Spire of the Ancients (WIP)

[Trebor]

25 minutes ago, Jinks said:

The golden teddy bear is weak but does lots of damage. Beware!! Lol

He must fuel up on some Super Golden Crisp.

[+SmittyB]

Before starting on the next few maps I wanted to double check that everything lined up and I wasn't going to have things overlapping. I drew a map from what the player would see because I couldn't just copy the map data as several of the maps take advantage of wrapping from one side to the other to fit more in and others have overlapping parts to allow for seamless transitions.

The only bit that really matters to me is the middle where the red squarish area is as that would be the border of the next map from what's currently available, but I got carried away and nearly mapped out the whole game so far. I only found one single spot that overlapped so that's been changed.

 

Key:

White - Outside

Red - Interior

Grey - Portcullis

Brown - Door

Blue - Pit / Ladder

Very Dark Grey - Where the paths would extend beyond what the player can see

Other colours are used to show the depth of the underground areas.

 

 

I figured it might be interesting / useful for some people to see how the top-down view compares. (Note there are a couple of very minor differences between the posted build's maps and the current maps)

 

[gambler172]

wow,what a big map...

[SlidellMan]

I suspect that you have more in store in terms of the overall map.

[+SmittyB]

At the moment there's 28 unique maps (one being secret) with 38 more that can fit as things are now. When I get a bit further along I'll shuffle code to other banks to free up more space for maps, but I don't want to do that until things are unlikely to change dramatically so I know what can go where.

 

I'm also not using the DMA hole in bank 8 where the maps are at the moment because I get an error when I do, but if I could that would be another 18 unique maps in that spot.

(I might be was making a simple mistake with this).

 

Overall I roughly estimate that the maps will cover a larger area than the dungeon in the original dungeon master and possibly the sequels which I'm pleased about.

[SlidellMan]

Nice! I love an expansive dungeon, especially when it is well-designed.

[phattyboombatty]

On 9/28/2018 at 1:21 PM, DracIsBack said:

doesn't work on Cuttle Cart. Used the Alien Brigade and Crossbow bankswitch scheme but the Atari logo doesn't boot.

 

On 9/28/2018 at 1:28 PM, RevEng said:

IIRC, the CC2 144k format isn't in the same bank order as the rest of the world.

 

On 9/28/2018 at 4:38 PM, Mitch said:

The 144K ROMs that run on the CC2 have the last bank swapped from what emus use and what is in the A78 files. You would likely need to swap it for this one as well to get it to run on the CC2.

 

I wanted to try this out on my CC2, so I revisited these posts. Using the new CC2 banking files (specifically 144RPK) provided buy Mitch, I was able to get this superb game loaded properly into the 7800!

 

Here is my CC2 entry for the menu.txt file:

 

7800:    Spire of the Ancients    SOTA    144RPK    78BIOS

 

Load the ROM (SOTA.BIN) into the /GAMES directory, and make sure you duplicate this entry into your menu.cc2 file (using spaces, not tabs).

 

This is a truly outstanding, quality 3D effort, and for that I thank you @SmittyB! I'm still learning how to play the game. It plays amazingly well on real 7800 hardware.

[+SmittyB]

Once again it's been a while so I figured I'd post what I've got so far while I continue to make improvements. In terms of what can be played through it's much the same as before but with a bit more to explore. It's not possible to get stuck anywhere that I've found, and there's an end screen when you get far enough. I'm interested to see if anyone gets to the end and what problems they have along the way that I might be able to smooth over.

Something I'll mention because it's not as obvious as it should be yet; When your focus stat is 10 you'll get a fireball which you need to use a few times to continue, and that includes in the basement of the abandoned stores.

 

Other changes include:

Enemies are generally weaker now.

Health regenerates slowly.

By default the colourburst is disabled for text screens and the hud, holding reset on startup enables it for compatibility with some TVs that don't like it otherwise.

Potentially/probably/hopefully fixed the rare crash that @KevinMos3 reported May 31st.

Added a stats screen that's shown when you continue a game showing your time and the number of unique items / abilities you've collected. 

Added some speech for the AtariVox (to be improved and expanded on).

Lots of other bug fixes.

Finally, I can't remember if it was in an earlier build but the left difficulty switch can be used to enable/disable the music (left = enabled). Only problem is it won't stop any music already playing until the track is finished or it's interrupted by something else like the secret chime.

 

 

Stat affecting items aren't counted on the statistics screen properly yet as I haven't assigned them unique IDs but the code is in place to count them.

There are a couple of long phrases the AtariVox stumbles through and I'll be working on that as I update the speech.

If you find some armour it will make you immune to damage at the moment because damage subtracts the armour value and all enemy attacks deal 1 damage, just at different rates.

 

 

NTSC Version Running on JS7800

SotA.PAL.bin SotA.NTSC.a78 SotA.NTSC.bin SotA.PAL.a78

[gambler172]

Hi Smitty

this versuon is the best....it plays very well....the whole game is amazing.....maybe you could add a small manual?

greetings Walter

[Trebor]

Great job with the update! Played through a bit, and have a few items I noticed off the bat and them some elaboration and comments.

 

-Is it possible for there to be a sound effect when acquiring an item into inventory?  Every time I pick up a key or that bottle 'thing' (Unsure what that is yet), there is silence.

 

-Notice with the keys, you can pick one up, leave through the door you came in and go back though the door, and there is the key once more.  It still picks it up (again), but you only have one key in inventory.  I did this a few times going through the same door bridging "Rustling In the Walls" and "Fork In The Tunnel".

 

-Besides leveraging the keypad (1 rotates the items in the left hand, 2 rotated the items in the right hand), can the joystick in port 2 be leveraged as well?  This is a title that really should be enjoyed by the widest possible audience.  Requiring a keypad to play may narrow that audience considerably under real hardware.

 

-So far, I feel like the Karate Kid with my wax on and wax off hand motion.   I was both happily surprised and somewhat disappointing how far I went and the variety of enemies faced without a weapon in hand; unless, I am truly a mage/magician type of character and misunderstanding the role.

 

I like the enemies do not always appear at the same times or in the same spots.  One game "Rustling In The Walls" area had me only encounter one or two at a time.   Another game, four enemies at once.  Two blobs, one golden teddy, and one pinkish snake.  The downside, and this is kind of in harmony with the weapons point mentioned earlier, all seem to be defeated with a stick and move technique.  Wax on, back up; wax off, back up - repeat as necessary.  At (many) times too, the player can just stand their ground and defeat the enemy as well.  I haven't found myself to be defeated yet, but then again it is early in the game.

 

The cavern coloring and tunnels looks great.  The lighting wonderfully handled.  Extinguishing and relighting torches are one of my favorite things to do even when serves no purpose at times. Working 'around' the spinning fan and having it push you back is very nicely done.  The walking perspective of corridors and the proportional changes of the stone is done excellently.  Really love seeing the continued development of this title.  Thank you for keeping at it.

 

*EDIT:  Just made "The Climb To The Plateau".  So with the key, unlock one door.  Exit back to the other room, re-enter find another door unlock.  Repeated a third time.  So the same 'key' appears in the same spot.  Though only one can be held at once, every time the character does/seems to pick a key up (Disappears from the floor).  Once you use the key in a door lock though, the same spot and door transport can be used to allow multiple keys to appear in conjunction with the one at a time usage.

 

Whether this is intentional or a bug, it may be best if the key does not seem to be picked up every time, but remains on the floor until the key that is in the player's inventory is used on a door lock, then the player can return to the spot and pick up the next key, unlock another lock, and so on.

 

*EDIT2: "The Old Guard House"...Sword - Yes!  Now we're cooking!  The precipitation effect is quite awesome - complete with lightning - Wow!  Great job on the sound effect on whatever is waiting for or hunting me....ah...I think that may actually be thunder...well played! 

 

A real Mage/Magician just kicked my butt inside the house...that's what I get for thinking I'm some sort of sorcerer.  A real one just did me in lovely.

 

Bravo on the gameplay balance!  As I suspected, I was too early on to expect more than 'just the hands' and enemies.  If anything it is quite a plus for a newcomer (Or someone like me who hadn't played this in a bit), to come along and feels like they are accomplishing some tasks and making progress off the bat.   The way the challenge is currently tweaked makes it both inviting and engaging - very well done!

[+SmittyB]

 

52 minutes ago, Trebor said:

Is it possible for there to be a sound effect when acquiring an item into inventory?  Every time I pick up a key or that bottle 'thing' (Unsure what that is yet), there is silence.

There will be. Sound is something I really need to sit down and work on. There'll also be AtariVox speech to accompany the pickups, and at the moment that only applies to keys and the knife.

 

52 minutes ago, Trebor said:

Notice with the keys, you can pick one up, leave through the door you came in and go back though the door, and there is the key once more. 

Yes, you can't collect a stack of keys in this so it's a one at a time jobby. I can't keep track of which doors have been unlocked so to prevent anyone getting stuck (and because I also can't keep track of it) the keys respawn when you re-enter the area. I can have duplicate items stay on the ground rather than being picked up so I'll change that.

 

52 minutes ago, Trebor said:

Besides leveraging the keypad (1 rotates the items in the left hand, 2 rotated the items in the right hand), can the joystick in port 2 be leveraged as well?

That's the plan. Before adding the AtariVox support it did do exactly that, but I'll need to put it back in. I need to allow it to run the keypad / second controller code if it doesn't detect a savekey / AtariVox on startup.

 

52 minutes ago, Trebor said:

I was both happily surprised and somewhat disappointing how far I went and the variety of enemies faced without a weapon in hand;

A lot of people were struggling to get anywhere in the previous version so I made all the enemies weaker until I can do some proper balancing. It'll be tricker when I do.

 

52 minutes ago, Trebor said:

I like the enemies do not always appear at the same times or in the same spots.

They're generally in the same spots in most of the areas at the moment but I can change that. It's a case of setting their initial state to wander in search of the player rather than staying idle.

 

52 minutes ago, Trebor said:

Two blobs, one golden teddy, and one pinkish snake.

The blobs are collectively called 'ooduzos', with the glowing blue one's called 'xuoglo'. The golden teddy with no animation yet is a 'wroat', and the pinkish snake is a 'paraserp'.  I'm torn as to how many of the names to reveal because obviously it would be better if people knew what to call them, but I don't want to spoil the reveal of some of them.

I have a character viewer I use for testing the colour and animation which is currently an unlockable on completion with AtariVox speech to help with the pronunciation. 

 

 

Keep at it, if you're at climb to the plateau there's a long way to go yet. ? 

Edit: I guess I was premature with my reply. It's fun to read your updates.

[Jinks]

The character  sounds cool... maybe a number for each with  bonus points for each killed. Or not.. ?

i was happy with the difficulty as if was and could get far until I got stuck... will have to try again when not super busy.

 

[+SmittyB]

On 8/24/2020 at 8:08 PM, gambler172 said:

maybe you could add a small manual?

Prompted by your request, and a headache I developed today, I've started writing up something of a manual seeing as the information is mostly strewn through this thread and should really be in one place. Also I'll have to do it eventually so why not now?

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

We'll be checking out Spire of the Ancients on tomorrow's (Fri Aug 28) ZeroPage Homebrew stream LIVE on Twitch at 6PM PT | 9PM ET | 1AM GMT! Hope everyone can watch!

 

Twitch Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/

 

Games:

• Popeye 7800 (2020 WIP | 7800) by @darryl1970
• Robotron: 2084 (2020 Exclusive WIP Update) by John Champeau (@johnnywc) (Coding & Design) of Champ Games, Nathan Strum (@Nathan Strum)  (Art & Graphics), David Brown (Music & Sounds)
• Spire of the Ancients (2020 WIP Update | 7800) by @SmittyB

 

(SET VIDEO TO 1080P60 FOR FULL QUALITY)

 

Edited August 30, 2020 by ZeroPage Homebrew

[vitoco]

On 6/19/2020 at 8:18 PM, SmittyB said:

Congratulations!!!

 

I found very interesting your maze engine and how you added enemies and other object in the route. It looks very nice and and the animations are wonderful.

 

But there is an issue with the perspective that disturbed me. One example was the following (screenshot from James' streaming):

 

 

Both of those paths are parallel and going to the West, but it looks like that they intersect in the point where the player is.

 

I think that the view should be something like the following:

 

 

or, it might be this (to show a wider path, proportional to the wall with the torch):

 

 

I just cut&paste into the image to change the view, and I think these improve the sense of orientation.

 

BTW, the intro screen is incredible. I could let it running for hours...

 

Again... Great game and FX.

 

[+SmittyB]

@vitoco you're right, that does look a lot better and I'll look into changing it, but doing it properly won't be as simple as drawing the walls differently and probably won't happen soon.

Originally it only showed the wall in front which I didn't like so I added the side pieces to try and fill out the space. The problem is that in your examples the left and right walls might not be there, and the walls are outside of the 10 map spaces that get checked.

I might also be able to expand it to show walls further back on the left and right as part of any changes I make, but I wouldn't be able up make objects of enemies visible down the sides.

 

Here's an example of what I mean. Blue is the space the player is in, and as well as that all the white spaces are checked for walls. The red spaces are where those side walls would be in your example. Not impossible to add the checks but the drawing will be tricky.

 

 

I've also been thinking this morning that I might be able to implement a rolling buffer of doors that have been unlocked so that it doesn't become a hassle to leave an area and go back. It might end up open to abuse if somebody can open a previous door to skip a later door, but in practice I don't think that situation will occur. The other concern would be that somebody could grab a key, unlock a door, leave, return, grab a second key, and then leave without unlocking the door and keeping an extra key. Maybe I could also keep a buffer of keys but the key and door lists would go out of synch at some point.

 

 

 

For those asking about a mini-map, I'm afraid it wouldn't be doable without essentially creating duplicate maps for what the player sees. Below is part of the 'Graveyard Passage' area and the blue and green markers show where transitions to other maps happen and the red marker shows where the map wraps around. To display this without breaking immersion I would need to cut out the right part of the map and stick it on top of the left part, and hide any secret areas. That's before getting into the problems of finding a way of decompressing the map for drawing without overwriting something important.

 

 

[RevEng]

Is a bit-field record of keys and doors possible? 32 bytes would give you 256 possible keys to track, and another 32 bytes would give you 256 possible door locks.

[+SmittyB]

I might be able to do it that way if I can find some free RAM. That's how I've handled the other items though they get saved as part of the password whereas these wouldn't.

[RevEng]

Oh yeah. The password state is indeed a sticking point. (and free ram, of course) and even an HSC save state tops out at 25 bytes.

 

Maybe 16 doors and keys saved for only for the active area, with other areas losing state after you leave? That doesn't stop someone from spamming using ladders, but that might be addressed with area design, or other techniques. You might get away with 4 byte (or 8ish bytes using the linked technique) added to the save method. I think it's fair to allow the rest of the areas to reset after a save, or after you've left them very much behind, so long as level design doesn't make some important object irretrievable if the player does massively backtrack.

 

It's an interesting constraint problem.

[vitoco]

4 hours ago, SmittyB said:

@vitoco you're right, that does look a lot better and I'll look into changing it, but doing it properly won't be as simple as drawing the walls differently and probably won't happen soon.

Originally it only showed the wall in front which I didn't like so I added the side pieces to try and fill out the space. The problem is that in your examples the left and right walls might not be there, and the walls are outside of the 10 map spaces that get checked.

I might also be able to expand it to show walls further back on the left and right as part of any changes I make, but I wouldn't be able up make objects of enemies visible down the sides.

 

Here's an example of what I mean. Blue is the space the player is in, and as well as that all the white spaces are checked for walls. The red spaces are where those side walls would be in your example. Not impossible to add the checks but the drawing will be tricky.

It seems that those red blocks are not the only ones to include. For example, in this other capture:

 

 

The problem repeats in the next step, and you should probably need to check for two more ones, the yellow ones here:

 

 

There are 2 options: wall or path (with the asumption that there is no door, gate or something else), like in these places of your map:

 

 

Of course, it can be left empty as is too far...

 

 

[+SmittyB]

I'm going to have a crack at rewriting my wall-drawing routines as they're a bit of a mess anyway and could do with a do-over to something to handle those situations

[+Pat Brady]

1 hour ago, vitoco said:

The problem repeats in the next step, and you should probably need to check for two more ones, the yellow ones here:

 

 

Even in your original example (post #440) those yellow locations appear to be empty in your renderings (the red floor is visible). Ideally they would be checked. But being black would be better than appearing empty.

[SlidellMan]

I wonder if you have any plans to use the switchleftb, switchrightb, and switchselect commands in this?

[+SmittyB]

5 minutes ago, SlidellMan said:

I wonder if you have any plans to use the switchleftb, switchrightb, and switchselect commands in this?

Yes, at the moment switchselect is used to change the left hand item (reset for the right), I use switchleftb for checking if music should play or not, and switchrightb will be used for checking whether the AtariVox speech should play instead of TIA effects so that SaveKey users won't have less sound, or in case somebody just feels like hearing the TIA versions of things.

[+SmittyB]

 

Getting there. Now I need to make it draw the sides properly when you're not next to the wall you're facing, then it'll be a case of making it actually check if there are more paths on the far sides as at the moment the far side walls are just forced as walls.

 

This is going to let you see way more of the map at a time at the expense of objects appearing to pop in when going around the corners, but I think that's a good trade-off.