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Colony 7 - Release Candidate!


Cybergoth

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Ok, something special today. Instead of yet another mockup, this is a Z26 screenshot:

 

The third flat spot in the landscape looks sorta 'lonely'. Would it be possible to rearrange the objects slightly like this [each character is four pixels]

----+----1----+----2----+----3----+----4
----11------11----------------------11--
----------22--------------22------------
XX_____XX_______XXXXXXXX_______XX_____XX

Or would that not look as good?

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Hi there!

 

I tried making the bottom region as small as possible, so that unlike Atlantis it won't occupy half of the screen. There'll come the shield

rows and the cannons on top, and still it'll only use 1/4th of the screen.

 

Since those tower and rocket shapes require a lot of height (unlike the flat Atlantean bases), I don't think a third building row is a good option.

 

And I think for the room I give it, it's already as crowded as possible :)

 

Greetings,

Manuel

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Hi there!

 

The third flat spot in the landscape looks sorta 'lonely'.
Looks good, but I do agree with supercat that the blank area looks a little barren. But all in all, very nice looking :)

 

Ok, by popular request:

vcs5.gif

 

I had to remove all WSYNCS in the bottom section for this. There's now 1 cycle left from 152 :-o;)

 

Greetings,

Manuel

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi Walter!

 

sieht doch schon recht passabel aus.Wäre das nichts für die Lightgun?

 

I think the game is much too fast paced. With only a lightgun for defense your colony would be trashed in a few seconds. Also the Colony 7 enemies are rather small in their design, so they wouldn't be good targets for the gun. And finally I don't have a lightgun :)

 

Greetings,

Manuel

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Hi there!

 

Here comes a first public demo of my next game Colony 7!

 

[/img]

 

Well, it's not yet playable and still pretty raw, but as a major milestone I have all kernels pretty much nailed by now :)

 

Greetings,

Manuel

933290[/snapback]

Very nice. :thumbsup:

 

Can't wait to see a playable version :)

Edited by vdub_bobby
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Hi there!

 

Here's an experiment I'd like to hear some opinions on:

vcs7.gif

 

More or less a proof of concept that I can get my engine working with single line resolution :)

 

BUT: I think the sprites are getting to small with it. Or is it just me? The shape you see is the one of the main attacking sprite in Arcade size.

 

Ultimately I think it's no improvement over the 2LK version and I think I'll better make a step back again.

 

Greetings,

Manuel

colony7.zip

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Hi there!

 

Here's an experiment I'd like to hear some opionions on:

[image]

 

More or less a proof of concept that I can get my engine working with single line resolution :)

 

BUT: I think the sprites are getting to small with it. Or is it just me? The shape you see is the one of the main attacking sprite in Arcade size.

 

Ultimately I think it's no improvement over the 2LK version and I think I'll better make a step back again.

I think it looks much better. The enemies are small in the arcade game. And not as blocky. I give it :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

 

:D

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BUT: I think the sprites are getting to small with it. Or is it just me? The shape you see is the one of the main attacking sprite in Arcade size.

 

Impressive! Very much in keeping with the arcade game. I think the sprites could be "slightly" larger, but not much. Maybe another 50%?

 

And I know it's still very early on, but the cursor speed feels very slow compared to the arcade version. Also, how would you deal with smart bombs?

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Hi guys!

 

Thanks for the kind words all around! :)

 

Impressive! Very much in keeping with the arcade game. I think the sprites could be "slightly" larger, but not much. Maybe another 50%?

 

Would you be interested in helping me with the sprites conversion? You have a much better eye/hand for stuff like that than me :)

 

And I know it's still very early on, but the cursor speed feels very slow compared to the arcade version.

 

Too slow indeed. That definitely has to change.

 

Also, how would you deal with smart bombs?

 

There's already a little discussion regarding that in... where was it... ah... Roberts blog. ;)

 

Well, amongst other things (Booster Grip / 7800 Joysticks / special joystick input sequence) I thought about just using the fire-button from the second controler. Would depend a bit on how widespread footpedals are. (Ok, you probably could tap the other fire button with your foot as well :lol:)

 

Ok, something special today. Instead of yet another mockup, this is a Z26 screenshot:
Groovy! How much of this is dynamic?

 

From the bottom scenery? The positions and the colors are fixed. But all shapes are read from pointers, so the enemies can blast everything into bits and pieces ;)

 

Greetings,

Manuel

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Would you be interested in helping me with the sprites conversion? You have a much better eye/hand for stuff like that than me :)

 

Sure! Just let me know what sizes they need to be and I'll take a shot at it.

 

Well, amongst other things (Booster Grip / 7800 Joysticks / special joystick input sequence) I thought about just using the fire-button from the second controler. Would depend a bit on how widespread footpedals are. (Ok, you probably could tap the other fire button with your foot as well :lol:)

 

I think there needs to be a nose-activated fire button for the 2600, and this is the perfect game to introduce such a device. Admittedly, it's not very practical, but it would be a lot of fun watching people slamming their faces into their coffee tables every time they needed to bomb something. (And it would be a great crowd-pleaser at game expos!)

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Hi there!

 

Sure! Just let me know what sizes they need to be and I'll take a shot at it.

 

Cool!

 

Hm... can I be a little vague on this? ;)

 

There's 4 different enemies in the game. You can see them all at once, if you just watch the arcades attract mode a while.

 

They are animated.

They all zoom in out of single pixels.

They can explode.

 

Well, my engine can do as many sprites as are needed for all of this. Their height can be variable, though all shapes *may* require to be padded with zeros to even heights (2,4,6,8,... scanlines). (I'm not fully done with the code here.)

 

Basically all enemy sprites should fit into a page. That is 256 bytes. That is also 256 scanlines.

 

So, that's averagely 64 sprite lines available for each enemy. Which is a really a lot. For example the small attacking sprite is only 3 pixels tall, so in theory it could zoom, animate and explode with 21 different frames. (16 if padded to a height of 4)

 

Well... to complicate (or simplify?) things, it'd be cool if all tasks would require an equal number of frames, at best being a power of 2.

 

Like zooming in an enemy would require 4 or 8 frames for all enemies, animating them 2 or 4 frames and exploding also 2 or 4 frames :)

 

Before I forget. Not only the enemies need to fit into those 256 lines, but also the explosions caused by the ion-cannons. And probably the bombs the bomber enemy is dropping. But that'll be few bytes only.

 

I see... I sound way too complicated already :lol:

 

Well to get started, a simple conversion of the 4 full size enemies with their animations will do. When I see how many frames and space that requires, I can see what's left for the zoom and the explosions :)

 

Right now just the shapes would be good enough, but I think I might be able to do multicolor instead of monochrome frames, so if color will help the conversion, just use it (one color per scanline)

 

I think there needs to be a nose-activated fire button for the 2600

 

Hehe, then TJ can really do a Nose Dive game :lol:

 

Greetings,

Manuel

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Hi there!

 

Right now just the shapes would be good enough, but I think I might be able to do multicolor instead of monochrome frames, so if color will help the conversion, just use it (one color per scanline)

 

Ok, so we can have individual colors for each sprite frame:

vcs8.gif

 

Greetings,

Manuel

colorny7.zip

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Ok, so we can have individual colors for each sprite frame ...

936631[/snapback]

 

That looks great! I have been playing the MAME rom a bit, so I can compare this to the original. I think you have really captured the look of the arcade game now.

 

Chris

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Hi there!

 

That looks great!  I have been playing the MAME rom a bit, so I can compare this to the original.  I think you have really captured the look of the arcade game now.

 

Thanks! :D

 

Was a weird evening yesterday. For 3 or 4 hours I tried rewriting the kernel from scratch, according to some new ideas I had. After giving up on that and throwing the new code away, it took only 10 minutes to find a way to add the color writes to the old kernel :ponder: :lol:

 

Greetings,

Manuel

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