Vaults of Nhyrmeth (was 'dungeon crawler attempt')

[ilmenit]

@clth - are you aiming for single character experience (Anvil of Dawn, Stonekeep) or multi-character (Dungeon Master, Eye of Beholder)?

[zzip]

Looks great!  But there is a lot of empty space to the right of the visuals.   Are you planning to fill that with anything?

[clth]

On 4/15/2020 at 12:13 PM, ilmenit said:

@clth - are you aiming for single character experience (Anvil of Dawn, Stonekeep) or multi-character (Dungeon Master, Eye of Beholder)?

Rather single character, realtime mechanics for multiple characters would be harder to implement with keyboard only.

 

On 4/15/2020 at 3:30 PM, zzip said:

Looks great!  But there is a lot of empty space to the right of the visuals.   Are you planning to fill that with anything?

Yep, in similar way as is already used in tech demo. Stats, some gauges maybe, quick actions menu. Depends how much space will remain in tilesets.

Edited November 23, 2020 by clth

[zzip]

43 minutes ago, clth said:

Rather single player, realtime mechanics for multiple characters would be harder to implement with keyboard only.

 

Yep, in similar way as is already used in tech demo. Stats, some gauges maybe, quick actions menu. Depends how much space will remain in tilesets.

Cool. You might also be able to use P/M graphics for status bars or other gadgets if the tileset space is too limited

[clth]

19 minutes ago, zzip said:

Cool. You might also be able to use P/M graphics for status bars or other gadgets if the tileset space is too limited

P/M graphics seems to me way too restrictive. I've already got scripts to split tiles to sections so more reasonable is use 1k more bytes for another tiles without any special low level magic involving P/M

[Justin Payne]

3 hours ago, clth said:

P/M graphics seems to me way too restrictive. I've already got scripts to split tiles to sections so more reasonable is use 1k more bytes for another tiles without any special low level magic involving P/M

Yeah, but you could use them for glowing treasure or magical items and enhancements to status indicators.

[+cjherr]

Very nice! 

[ilmenit]

@clth - For inspiration take a look at the simple controls scheme in this GBA game:

https://arcadespot.com/game/mazes-of-fate/

Edited May 18, 2020 by ilmenit

[clth]

10 hours ago, ilmenit said:

@clth - For inspiration take a look at the simple controls scheme in this GBA game:

https://arcadespot.com/game/mazes-of-fate/

Hi, thanks. By chance i've played this one quite a bit Its controls have interesting approach but bit too gamepad driven - it would be nice to have full control on joystick/gamepad but it is not possible on stock atari joystick. I do plan more keyboard oriented way with tabbed screens with menus.

[Wally1]

is this real time?

 

is this tile based.

 

how is ray casting imp..

 

pleaseexplain.

 

thanks

 

[clth]

1 hour ago, Wally1 said:

is this real time?

 

is this tile based.

 

how is ray casting imp..

 

pleaseexplain.

 

thanks

 

Hi, depends on definition of realtime

 

It is tile based from hand drawn tiles.

[Wally1]

real time is in real spaxe

 

what is ray casr formula

 

 

[Preppie]

This game isn't ray cast, the screen is bult up from pre-drawn graphics.

 

If you search youtube you can find plenty vids on ray casting, or search google if you want to read about it.

 

I like this guy, he codes in C++ but if you code in something else you can still get a good idea.  Only problem with this is some techniques would be ultra slow on an 8 bit so you'd need to figure out ways around them.

 

 

 

If you want to see a proper ray cast game on the A8 check out this thread 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2020 by Preppie

[clth]

I've been wondering - as features and amount of data grow, kinda of starting to realize not being able have all at of it once on stock 48k atari. It is definitely not final thing but what do you think about having sound and music on XL devices and no sound at all on 48k?

[+CharlieChaplin]

10 hours ago, clth said:

I've been wondering - as features and amount of data grow, kinda of starting to realize not being able have all at of it once on stock 48k atari. It is definitely not final thing but what do you think about having sound and music on XL devices and no sound at all on 48k?

 

Well,

it's always a good thing for a game, if you can choose between music or silence (or sfx) by pressing a key ;-) Thus, even if one has 64k RAM, it would be nice if one can choose to play the 48k or 64k version.

 

And maybe in a few months you realize that you require min. 128k RAM and the question becomes redundant ;-)

 

[ilmenit]

18 hours ago, clth said:

I've been wondering - as features and amount of data grow, kinda of starting to realize not being able have all at of it once on stock 48k atari. It is definitely not final thing but what do you think about having sound and music on XL devices and no sound at all on 48k?

I think 48k people will be happy to have the game still available, even without sfx.

 

I'd propose to consider placing the game on disk/ATR to overcome memory limits. CC65 has IO support and the new cart of @jhusak (the cart used in "Adam Is Me" game) has a "cartridge DOS" so you can use standard system read/write operations and your game can work from both disk and cartridge, without changes. It is quite amazing considering how tiresome can be work with cartridge banks!

If you will go this way, then I recommend:

- use read/write from fcntl.h instead of fread/fwrite - much smaller library code (fxxx functions use internally read/write)

- only one file handle at time for universal compatibility with different DOSes

- keep number of files on disk below 64 (again for compatibility with DOSes) 

Edited November 2, 2020 by ilmenit
DOS proposal

[clth]

8 hours ago, CharlieChaplin said:

 

Well,

it's always a good thing for a game, if you can choose between music or silence (or sfx) by pressing a key Thus, even if one has 64k RAM, it would be nice if one can choose to play the 48k or 64k version.

 

And maybe in a few months you realize that you require min. 128k RAM and the question becomes redundant

 

Thanks, will consider that then. Ability to toggle on/off music/sound is planned, however I really dont like idea of 48k+ being required.

[clth]

4 hours ago, ilmenit said:

I think 48k people will be happy to have the game still available, even without sfx.

 

I'd propose to consider placing the game on disk/ATR to overcome memory limits. CC65 has IO support and the new cart of @jhusak (the cart used in "Adam Is Me" game) has a "cartridge DOS" so you can use standard system read/write operations and your game can work from both disk and cartridge, without changes. It is quite amazing considering how tiresome can be work with cartridge banks!

If you will go this way, then I recommend:

- use read/write from fcntl.h instead of fread/fwrite - much smaller library code (fxxx functions use internally read/write)

- only one file handle at time for universal compatibility with different DOSes

- keep number of files on disk below 64 (again for compatibility with DOSes) 

 

Of course there is still option to use cart but i want to preferably have it running on stock 48k with floppy disk(or emulation). Cart simply seems overkill for me. Also ATR is in use via xbios, at this point I am using approx 46 KBs of ram - I wouldnt get much further without ATR long time ago :).

 

Thing is that cc65 produces pretty efficient code and rewriting to assembly gets you only few extra bytes but also harder to maintain assembly mostly not worth the effort, luckily there is still some low hanging fruit though.

 

Promising looks idea of scripting postprocessing whole existing c code to evaluate number of occurrences of every global/local/argument variable so it can be conditionally placed to very underutilized zeropage which might help alot again instead of messy rewriting by hand.

Edited November 2, 2020 by clth

[ilmenit]

11 minutes ago, clth said:

 

Of course there is still option to use cart but i want to preferably have it running on stock 48k with floppy disk(or emulation). Cart simply seems overkill for me. Also ATR is in use via xbios, at this point I am using approx 46 KBs of ram - I wouldnt get much further without ATR long time ago :).

 

Thing is that cc65 produces pretty efficient code and rewriting to assembly gets you few extra bytes but also harder to maintain assembly mostly not worth the effort, luckily there is some low hanging fruit though.

 

Promising looks idea of scripting postprocessing whole existing c code to evaluate number of occurrences of every global/local/argument variable so it can be conditionally placed to very underutilized zeropage which might help alot again instead of messy rewriting by hand.

Indeed, it's a pity that CC65 is not doing by itself the graph call analysis for variable space reuse. Just bear in mind that xbios may cause issues for different users (take a look at the Stunt Car Racer thread).

[clth]

10 minutes ago, ilmenit said:

 Just bear in mind that xbios may cause issues for different users (take a look at the Stunt Car Racer thread).

Ah, thanks, good to know. Will check it up.

[clth]

Moved to

Edited February 9, 2021 by clth

[+gnusto]

I equipped a club, met a spider and then it ate me. I had the club in a weapon slot but it didn't seem to attack when i hit 1? I'm sure it's probably me not understanding.

 

On the plus side, it looks neat, and it gave that Dungeon Master feel. I think there should be slide keys (left/right without having to change facing). Reason being that the switches aren't visible until you are facing them dead on, so it's hard to tell where to stop and find them sometimes.

 

Don't mean to take away though, it looks really promising!

[clth]

25 minutes ago, gnusto said:

I equipped a club, met a spider and then it ate me. I had the club in a weapon slot but it didn't seem to attack when i hit 1? I'm sure it's probably me not understanding.

 

On the plus side, it looks neat, and it gave that Dungeon Master feel. I think there should be slide keys (left/right without having to change facing). Reason being that the switches aren't visible until you are facing them dead on, so it's hard to tell where to stop and find them sometimes.

 

Don't mean to take away though, it looks really promising!

Pressing 1 is only for slot selection. Action with selected slot is performed by enter key. Also first switch is secret one, it is not supposed to be seen easily. Sideways stepping keys are on list, just forgot to add them.

Edited February 8, 2021 by clth