sh3-rg Posted August 4, 2015 Share Posted August 4, 2015 (edited) I started this around 7 months or so ago and for a time posted a few things in an AA blog. Seeing a few things happening around the rB+ forum and digging back in for the first time in around 4 months, I was looking for something fun to make decided to get back to it. Not really knowing how much AA blogs get noticed I decided to make a thread here, for somewhere to post updates and binaries to instead. So here's microFLY build 0.5. It's an endless runner that's a little bit SuperFly DX and a little bit Flap... yes, that (only a little bit). The progression curve is accelerated in this build, so you'll quickly reach the minimum distance between blockers. Things to be added: Scores Better progression - once the minimum blocker spawn is reached, I want the openings to narrow as well. Eek! Difficulty settings High score saving Bonus scoring A different audio engine allowing more tracks (compression) Collects? Flying enemies to avoid? Webscores? If this gets completed (and there's no good reason why not now), some bits of it might be worth commenting and using as a tutorial as it does a few things not covered yet (like redefining objects on the fly to have specific properties of an object type from a table). Oh, and the other game based on the same backdrop - the horse thing - that might get worked on once this is more finished. uFLY.abs Edited August 4, 2015 by sh3-rg 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sporadic Posted August 4, 2015 Share Posted August 4, 2015 Nice to see you pick something back up and carry on with it. Looking cool The parallax effects are really effective. Good job there. Small idea I had; How about making the occasional blocker slowly move up and down? Maybe later on when things get harder. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CyranoJ Posted August 4, 2015 Share Posted August 4, 2015 I'll wait until it's finished and you can shoot..... (As some useless c**t on another useless c**ting forum once said) Seriously, though - looks good 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted August 4, 2015 Author Share Posted August 4, 2015 Was going to burn the rest of the day away with some gfxing, but CJ gave me a tip or two regarding branch objects, so I checked out the Raptor tutorial #10 and now it's either skipping all 7 grass objects or skipping all 15 sky/cloud objects when processing the list. this should give me a bit of breathing space for collects and stuff and offers more possibilities for rb+ site tricks and tips info. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ggn Posted August 4, 2015 Share Posted August 4, 2015 I love the fact that 2/9 in that todo list have to do with me slaving away to add moar functions to basic . 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted August 5, 2015 Author Share Posted August 5, 2015 I love the fact that 2/9 in that todo list have to do with me slaving away to add moar functions to basic . But it's what you do best, and you already did 1/2 of them before, so you can do it again! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted August 5, 2015 Author Share Posted August 5, 2015 New: blocker graphics - still WIP, animate as they cross the screen with a kind of depth to them. blue sky at top, green grass below. first two grass layers now in front of blockers - lower blockers are also taller and can be moved up to reveal more of their buried lower parts and narrow the gap (not implemented). blocker spawn time minimum lowered - harder. thought this would need more objects as on my screen, via xrgb mini, objects were being reused before they had died of natural causes (exit screen left), but in VJ and direct to TV, there's no such problem - around 8 pixels to spare in fact. player movement - you can now move left and right, makes the movement more like a kind of scramble-with-gravity. player shadow now tracks horizontally as well. game feels quite different with new movement, not sure where it will head but it should be more fun with more possibilities - making it up as I go. uFLY.abs 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sporadic Posted August 5, 2015 Share Posted August 5, 2015 (edited) uFLY0_6.png New: blocker graphics - still WIP, animate as they cross the screen with a kind of depth to them. uFLY.abs Looking very cool. I'm loving the 3d effect for the blockers. Thats a great touch. I always find it interesting creating pseudo 3d effects out of 2d. Edited August 5, 2015 by Sporadic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted August 5, 2015 Author Share Posted August 5, 2015 Wasn't going to post 2 in a day, but it's sort of worth it. New: some kind of scoring "thing" - rather than just +1 for passing a blocker it's piling on score all the time you're passing through 2x speed - turns out it's better when faster uFLY0_7.abs 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted August 7, 2015 Author Share Posted August 7, 2015 Switched to zerosquare's player as GGN recently added that back in to rB+, so the perfect opportunity to test it while the Jaguar is doing a few things. Seems to work well. Original player and pad handling still available as a switch and single comment flip at build time. Binary is now smaller as a result even though more bitmaps are included and audio output is 16-bit from u-law compressed source. This is playing better now. Faster gameplay = more fun (IMO, YMMV). Blockers move 2x faster than they originally did, grass and other things sped up appropriately. Player x movement mow matches blockers again - 2 pixels per VBL. Scoring: 1 point for passing between blockers. Multiplier increases this score, up to a maximum of x9. Multiplier increased by x1 each time a star is collected, but... To keep multiplier active, have to chain star collects - miss one and multiplier resets to x1. Even at x9 you have to continue to collect stars for it to remain active, but this also adds a bonus score (50, not affected by multiplier) Heart collects give a fixed bonus score (25, not affected by multiplier), not part of the multiplier system so don't affect it if collected or missed. Plays best with joypad in hand rather than emulator/keyboard. Getting a feel for the scramble-like left and right movement coupled with the rising/falling doesn't take long and is the key to larger scores. My best is somewhere over 800, but I'm mostly testing in-game logic, not playing for score. It seems rb+ doesn't fully support branch objects as previously thought - running the previous build/s with those in at 50Hz produced an interesting display. Until that functionality is patched in, I've done a quick haxx0r, bashing the generated OPL with the correct values every frame if the game is not running at 60Hz. Only implemented in-game just to see if I could, not at startup or on death, so you can see where it goes wrong if you're curious :0) uFLY0_8.abs Not sure if this will be the last one posted before it's complete, there's not much more to be seen to make any worthwhile... Things to come: new or at least edited collect gfx small exit from current game and start of new one - something quick and scripted retaining the immediacy of death to restart for a speedy one-more-go without faff. title screen? secret/silly stuff in background and foreground - depends on free RAM, this won't be a ROM it'll be a single-loader. correct non-test settings for initial state and progression - have to find the best balance that's not boring to begin with for good players and not too difficult for those who need to git gud. it doesn't actually seem all that far from being right to me. maybe more music, something smaller and loopy for out-of-game state. memory track stuff - this'll be last, will just be a single best score that will always be shown on-screen to the right. Things not coming: sound fx - they'd only clash with the lovely music, no need for CHING CHING 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted August 11, 2015 Author Share Posted August 11, 2015 (edited) I'll update as well but don't have a binary to post. Added a few things, it's getting close to finished as far as everything but high score management goes. Took a day off from this to make another fake "demo effect" after seeing that great Checkpoint Pulse demo released a few days ago, especially the horizontally scrolling colourful thingy... couldn't stop thinking about how the Jaguar could do an equally cheaty but differently cheaty version - with a few twists of course!). Oh and built a wall with cavity closer because I really I should be converting this room and not BASIC programming - GGN's scroller, modified it to 16 colours (and took up one of the final CLUT sections), made is trans and have it overlapping character by character (italic font), can be "switched off" (scales into oblivion, it's still there at height=0...) Looks effective and will be used for credits and stuff. - Control info, a handy little guy appears and tells you how to play if you leave the game sat on the title screen. - Music now plays a small loop at title screen, same long loop in-game, and a different small loop on death To do: high score stuff draw font (only test outline atm) and add support for non-A...Z&space characters. branch object 50Hz adjustment (not currently supported in rB+ and my botches break when I add and remove objects to the list, so the game is dead at 50Hz currently). uFLY-FLY! move score display around - feedback from testing on TV shows stuff is off the top at PAL60 and therefore probably regular NTSC60. ...oh, I was playing with palette fading as well... turning the sky into more of a sunset gradually. Considered adding this to the game to help show how far you got or how good your score is, just for a bit more tension or whatever, but think it might be best saved for the horse game that will be based on the same simple framework of this game (but play more like Moon Patrol). If I go for that there I can build it in from the beginning, and GGN says he enjoyed playing an old Atari 8 game that had a full day/night cycle, so... FAKE EDIT: wow, sorry, that read like some dodgy blog lol, but did consider a rare edge case that might create a problem on the title screen by writing this crap out, so all was not lost, bug fixxy... Edited August 11, 2015 by sh3-rg 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted August 11, 2015 Author Share Posted August 11, 2015 Couldn't edit last post for screen shot. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted August 17, 2015 Author Share Posted August 17, 2015 It's very close to complete now. Difficulty curve is just about right for what I want now. Implemented the hearts feature. So you collect the stars for a score multiplier. Miss one and the multiplier resets to the default of *1. The hearts that spawn much less frequently than the stars can be collected for a score bonus, but their main function is to allow you to keep your multiplier going even if you miss the stars. You can collect a maximum of three stars in total. They will be consumed one by one when your combo is above the default *1 setting to allow you to continue gaining higher scores. The only thing I'm considering adding here is a post-game score bonus based on an unused hearts - it seems only fair and should probably be a decent amount. MT stuff is working, the sly little bug was squashed from this and all other rB+ projects, will go up with the next release. Considering using the MT for more than just saving a single score. Playing around with that at the moment. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted February 27, 2018 Author Share Posted February 27, 2018 Now here's a bump. 2.5 years later Adding scoring to Bexagon was the plan for today, thought I'd tear it out of uFLY. In these 2.5 years, though, Raptor has changed and rb+ has changed meaning this game needed a bit of fixing up of its own. Scroller broken, branch objects not working on PAL/50 so stripped out (leading to all kinds of fun brokenness!), head-scratcher with the score panel dancing around (due to_indx and _size switcharoo when I wasn't looking) and other fun things. So my fun Jaguar coding Tuesday was all uFLY this week instead of Bexagon, but the good news is it seems to be mostly done now bar an odd graphical hitch right on the horizon and I suppose somehow testing eprom saving. Has been stress tested on 60hz machine but not at 50 but I think that will be fine. Then it just needs the scroller writing and job done. So anyway, after all that mucking about I spent over half an hour playing, so I suppose that's a good sign. Plan on making the other game this was originally meant to be before it became a superfly-like thing, not sure how long that will take, but it'll happen after or if I get bored working on the last bits of Bexagon. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted March 2, 2018 Author Share Posted March 2, 2018 Fixed the horizon bug, edited the colours to make the grass parallax layers stand out more and fade nicer into the distance and it's done! Well, apart from testing high score save. <2MB ROM or .abs/.bjl upload. 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F.L Posted March 3, 2018 Share Posted March 3, 2018 Hello. I would like to test your game but i dont know how to load .abs file with virtualjaguar It is possible with a skunkboard ? Thanks in advance ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ggn Posted March 3, 2018 Share Posted March 3, 2018 Hello. I would like to test your game but i dont know how to load .abs file with virtualjaguar It is possible with a skunkboard ? Thanks in advance ! In virtualjaguar you can drag'n'drop the .abs file into vj's icon, or type "virtualjaguar filename.abs" in a console. If you want to use the built in file selector then go to config and check "show all files in file chooser". As for skunkboard just type "jcp filename.abs" in a console or use jiffi. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted March 3, 2018 Author Share Posted March 3, 2018 Latest preview seems to have been in another thread, didn't realise there was one in the main Jaguar section (only visit here now, focus!) http://atariage.com/forums/topic/241958-%ce%bcfly-new-jaguar-game-release/page-2#entry3308023 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F.L Posted March 3, 2018 Share Posted March 3, 2018 In virtualjaguar you can drag'n'drop the .abs file into vj's icon, or type "virtualjaguar filename.abs" in a console. If you want to use the built in file selector then go to config and check "show all files in file chooser". As for skunkboard just type "jcp filename.abs" in a console or use jiffi. thanks, i will try it. sh3-rg , can you add here your latest preview ? thanks in advance Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted March 3, 2018 Author Share Posted March 3, 2018 thanks, i will try it. sh3-rg , can you add here your latest preview ? thanks in advance I think the other one in the other thread will have to do - I've since made it into a 4mb ROM along with another game I'm working on that shares some assets and parallax things (only it's rather more OTT on the parallax lol) and I don't want to share anything of that just yet, it's too early... so the two games are joined at the hip now, no going back! uFLY0_991.abs 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ggn Posted March 8, 2018 Share Posted March 8, 2018 NSFW: Can cause spontaneous erections 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 NSFW: Can cause spontaneous erections Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F.L Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 I think the other one in the other thread will have to do - I've since made it into a 4mb ROM along with another game I'm working on that shares some assets and parallax things (only it's rather more OTT on the parallax lol) and I don't want to share anything of that just yet, it's too early... so the two games are joined at the hip now, no going back! hello i have tried this abs with my skunkboard but it dont works.... i do : jcp -r jcp -f uFLY0_991.abs it is correct ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted March 21, 2018 Author Share Posted March 21, 2018 (edited) hello i have tried this abs with my skunkboard but it dont works.... i do : jcp -r jcp -f uFLY0_991.abs it is correct ? nope -f is for flashing ROMs, this file is an ABS, it just needs firing into the Jag's ram not flashing to the skunk itself do: jcp ufly.abs Edited March 21, 2018 by sh3-rg 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F.L Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 ok, thanks. it works fine , good job ! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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