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TI BASIC Game: Aperture


adamantyr

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Okay... I've drawn up all my test chambers, and the final "computer core". There are 16 levels in total. So far I've got ten encoded into the game, with about 2048 bytes left, so I should have enough. This will definitely be "too big" for anything except cassette.

 

Encoding is a pain. It takes me a half-hour to do one level, and I often make adjustments if my original map was a bit too ambitious for the HCHAR/VCHAR system to set up effectively. Still, it takes way less space than printing them. I'm using an Excel spreadsheet to help the process, but still a lot of exacting work. The fact I have to go in and manually enter the control characters into the strings takes time too.

 

Also, I may have gotten a little sadistic in some of the levels... serious joystick skills are needed to finish each level. And yes, you are being scored. :)

 

Look for my post to the thread tomorrow evening, hopefully.

 

Adamantyr

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Hey--- adam's game is great, but we haven't seen most of the entries yet. :)

 

As for second prize---- how about a very nice classic tape with a case and printed label with the second place prize winning game on it? :)

 

BTW, the BoCC games will all be put on cassette in alphabetical order. I recently received the SSGC manual document from Codex, so I'll make up the disks from that contest and the cassette tapes for this contest all at the same time. :)

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Haha - :) I still haven't received my disk from SSGC - but I don't really care about that - I don't have a real system in which to use it. I'd honestly like the ability to pay for my own cartridge - should my game turn out - how's that for a prize :)

 

My system goes mostly unused and I live in Classic99 land. I need to use my real system - but setup / teardown / whatever is just not in the cards - and my video out is a bit "snowy"....

 

-H

 

Hey--- adam's game is great, but we haven't seen most of the entries yet. :)

 

As for second prize---- how about a very nice classic tape with a case and printed label with the second place prize winning game on it? :)

 

BTW, the BoCC games will all be put on cassette in alphabetical order. I recently received the SSGC manual document from Codex, so I'll make up the disks from that contest and the cassette tapes for this contest all at the same time. :)

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Nobody had received disks yet. I was waiting to get the manuals done to send them all out at once. Just got the unfinished manual from Codex, so I'm on it. :) everyone will get a package who contributed. :) Promise.

 

 

You need to add a file on the disk, name it something like PRIZE

Have it output this


--------------------------------
|Marc Hull won the SSGC contest|
|                              |
|             and              |
| all I got was this damn disk |
|                              |
|                              |
|              O               |
|                              |
|                              |
|              -               |
|             | |              |
|             | |              |
|             | |              |  
|              -               |
--------------------------------

 

hehe

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I may have found an endless loop, if you put portals on the floor in two places and shove a box in and then walk in yourself you alternate you,box,you,box and it seems to ignore keys..

 

Greg

 

Latest version... six chambers now available! Also, if you get stuck, press 'R' to restart the level.

 

 

 

Added some new stuff on test chamber 6, so be sure and try it out!

 

And yes, I'm aware that cubes can destroy ladders. I don't want to waste an array tracking what's behind cubes. Just be careful. :)

 

Adamantyr

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I may have found an endless loop, if you put portals on the floor in two places and shove a box in and then walk in yourself you alternate you,box,you,box and it seems to ignore keys..

 

Yeah, you don't need to push the cube in first. :) I did fix that, although maybe not in this particular code package...

 

Try pushing hard to the left or right right after coming out of the portal and you should be able to get out of it. (I made sure it loops back to check for a joystick movement BEFORE checking for gravity, which naturally would drop you back in.)

 

Full game will be coming soon. I have to finish encoding the levels (which takes FOREVER...), make sure they're all winnable. I will also put together a disk-based version that loads the levels from disk, which would shrink it enough to work in BASIC with a disk drive.

 

Adamantyr

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Sorry for the late post... Blizzard WOULD choose today of all days to update the World of Warcraft with all the earth-shattering changes to the zones, so I just had to check it out...

 

Anyway, I've got all sixteen levels encoded into the game, and was working through play-testing each one to make sure they're solvable, and also catch any last-minute bugs and errors from transcribing them from paper.

 

However, I've run out of time as I need to get ready for a trip over the mountain pass for Thanksgiving tomorrow. (With lots of ice. And teen degree weather. Yay.) So, having tested at least 12 of them, I'll throw the rest to you guys to find the bugs.

 

 

 

Note that the game takes up nearly all the memory BASIC has to offer. There's no way this one can be run on iron without (ugh) typing it in by hand. Fortunately, there's an easier solution: offload all the level data to disk. That should cut it down enough to fit easily in BASIC with room for a disk controller. I'll probably do that for completeness sake.

 

Adamantyr

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I've played it... Got through a few levels and then had to knock it off--- I've been extremely busy the last couple days... But I posted earlier about my initial thoughts. :) You truly ARE killin it. The game is really unbelievable--- I like to play it in OD, even though you have to be super sharp with your moves and portal shots. Sometimes it gets extremely hard. :)

 

So far, I've completed 3 or 4 levels... I'm going to try to best all the levels tonight.

 

The gravity is cool--- very effective in BASIC, and I didn't think it would be so quick. I do like the fire button and joystick updates as well. It adds another element of strategy.

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On vacation, can't work on my game for a few days, I DL this and let my son play who has beat Portal and he liked this game. a couple of things we noticed that may be fixed. I think the first was mentioned, 2 portals on the ground walk into one and a endless loop starts that you can'r ® out of have to F4 it. Then on level 4 got the box top of the do even though it's a wall spot. Going to play it some more! Really enjoy it!

Edited by jchase1970
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On vacation, can't work on my game for a few days, I DL this and let my son play who has beat Portal and he liked this game. a couple of things we noticed that may be fixed. I think the first was mentioned, 2 portals on the ground walk into one and a endless loop starts that you can'r ® out of have to F4 it. Then on level 4 got the box top of the do even though it's a wall spot. Going to play it some more! Really enjoy it!

 

Glad to hear it. Hm, can you post a screenshot of the second problem? Also, I know if you put two portals straight down, you should be able to move away... are you pushing a cube through first?

 

Adamantyr

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Hm, the "push block on any axis" code is relatively new, not surprising you managed to find a bug. It's supposed to only move the block into an empty space, though, weird...

 

I think I know why the portal skip-out is no longer working... Blast it. I had to make other changes so that falling out of a portal let you shift one space to left or right, which necessitated other changes... one of them is applying a Y-axis value on you when you attempt to move out of the portal. So you hit a block diagonally and are stopped, thus, you fall back through.

 

Any complex system has a number of edge cases. I know of a few in the game that I can live with; BASIC just doesn't have the memory or speed to cover every potential case, and the ones I've seen were mostly harmless.

 

Adamantyr

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Hm, the "push block on any axis" code is relatively new, not surprising you managed to find a bug. It's supposed to only move the block into an empty space, though, weird...

 

I think I know why the portal skip-out is no longer working... Blast it. I had to make other changes so that falling out of a portal let you shift one space to left or right, which necessitated other changes... one of them is applying a Y-axis value on you when you attempt to move out of the portal. So you hit a block diagonally and are stopped, thus, you fall back through.

 

Any complex system has a number of edge cases. I know of a few in the game that I can live with; BASIC just doesn't have the memory or speed to cover every potential case, and the ones I've seen were mostly harmless.

 

Adamantyr

Well the block in the wall only happened when the door was there. I tried to do it next to a wall. So that is not real important. The portal lock is bad. Cause u have to break the program and restart.

Speaking of restart are you going to have a level skip or password to another level. Be nice if when I play again and I'm on level 7 or whatever that I don't have to play from the beginning.

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Well the block in the wall only happened when the door was there. I tried to do it next to a wall. So that is not real important. The portal lock is bad. Cause u have to break the program and restart.

Speaking of restart are you going to have a level skip or password to another level. Be nice if when I play again and I'm on level 7 or whatever that I don't have to play from the beginning.

 

Only when the door is there, interesting... would like to at least identify the cause there.

 

I'll have to look over the check code again for the portal fall-through... I had it so it kept moving you 2 over if you shifted at all, because it treated it like you were falling off an edge. I didn't like that, so I worked to get it to only move you one square. Hopefully there's a simple way to restore the move-away to break out of a portal loop. :P

 

I hadn't planned on a level skip. The game doesn't end at any point, or regress you to a prior level. Plus it scores how many times you restart or die, so a level skip would break that.

 

Still, if you want to start at a different level, just change line 770 to L=# to set it to start at a different level.

 

Adamantyr

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