[WIP] RetroVenture (Development Thread)

[Maurice Den Braber]

Hello People,

As I'm an absolute newbie here (this is my first post ?).

A little introduction is in place I guess.

My name is Maurice and in my daily life I work as Coordinator / Senior network engineer at a fairly large ISP in The Netherlands.
So on a daily basis I'm mostly into maintaining and configuring our network / servers as well as coordinating my team to keep things as highly available as possible. ?

I'm quite familiar with Cisco and Linux and do a lot of Bash programming as well as some PHP / MySQL stuff.

Far, far, far away from programming my first 'game' using Batari Basic.

 

However I have a soft spot for old game consoles and as the Atari 2600 was my first game console I decided to see if I could make something nice for it. 

I'm working on and off on it in my spare time, which is scarce with a 8 year old kid and lovely wife.

 

So I'm creating 'RetroVenture', the video shows a very short clip of playing it. 

 

 

 

It's simple and basic, I just try to set achievable goals for myself and add something useful every now and then.

The goal of the game is to walk around the city and enter buildings. In these buildings you can find parts for your next-gen gameconsole.
If you've collected all the parts, you can build your new game console.

 

The faster you collect them, the higher your score will be.

 

I have part of the city done, as well as some in building stuff as well. Currently working on a title screen and looking in to sound effects and background music.

Anyway, just wanted to share my work in progress. Again, i'm very new to this but hope to bring this little hobby project to reality one day and would like to post my updates here, if appreciated. 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 31, 2019 by Maurice Den Braber

[Sknarp]

Nice start, I definitely think dev threads are a good idea because there's any number of choices/issues/changes that can come up during the process and you never know what information might be helpful to others in the future.

[NostAlgae37]

This game looks fun, for some reason it reminds of that screen in Raiders of the Lost Ark with all of the thieves/bandits scurrying back and forth at high speed.  I like the way that the player character can carry the circuit boards, but it looks like you will need to get the flicker under control because the boards keep disappearing.

[KevKelley]

I'm assuming the Sprite disappearing is just a result of the video capture. My game did that where it showed all the cars disappearing but in reality you can see them fine, even with the flicker management. 

[Maurice Den Braber]

It's because I used virtual sprites and the DPC+ kernel, if I'd use 2 missiles there is no flickering.

But my idea is to change the rooms in a way that they are scanned with moving camera's.

 

I'm working on a way to show which part of the room the camera is scanning.

I'm thinking something along the lines of overlaying the PF and switching to a lighter version of the floor color where the camera is looking. 

 

Goal would be to stay out of the camera's sight, basic idea would look like the image uploaded.

Thinking about ways on how to animate the playfield efficiently though. 

 

 

 

 

[Maurice Den Braber]

So, I'm trying out a couple of things but have created some code to make the camera somewhat challenging.

Attached is a Bin which you can try.

 

Currently every building you enter is the same, so it does not matter which building you enter, you always get the PCB;

 

The red & white cross represent where the camera is looking, I'm looking for ways to make it ecstatically more pleasing. ?

Goal is to get the part without the camera seeing you.

 

In the end there will be 5 parts, if you get them all you go to the next part of the game.

If the camera has spotted you you'll be teleported outside.

 

First part is easy... but it gets harder, and you'll receive a penalty if you get caught, so don't get caught.

Try and get a score of 5. 

 

Known issues;

 

* If you get caught on the first part, the score goes negative and the game behaves weird.

* You can walk around the camera view, need to add some PF elements there which you can't pass.

* If you get to part 4/5 sometimes camera goes out of bounds.

 

- It does not matter which building you go in to, this is on purpose for testing.

- Part does not disappear from building if you have it, this is also on purpose for now.

 

retroventure_camera_test_1.bin

Edited August 7, 2019 by Maurice Den Braber

[Maurice Den Braber]

So a bit of an update.
Created an inventory system as well as a camera scanning the building you enter.
Working on different mazes for different buildings you enter.

 

Created a healthbar and implementing a hospital feature where you can heal yourself.
Also, current difficulty setting is very easy, which makes testing a lot less painful... ?

 

 

 

Edited August 31, 2019 by Maurice Den Braber