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New homebrew called "Rocketeer"


GroovyBee

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I would like to see this game finished as much as you do. Hopefully groovybee will eventually get it done and release for the mass to devo- err enjoy it. Even if it cart is made with dried bacon. I did prepay for it too. There's other homebrew games coming out for Intellivision and Colecovision to keep me busy until this game get finished.

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I thought about his whole calamity here and its funny and sad at the same time. Back in the early 2013 you announced games. Many people loved them and gladly paid you the money you asked for them to pre-order. The release should follow in April 2013! We have September 2016 and still nothing.

 

You are so good in telling us about so great things that will come, but what have you done all the time? You programmed one single game (Piggy Bank) which was released just to mock other publishers, while your pre paid games were behind in time for over two years already. You dont even see any reason for being modest, no you told us proud how good you are. You also told us proud that Jeff Minter liked your game, completely ingoring the fact that many of us would also like to get the chance to like your games and in contrast to Mr. Minter we paid money for that. Maybe I am the only one, but I am sick of hearing some new empty promises or great things you have done, the only thing I want is that you finish the things you promised us to finish back in 2013. We had several release dates, you broke all of them and you do not even show enough respect for your customers to inform them most of the time, hell, you do not even answer questions if you dont like them.

 

I almost forgot, you are busy with your Multi-Cart, which is also very great and has so many additional stuff. Well, in the time you told us how great this cart will be, another publisher used its time to release a Multi-Cart. Just like that and as it seems its great.

 

I probably should stop the time until someone joins your side and tells me to "get a refund", brownnosing is very common in these situations. But I dont want a damn refund, I want the games I paid three and a half years ago and hell, I definitely won't hear you talking about great things you do. You dont do great things very often, most of the time you are just doing great words.

May you cancel my orders now, because my nose is not brown enough. I do not want them to be cancelled, but its not in my power. But I am just so sick of this empty promisses and of this farce. I stood at your side sometimes in the past, you may remember which situations, but in restrospect I am not sure if I was right in the past. I made advertising for your game in a german board and meanwhile I hope no one joined the pre order, because I would feel ashamed for talking people in this pre-order after all these years.

 

And don't worry. I definitely never will pre-order something again from you, so if you announce the next games and take money you can take your time for decades, I will not complain. Its everyones own fault if he supports you again before the games are done and produced. But I expect you finally to deliver that you promised for April 2013.

 

No longer buried.

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  • 5 months later...

I guess its time for a small update on this game. Its been a long time coming (too long in fact :() but the game is now at Release Candidate #1 status (RC#1). The final game now features :-

  • Never before seen graphics from nonner242
  • Five awesome tunes from Mystery Musician
  • Three difficulty levels: Easy, Medium and Hard
  • Eight enemy types to avoid/shoot
  • Four different enemy attack styles
  • Four "Evil Otto style" invincible bosses and their shots
  • Five rocket ships to build up and collect fuel pods for
  • Animated rocket launch/land sequence
  • Eight different collectable items
  • Procedurally generated planet names, graphics and colour schemes
  • An animated "New Game" intro sequence
  • An animated "New Planet" intermission
  • Four "New Ship" animated intermissions
  • HSC league and player initials entry (saved/restored to/from cart)
  • Fully adjustable volume for both music and special effects (settings saved/restored to/from cart)
  • A selection of graphical screens and animated screen wipes done in Coloured Squares mode
  • All tunes are PAL and NTSC compatible.
  • Piggy Bank also makes an appearance too :rolling:

Take a look at the sneak peek video of RC#1 here :-



Difficulty levels
There are three difficulty levels in the game that are selected by pressing 1, 2, or 3 during the game's attract sequence:
  • Easy - The next rocket part to collect is identified briefly (it flashes blue)
  • Medium - No rocket part identification and an "Evil Otto style" boss
  • Hard - No rocket part identification, an "Evil Otto style" boss and weapon overheating

A new life is awarded every 10K points too. I'm not a great believer in giving the player a bunch of things to tweak because all those parameters should have be worked out in the balancing phase of the game development in my opinion.

Procedurally generated planets
The procedurally generated planet's names, graphics and their colours allows for far more level variety in the game than I could come up with manually e.g.
post-21935-0-39859400-1489064140_thumb.png<---- Click to enlarge
post-21935-0-26476400-1489064132_thumb.png<---- Click to enlarge
post-21935-0-68589500-1489064151_thumb.png<---- Click to enlarge
Yep! The game generates ice/snow planets just for Rev :lol:.

Bosses
These are screenshots of two of the four bosses (the video contains a snippet of the first boss in action):
post-21935-0-18295400-1489064568_thumb.pngpost-21935-0-89398600-1489064574_thumb.png

"New Ship" intermissions
There are four "New Ship" intermissions in the final game (only two are shown in the video above). Each intermission contains some random elements so that you won't always see the exact same thing every time you play. The intermissions are chosen randomly too, just to mix it up a bit.

Options
I noticed that the game's Options screen wasn't using the right font after I posted the video. Its corrected in this screen shot :-
post-21935-0-33021000-1489067732_thumb.png
Its been quite a while since I coded that screen and the 'S' and 'Z' font characters were changed a long time afterwards.

Bee3s
I have plenty of blank Bee3 PCBs to populate :-
post-21935-0-40409400-1489064879_thumb.png

Shells
I have several crates of these things to clean and prepare :-
post-21935-0-48146700-1489065988_thumb.png
If I run out of them, I know a man with far more (*cough* BBWW *cough*) :lol:

Wrapping up
The plan going forward is as follows :-
- Get some more Bee3s built up and programmed for the final phase of testing.
- Beta testers to test the game on real hardware for a couple of months and for any bugs found to be subsequently fixed and their carts swapped out.
- Ship JasonlikesINTV his early copy (as I promised ages ago).
- Ship it out! :lol:
- Make the game available to anybody who missed out.

Testing
I have tested the game on several of my own NTSC Inty II and PAL units and it behaves as expected. Having said that, there is no substitute for testing "out there" on different hardware.

As always, if anybody wants a refund just drop me a PM.

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That looks and sounds really impressive.

Thanks for the compliment.

 

How do you do the overlay of the scores on the planet animation on high score screen? The effect is subtle and slick. There look to be quite a few cards with 3 colours:

 

attachicon.gifrocketeer.png

It uses all 8 MOBs in double height mode (STIC.moby_yres) with a double magnification in X (STIC.mobx_xsize) and a quadruple magnification in Y (STIC.moby_ysize4). They all have their priority flag set (STIC.moba_prio) so that they will appear behind the BACKTAB cards. Their 16 respective GRAM cards are reprogrammed on the fly.

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Looks and sounds awesome GB!!!!

Thanks for the compliment.

 

Thanks for sharing this update.

I would have done it sooner, but the aftermath of Hurricane Doris screwed my internet connection for nearly two weeks :(.

 

I soo want !!!

Pls put me on your list,

Rocketeer Rocks!! Can't wait for my space odyssey to start.

You should be able to order the game after the pre-orders have shipped.

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Wow, this game is going to be a masterpiece! Thanks for the detailed update. Glad to see it coming along.

Thanks for the compliment.

 

Early copy...was that me? :ponder: Sure, I'm in! I can't remember if this one will be boxed, but I can be a packaging beta tester ;-)

You did indeed! Click the speech bubble in the top right of the following quote for some time travel :lol:

 

:lol: Just for being cheeky I'll send you a version on a Rev3a prototype.

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