Plumb Luck DX

[+SmittyB]

For those wanting a different cursor I've added an X shaped one but I don't know if it's any better than the previous one. Any thoughts?

 

[RevEng]

It's fine in terms of functionality, but the X doesn't quite feel cursor'ish to me. Any appetite for a spinning cursor instead?

[+SmittyB]

Thanks @RevEng. My quick and dirty animation is a little choppy but it looks passable at the moment and in motion nothing is obscured.

 

[+SmittyB]

I've done a lot of work on this since the last posted build though a lot of that didn't get results, however what's here is getting closer to something I'm happy with. There are a few things that need polishing and there's still more to do, but this should be a much better build than previous ones.

 

Try on JS7800

 

 

I tried adding dithering to the shadows, but that meant MARIA would have to draw just a little bit more than it could handle. To counter that I tried drawing the cursor as part of the tile map instead of an extra object which would have plenty of other benefits, but it caused too many problems with the logic to create the cursor graphics for me to fix. In the end I decided that it just wasn't worth it. The below mock-up is kind of what I was going for.

 

Along similar lines I was working on improving the 'next tile' list but smooth-scrolling and / or dithered shading was just too much to process so I've added a quick sliding animation just on a tile-by-tile basis.

 

As for changes that did make it in I've updated the graphics on the title screen somewhat. It's closer to what I initially imagined with an attempt at more of a pseudo 3d looking slime. I had to remove the bit where the slime raises in the transition to the game screen.

 

I've finally managed to add in a crossover piece which has been on my to-do list since the original Plumb Luck. As you can enter a crossover piece from any one of four directions and then again from one of two directions there are a a total of 8 combinations, each of which have 16 frames of animation so that's already as many tiles in the original so this wouldn't be doable without holding the graphics data in RAM.

 

There's now a 'tile goal' counter marked T which is the minimum number of tiles you need to place in addition to reaching the end tile for the level with the idea being that players are encouraged to do more than take the shortest route to the exit. At the moment these are set low until they can be balanced. Additionally, if you try to place a tile over an existing tile there's a longer delay compared to placing one in an empty space so that it's less effective to just hold the button down until the right tile comes up.

PlumbLuckDX_220327.a78

[+Muddyfunster]

Love the cursor!

 

I know I say this on each release but the backgrounds are great!

 

This latest version is really good @SmittyB, quick emulator blast this evening but I'll give it the real hardware treatment tomorrow.

 

 

[RevEng]

The spinning cursor, complete with highlights and shadows, is fantastic!

 

The crossover piece also functions as a wildcard piece, which I actually quite appreciate. Maybe there can be a bonus when you make the pipe shmutz cross itself? Or if you want to really make it a strategic game element, for each time you get the pipe shmutz to cross you get an additional multiplier on the rest of the shmutz travel points. (2x, 3x, 4x, etc.)

 

Anyway, really good stuff! I too am compelled to repeat that the backgrounds are great!

[+SmittyB]

Glad you like the cursor, it seems to be a winner this time. I'll likely add extra frames of animation to smooth it out as it skips in a couple of place.

The GB version of Pipe Dream adds a multiplier for all tiles within a loop, but that's too complicated for the way I'm doing things so I was deciding whether to include a large bonus for using a crossover or adding a multiplier, but I like the idea of somebody being able to rack up huge points by planning out complicated loops. I think playtesting will be needed to make sure we don't end up with everyone maxing out the score.

 

At the moment losing a level means you just lose a few points and the level select doesn't automatically move to the next one, but I'm currently planning to make it so that you can build score across multiple levels but as soon as you lose once it resets to zero and if it's a high score it's recorded. Players who want to go for high scores need to beat successive levels in one go whereas players who just want to see every level can have as many attempts as they want.

[RevEng]

1 hour ago, SmittyB said:

 I think playtesting will be needed to make sure we don't end up with everyone maxing out the score.

First 7800 game to use scientific notation for score?

[SlidellMan]

The latest build is great, and it could use some music and sound effects to liven it up a bit.

[Trebor]

14 hours ago, RevEng said:

First 7800 game to use scientific notation for score?

New personal score goal... 2.5x10^9  

[+SmittyB]

It's been a while but here's a new build that as far as I can tell is working nicely. I had to go back and check what I previous posted to remind me of what I've changed.

 

A reminder of the controls:

• Either fire button at the title screen to go to the game screen in stage-select mode.
• Left and right to select a stage in stage-select mode. Arrows indicate that you can select the next or previous stages, Xs indicate you cannot.
• Either fire button to select a stage and start the timer.
• Select console button to quit the stage (your high score will be registered if you got one).
• When playing a stage the left button places a tile, the right button speeds up the timer / slime.
• On the high-score entry screen up and down change the current initial, left and right select which initial to enter, fire buttons confirm high-score entry.

Changes include -

• Added title screen music
• High score screen
• High score and progress saving
• Title screen transitions to the high score screen when idle
• You now have to complete a stage before being able to select the next one
• Icons on the sides indicate whether you can select next / previous stage
• Updated font graphics
• Updated Cursor graphics
• Updated title screen graphics slightly
• Fixed 1-frame flicker when tiles are updated in RAM
• General stability improvements
• Have just now changed the background colour hues to be random rather than fixed combinations (may go back to fixed values depending on feedback)

 

 

The to-do list is currently -

• Save progress even if a high score hasn't been reached (though of that while typing this up)
• Add a fade transition from the main screen to the high score screen
• Add the ability to view high scores without getting a high score first or restarting
• Add PAL colours
• Add more maps
• Tweak map tile requirements
• Tweak scoring

PlumbLuckDX_220811_2219.a78

[+Atarius Maximus]

I played this for a while this evening.  Excellent work! I had a lot of fun playing. It took me back to my Windows 3.1 gaming days, I loved Pipe Dream.

[Ecernosoft]

On 8/22/2021 at 6:13 PM, SmittyB said:

 

"This is it. You've landed the biggest contract
you've ever seen and you're going to need it if
your small plumbing business is to survive.

What you didn't know before you signed however
is that many others have been hired and fired
during the construction of this toxic waste
facility so you'll need to contend with their
leftover piping, and to make matters worse the
pumps will be turned on today whether the work
is finished or not. Delays are unacceptable!

 

If you're going to complete what was started,
claim your payment, and avoid an environmental
disaster, it's going to take all of your skills,
quick thinking, and sheer plumb luck!"

 

 

Plumb Luck DX is a follow-up to / remake of the second (first finished) of my 7800 projects Plumb Luck from 2017. In a way it's really the game I wanted to make back then but couldn't because I wasn't anywhere near as familiar with the system as I am now, and this is why in game it's only called Plumb Luck rather than Plumb Luck DX.

It exclusively uses the 320B mode for high-res graphics, and extra RAM on the cart to allow for far more frames of animation than would be possible without.

 

The aim of the game is to prevent the toxic slime from spilling by placing pipes to create a path from the pump to the drain. It's not as simple as it sounds though as you won't always get the pipes you want, the path the drain won't always be clear, and you'll want to build the longest path you can for the most points.

 

 

 

This 22nd August build is fairly bare bones, but I wanted to have something posted while I work on the rest of it. At present there is only a single empty level which repeats when winning or losing, the level counter just shows a debug value of the tile number, and the score counter does nothing. The title screen graphics will eventually be given a layer of polish, I should be able to fit some extra background graphics in (I'm already pushing the graphics limit of a 128K cartridge thanks to the 320B format), and I'll throw in a few AtariVox phrases where I can because you can never go wrong with more AtariVox support.

There's a bug I'm aware of where corner pieces won't work properly on the left or right walls as it will count the slime as having hit the wall rather than been redirected up or down.

 

Try on JS7800

 PlumbLuckDX_210822.a78 (NTSC colours only for the moment)

What graphics mode did you use?

[Ecernosoft]

320B?

[+SmittyB]

2 hours ago, Ecernosoft said:

What graphics mode did you use?

2 hours ago, Ecernosoft said:

320B?

 

The post you quoted has all the information.

[+Muddyfunster]

3 hours ago, Ecernosoft said:

320B?

 

You can do it !!  

 

[Cousin Vinnie]

On 8/11/2022 at 5:57 PM, SmittyB said:

It's been a while but here's a new build that as far as I can tell is working nicely. I had to go back and check what I previous posted to remind me of what I've changed.

 

A reminder of the controls:

• Either fire button at the title screen to go to the game screen in stage-select mode.
• Left and right to select a stage in stage-select mode. Arrows indicate that you can select the next or previous stages, Xs indicate you cannot.
• Either fire button to select a stage and start the timer.
• Select console button to quit the stage (your high score will be registered if you got one).
• When playing a stage the left button places a tile, the right button speeds up the timer / slime.
• On the high-score entry screen up and down change the current initial, left and right select which initial to enter, fire buttons confirm high-score entry.

Changes include -

• Added title screen music
• High score screen
• High score and progress saving
• Title screen transitions to the high score screen when idle
• You now have to complete a stage before being able to select the next one
• Icons on the sides indicate whether you can select next / previous stage
• Updated font graphics
• Updated Cursor graphics
• Updated title screen graphics slightly
• Fixed 1-frame flicker when tiles are updated in RAM
• General stability improvements
• Have just now changed the background colour hues to be random rather than fixed combinations (may go back to fixed values depending on feedback)

 

 

The to-do list is currently -

• Save progress even if a high score hasn't been reached (though of that while typing this up)
• Add a fade transition from the main screen to the high score screen
• Add the ability to view high scores without getting a high score first or restarting
• Add PAL colours
• Add more maps
• Tweak map tile requirements
• Tweak scoring

PlumbLuckDX_220811_2219.a78 128.13 kB · 11 downloads

Dude- keep it up. I love this game. 

[Ecernosoft]

7 hours ago, Muddyfunster said:

 

You can do it !!  

 

I KNOW!!! And guess what? The edit button is visible on your own posts!! Soo cool!

[+Muddyfunster]

10 minutes ago, Ecernosoft said:

I KNOW!!! And guess what? The edit button is visible on your own posts!! Soo cool!

Yes, I use the edit button regularly, you should try it, instead of making multiple posts, one after the other  

[Keatah]

Mmm.. the edit button.. I'm only gonna use when it's convenient. If I gotta scroll up and down a billion times to find it on mobile. Nope. It's easier, much easier to just make a new posting. Technology needs to cater to me. Not me to it.

 

[Keatah]

No need to be sad. It's how it's always been. Of course make some effort to see the options and get the lay of the land. But when it gets too tedious, I just eff-it.

Edited August 27, 2022 by Keatah

[Ecernosoft]

16 hours ago, Keatah said:

Mmm.. the edit button.. I'm only gonna use when it's convenient. If I gotta scroll up and down a billion times to find it on mobile. Nope. It's easier, much easier to just make a new posting. Technology needs to cater to me. Not me to it.

 

Yes. That's my reason.

Also, since your using 320B, if you need more colors, check out my 320B artifacting!

Also my reason:

  

6 hours ago, Keatah said:

No need to be sad. It's how it's always been. Of course make some effort to see the options and get the lay of the land. But when it gets too tedious, I just eff-it.

 

Edited August 27, 2022 by Ecernosoft

[Ecernosoft]

Techinically, you can get 32 colors in 320*224 resolution using artifacts, from a pallete of 65,535 colors! It's closer to 32K though because colors of the same hue don't artifact if they are too close to eachother in brightness. (Luma)

 

[Ecernosoft]

On 8/22/2021 at 8:40 PM, SlidellMan said:

Talking about pushing the 7800 to its limits. Easily, hands down, the best looking 7800 game I have seen.

Wow! I wouldn't know the restraints of 320B seeing this.

[+SmittyB]

Thanks. I actually have a spare colour available for the background but I decided to stick to 2 because I don't want it to be distractingly busy. Being able to use extra RAM to get around limitations like the tile limit and lack of transparency definitely allows it to look much better than it otherwise could.