Vaults of Nhyrmeth (was 'dungeon crawler attempt')

[funkheld]

hello good day.

In which c did you write this for the Atari?

Thank you.
greeting

 

// mul_lookup40 for mul [0,23] #define SetChar(x,y,a) video_ptr[(x)+mul_lookup40[(y)]]=(a); unsigned mul_lookup40[] = {     0, 40, 80, 120, 160,     200, 240, 280, 320, 360,     400, 440, 480, 520, 560,     600, 640, 680, 720, 760,     800, 840, 880, 920 };

[ilmenit]

43 minutes ago, clth said:

Yes, at this moment 7 charsets with varying height and all are already 40-50% full. With 4-directional  9*9 tiles big is impossible to have enemy sprites in charset more than few at once. Only option is to have reserved tiles in charset and and copy to them from normal memory as needed - which could be quite bottleneck. Having various premade tables is definitely way to go, already doing so alot.

I think even games like Dungeon Master or Eye of Beholder had usually just 2 (max. 3) types of enemies per level (if not for saving memory, then for variety of levels). I'd probably entering a level copy required data to the font slots. I'd also consider removing graphical representation of 4 directions in case of enemies and just keep them always facing the player.

[ilmenit]

21 minutes ago, funkheld said:

hello good day.

In which c did you write this for the Atari?

Thank you.
greeting

In CC65 https://cc65.github.io/

I did quite many games already - including e.g. His Dark Majesty or The Hunt (sources available) - in this and writing currently a small one (having free time).

CC65 is mature tool, still in active development and allows to write very efficient code as long as you don't use dynamic memory allocation, pointers and structs. It also allows to put some specific variables on zero-page for very fast access in loops.

[funkheld]

hello thanks fpr the help.

 

greeting

[clth]

Hi,

 

progress so far:

- redone in cc65

- optimized, double buffering

- added sprites

 

I created simple playable demo of one level

- level contains 200 gold crowns in chests combined but to win you need just 100

- two enemy types(orc, rat) with different attack/movement speeds

- simple stats system based on stamina and health

- there are also secret buttons, ilusionary walls and spinning squares.

 

Controls are WSAD, SPACE for attack and ENTER for action. Attacking needs 3 stamina points.

 

You might need disable BASIC via OPTION durring powerup.

 

game.xex

Edited April 11, 2020 by clth

[Bill Lange]

On the first try, I was able to find and open three chest. The game is very responsive. I fell down a pit before I died. The only issue is the boxy outlines around the enemies.

 

Nice job! 

Edited April 12, 2020 by Bill Lange

[Justin Payne]

This looks great! Are you just trying to do a standard dungeon crawler or do you want to put some mythology, or story, behind the adventure?

[clth]

9 hours ago, Bill Lange said:

On the first try, I was able to find and open three chest. The game is very responsive. I tell down a pit before I died. The only issue is the boxy outlines around the enemies.

 

Nice job! 

Thanks for trying out. Boxy outlines are kind of feature given by used text mode. Fixing it is possible but overhead on cpu would be noticeable so not really worth it i guess.

 

3 hours ago, Justin Payne said:

This looks great! Are you just trying to do a standard dungeon crawler or do you want to put some mythology, or story, behind the adventure?

That would be nice but who knows how it will end up

[Kaz atarionline.pl]

Wow, impressive! Keep my fingers crossed for this project.

 

 

[clth]

5 minutes ago, Kaz atarionline.pl said:

Wow, impressive! Keep my fingers crossed for this project.

 

 

Glad you liked it, nice to see how other person plays it. Map is actually quite small but floor squares randomly rotating you (message "you are feeling dizzy") do confuse people alot it seems

[pusakat]

14 hours ago, clth said:

progress so far:

- redone in cc65

- optimized, double buffering

- added sprites

 

I created simple playable demo of one level

- level contains 200 gold crowns in chests combined but to win you need just 100

- two enemy types(orc, rat) with different attack/movement speeds

- simple stats system based on stamina and health

- there are also secret buttons, ilusionary walls and spinning squares.

 

Controls are WSAD, SPACE for attack and ENTER for action. Attacking needs 3 stamina points.

 

 

This looks great! Looking forward to this game developing further.

 

Are you making the source available? I'm sure there will be others who'd like to help if you welcome it.

[ilmenit]

14 hours ago, clth said:

- redone in cc65

Looks amazing! I always wanted to create a dungeon crawlem myself ? How do you find cc65 in comparison to Mad Pascal?

[clth]

54 minutes ago, pusakat said:

 

This looks great! Looking forward to this game developing further.

 

Are you making the source available? I'm sure there will be others who'd like to help if you welcome it.

Yes, i am planning that sooner or later.

 

53 minutes ago, ilmenit said:

Looks amazing! I always wanted to create a dungeon crawlem myself ? How do you find cc65 in comparison to Mad Pascal?

Mad pascal is definitely great to start but i dont like how pascal in general forces you to work with pointers and arrays. Also cc65 is much more flexible when bundling binary data and handling memory layout. Right now is in use 150+ files which need to be loaded to fixed memory locations to work with. Btw your new game "ADAM IS ME" looks really nice

Edited April 12, 2020 by clth

[ilmenit]

8 minutes ago, clth said:

Yes, i am planning that sooner or later.

 

Mad pascal is definitely great to start but i dont like how pascal in general forces you to work with pointers and arrays. Also cc65 is much more flexible when bundling binary data and handling memory layout. Right now is in use 150+ files which need to be loaded to fixed memory locations to work with. Btw your new game "ADAM IS ME" looks really nice

Thanks! We are just doing final polishing. It's written mostly also in CC65. I'm going to make it open source and can give you some optimization hints, how to avoid generation of bad code with CC65. Some things are surprising there.

[clth]

31 minutes ago, ilmenit said:

Thanks! We are just doing final polishing. It's written mostly also in CC65. I'm going to make it open source and can give you some optimization hints, how to avoid generation of bad code with CC65. Some things are surprising there.

That would be nice. Though thing is that more than optimize code i need to reduce amount of it because even simple switch expression is huge(and i need lot of them). So tedious rearranging is needed, tables referencing tables etc. Otherwise performance is not that bad, uncapped game runs about 15 fps.

Edited April 12, 2020 by clth

[matosimi]

Nice game.

Really huge improvement since the previous madpascal version (the depth redrawing was annoying).

Keep up with the good work.

[Alfred]

Agree with previous comments, looks quite amazing. Since I'm not a graphics person, maybe I'm missing something but: Is there a technical reason it's not in colour ? As in perhaps the resolution is too low if you switch to a 4 colour character set. The few attempts at this type of game all seem to be charset baset, so I presume there's a reason for it, either too difficult or memory issues.

[clth]

7 hours ago, Alfred said:

Agree with previous comments, looks quite amazing. Since I'm not a graphics person, maybe I'm missing something but: Is there a technical reason it's not in colour ? As in perhaps the resolution is too low if you switch to a 4 colour character set. The few attempts at this type of game all seem to be charset baset, so I presume there's a reason for it, either too difficult or memory issues.

Basicially yes. There are more qualified people here to explain but problem is simple - you can have high resolution or colors. Having both especially with higher amount of graphics is on stock 48/64k atari difficult to do and i dont like huge blocky pixels :). At this moment i am at maybe 85-90% of usable ram.

Edited April 13, 2020 by clth

[sodarun]

This looks Awesome 

[clth]

Map in case someone got lost Some kind of automap or minimap wouldnt be bad idea i guess.

[+Philsan]

@clth, it seems people like your game!

 

83 likes so far in the news I posted on Facebook.

[gambler172]

Nice....plays very well.....could you also post an 

atr File?

[Bill Lange]

gameexe.ATR

 

(L)oad GAME.XEX from the DOS Menu.

[clth]

55 minutes ago, Philsan said:

@clth, it seems people like your game!

 

83 likes so far in the news I posted on Facebook.

I am aware of that that post, kinda surprising i must say

 

2 minutes ago, Bill Lange said:

gameexe.ATR 130.02 kB · 1 download

 

(L)oad GAME.XEX from the DOS Menu.

Thanks alot, havent quite figured out ATR files yet.

[+CharlieChaplin]

10 hours ago, clth said:

Map in case someone got lost Some kind of automap or minimap wouldnt be bad idea i guess.

 

 

Yeah, an automap or minimap inside the game would be very cool! I always get lost in the game and in other 3D dungeon games that do not have an automap, that's why I rarely play these 3D dungeon games. But with automap, like e.g. in Dungeon Hunt and Dungeon Hunt II, I have much more motivation to play.

 

Maybe the automap feature can be made selectable (for Atarians like me that want it and other Atarians that do NOT want it)...?!?