Rockcutter 32KB version

[Kiwi]

I decided to just release the 32KB version of Rockcutter today. I don't feel like working on the Mega-cart 128KB version of Rockcutter for awhile, so I think releasing a game on my birthday month would be better. It is bankswitched already and reachable to the end of the game. Music need to be finished and finalized.

 

I'm not in the mood to work on the instruction manual or box art for awhile. I want the instruction manual to be awesome, so I'll worry about that later.

 

The reason I'm releasing it is not an arcade style game or a well known game. I wanted more people to play it.

 

Based on the file creation date, I started on this game on July 17, 2014. I "finished" the 32KB version last year. It been playtested and I fixed most of the bug in the 32KB version. Only 1 harmless bug is that when defeating the 2nd boss, the fish can swim higher passing through the wall. I added reminder instruction on the final boss. One of the playtester made it to the final boss and didn't use the cutters to slay the boss.

 

Rom file: Rockcutter32Kv.rom

 

32KB exactly. The level data get unpacked to 2800-37FF portion of the VRAM, so defective VRAM chips may not work well with this game. I think there's over 59 screens, I've lost track.

 

This game is an platformer genre game. The level becomes bigger and more non-linear as you progress, requiring you to explore every rooms to find switches or defeat enemies to open the boss room gate to defeat the boss. You can collect cutters dropped by enemies. To toss them, just hold up and fire, like you would use sub-weapons in Castlevania. Just remember, there's a timer ticking away to discourage farming them | . There's a heart extension hidden in each level. 2 are out in the open, 3 have to be in a specific part of the map to make it appear. There's treasure room in level 4 and 5. If you didn't find the treasure in level 4, then the treasure in level 5 won't appear. Collecting both will fully power up your cutter and make the final boss much easier. Beating this game and pressing fire at the ending screen will enable hard mode.

 

I added easier mode that give you more time and start the game off with 99 cutter, more time and plus 1 extra chance collected. Pressing down and fire 2 at the title screen will give you those things.

 

 

Here's the instruction demonstration gif taken from the bankswitched version.

 

I would like to thank newcoleco for the awesome tools he made and documentation to help me understand C language and able to make games for the Colecovision. I would like to thank my best friend VampGoddess for playtesting the hell out of this game and reporting bugs. Groovybee for taking the time and looking over my code and found way to reduce the game size and buying back CPU cycle greatly. Also teaching me in the process. I would like to thank betatesters for taking the time to play this game and giving me feedback. And thanking Collectorvision, retroillucid and colecomaster, for being awesome. I also want to thanks Kamshaft, TPR, chartz, ArcadeUSA, and NIAD for playtesting this game.

 

Enjoy.

Edited February 28, 2017 by Kiwi

[alekmaul]

Thanks a lot, will take a look at it

[SiLic0ne t0aD]

Thanks for sharing! I hope to have a go at it later this week.

[chart45]

i hope people will give you enough positive feedback to resume working on this game

 

when i beta test this i made it to the final boss really chalenging game...

 

thanks for releasing this game rom

[ValkerieSilk]

Thank you! Wow, this is FUN!

[Kiwi]

i hope people will give you enough positive feedback to resume working on this game

 

when i beta test this i made it to the final boss really chalenging game...

 

thanks for releasing this game rom

I been working on and off since July 2014. 32KB version is complete since it has an animated ending, and hard mode when completing the game. I didn't reserve space for music because I'm not good at making music.

 

RCPreMetaTile.rom

 

This is the pre meta-tile version. You can see the difference between the 32KB version and that one. This one was 30 KB, level 3 and 4 would have been very small. I made the bosses for that level before doing the level to determine how much space is left. So I held off working on that until I had a solution how to do metatiling and rle doesn't compress well. The whole screen would be over 192 bytes, up to maximum 784 bytes. So metatiling takes less space and max at 192 byte and fit well into Colecovision 1KB RAM since it retrieve the data from the vram address. After I finish and finalize the level layout. I used pletter compression and have it unpack the level data to the unused VRAM. Pletter is good with using dictionary type compression, so the leveldata have a lot of common data.

 

uncompressed leveldata - compressed

level1&2 =3,456 - 731

level3 =2,880 - 593

level4 =4,208 - 432

level5 =1,712 - 282

Total =12256 - 2038

 

And I only have 1 copy of the sprites compressed, and have a routine to copy and flip it to another sprite table at load. I have help from Groovybee to condense the game further. I condensed the boss behavior to cram more things in a 32KB space.

 

I wanted to release it because it done and I lost motivation and don't know when I going back to it. I'm more likely to rewrite the engine to have Quinn sprite to be redefine instead of having it all load into 32 card slots, leaving 32 cards left for the objects. I wanted to have death animation and win animation. So redefining the player sprites will leave me 60 cards err sprite patterns-sorry too much intellivision programming- toward the objects so I can add more animation frames. One of the game I'm making for Colecovision does that and having 128KB will let me have uncompress version of the player sprite to put data from. I'll worry about box release later. I wanted to add story animation scene and full screen picture 3D render of the final ending screen to attempt to fill up all the bank and then it should be ready. And probably add more details into the levels itself. The tutorial level I will probably add a boss to that stage to complete that level. Possibly build 2 more levels and a password system.

 

Atariage and Intellivision developers usually post complete/WIPs games on the forums to get feedback, so I think Colecovision side is no exception.

 

Right now, I'm working on the sequel to the RPG game I made last year for the Intellivision.