with your points in general and greatly appreciate Sprybugs work. Just don't appreciate everyone else's work being judged.

Yeah, working with 4K is a great challenge, I call this view of Atari programming "the 4K-ers", but even at golden time of Atari, there was 16K available for more exclusive games. And to be fair, most of homebrews have characters with really small, un-detailed sprites, so they reseble the very-very early days or the Taiwan pirate games. We all know that the VCS is capable more.

 

My view is that you should push the VCS to it's limits (optimize a lot, so the code won't be too long and you won't go over 262 scanlines). Of course it doesn't mean that you have to make chaotic flicker wars, I have seen a Mortal Kombat and a Golden Axe demake and it just turned to a great mass because the creator just was not able to compress it well. I'm in the middle, I don't like the idea of DPC+ and extra RAM, it was really injoyable to find it how to use 128 bytes for all the things I need, I'm not a programmer myself and even I could compress music data to the 2/3 of the original size, and have more ideas for next games to write a new script to compress it more, but I think 16-32K of RAM is the optimal amount for a game that can contain good looking sprites (I often use silhouettes, so you can imagine the details), variety and some music as well. I have now ideas to start my Distopia project again, so I can make maybe the first TBS for the console.

 

I talked yesterday to a book writer who collect information about homebrew and this year was a huge "success", due the 40th anniversary and the fairly easy use of Batari Basic, there are just too many homebrews those are created in days. There are simple games those are really cool even in their simple way, like Spies in the Night, but most of them are really rough-and-ready games with lack of creativity. The best example is Baby that was even gave to the Retron77 homebrews, instead of Anguna.

[+Gemintronic]

I think blanket statements about developers who use a particular compiler are counterproductive. Baby is a good example. It was the guys very first game. He was also willing to put up with the draconian licensing they offered him.

 

Just saying it would be easy to praise Sprybug without comparison to batari BASIC developers in general. We're a pretty diverse lot with different experience levels and tastes.

[MemberAtarian]

Just saying it would be easy to praise Sprybug without comparison to batari BASIC developers in general. We're a pretty diverse lot with different experience levels and tastes.

Yeah, he has experience and skills, but you know, I'm not a programmer either originally. I work as a social worker with homeless people and have a degree in minority politics, so I can say it's so far from programming as it can get, but as I wanted to do a video about oldschool programming, I thought I should give it a try, and after the 4th game, Fear of the Dark I thought I should go further, so I will attend programmer's school from the second part of September.

 

Biggest problem is the lack of patient. You can't figure out programming in a few weeks and also you cannot make a complex, worth of playing (buying?) game in a few weeks either.

[Lillapojkenpåön]

Nice stuff above my head, don't know if possible but I think it would be nice if when you exit the level at the right you enter the next level positioned at the right and play that level running to the left, alternating every level, just a thought.

[Albert]

Just tried this out on a real system. The engine looks great and I can't wait to see what you do with it when you turn this into a full game. Thanks for sharing!

 

..Al

[+Muddyfunster]

really like the main character, lovely sprite.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Heya Sprybug! We're doing an 'early WIP homebrew' special episode tomorrow on ZeroPage Homebrew and thought Robot Zed would fit in perfectly. :-)

We'll be broadcasting LIVE on Twitch tomorrow (Friday) at 2PM PT/5PM ET, so I hope you can make it! If not, you can catch the episode in our YouTube archives the next day. Hopefully see you there in the chat!

Twitch LiveStreams: http://twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew
YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/zeropagehomebrew

[+Philsan]

Fast, smooth and beautiful!