E.X.O. [Done]

[Trebor]

3 hours ago, Muddyfunster said:

I'll add a snowflake mode for you mate

Thanks to 2600 Ms. Pac-Man, I often refer to an easy difficulty setting as 'Teddy Bear' mode. ? 

 

When I hear something is described as heavy, my mind references Back To The Future and the conversation between Marty and Doc Brown...

 

Marty: Are you telling me that my mom has got the hots for me? 

Doc Brown: Precisely.

Marty: Whoa, this is heavy...

Doc Brown: There's that word again, heavy. Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?

[+Muddyfunster]

The last demo provided really good feedback on difficulty and tuning and I've taken then into consideration with the design of the new worlds (and there are tweaks to world 1 beyond what was in the last demo).

 

Yes there are some areas where the difficulty steps up, like to get the secret & switches to unlock the artifact room and secret rooms (but well. you want that 5th level, you have to sweat a bit to get it - but its not compulsory to do that to complete the main game). 

 

But it's more gradual than "brick wall". Plus now when you complete a level you go back to your main screen (after defeating the boss for that level) and you can save your progress  if you have a save key or similar (saving is tested and working). This will save including any artifacts that you collected and folks rescued. Not sure there will be a password system yet, that's something I need to figure out.

 

Also for folks in PAL land, the latest version auto detects and fixes the palettes and speeds accordingly. It's not 100% perfect yet but it's not far off.

 

 

[gambler172]

On 12/24/2020 at 10:28 PM, Muddyfunster said:

I'll add a snowflake mode for you mate

 

Hi Muddy

a Freezer would also help ?

Oh i can live with difficult games ?

 

[+Muddyfunster]

Happy New Year!

 

I've attached the latest demo of EXO. This is Alpha 12. It's quite big update, so sorry for the wall of text!

 

As always, feed back is greatly appreciated (even if it's  @gambler172grumbling that it's too hard !   j/k). It helps me to tune the game and make it more fun.

 

This demo has a complete World 1 and a few screens from World 2 and World 3 as tasters (they are not complete). 

 

This is still very much work in progress so glitches or strange things might happen. If they do, please let me know  

 

Controls are the same as before, left right to move, up to thrust your engines, button 1 shoot primary weapon, button 2 for rockets. 

On the barracks screen, D-pad to mover the cursor, button 1 to select, button 2 is usually back.

 

New for Alpha 12 :

• EXO is a 512KB binary - Works fine on Dragonfly (Sorry Concerto owners). Testing and working fine under BUP, A7800, JS7800 & Argon
• World 1 has had more balance tweaks and is more forgiving. Still tuning this. (turrets are now much more forgiving and much less random).
• New mission select screens (fire 2 takes you back to the barracks)
• New mission cinematics & intros for each level
• New barracks screen - replaces the old start screen with the icons  (I'm calling this placeholder for now as I wanted to test the idea and borrowed design ideas from Wing Commander and Gunship 2000 and I'll likely redo all of this screen at some point if I stick with this, pending feedback). There is a Gunship 2000 inspired Easter Egg if you can find it.
• Save Game - EXO will detect a save device (green disk= detected, red = not detected), saving not yet implemented.
• Artifacts are in the game now. To find an Artifact you need to unlock the hidden Artifact room. Clues are in the names. Artifact rooms are usually unlocked by finding all of the switches on a level. Some are obvious, some are hidden, some easy, some hard to reach. Each world will have an artifact. If you get the artifact from each World (1 to 4) then you will unlock the "special ending" and a bonus World #5.
• World 2 and 3 feature new hazard types.
• PAL palette detection so PAL users should have correct colours (more or less).
• Lots of bug fixes and code rewrites (which is why the levels aren't all yet in!)
• Lots of palette tweaks especially on W1 and W2, usually to brightness, this is still WiP as I find some NTSC screen look dark compared to PAL and lower end shades appear really dark.

Know issues with Alpha 12:

• Collisions with between the ship and patrol / blocker aliens isn't 100% perfect. A new collision system is being written to make the collisions more accurate and forgiving. 
• PAL movement speeds are wrong, they are a too slow right now as I've not had time to implement those changes (Sorry PAL folks). As a result the ship on the PAL version is slower than it should be but so are the enemies so it's not all bad. Some of the hit and run trap types are "close" as a result, but all are doable. This will be fixed in the next major build.
• Credits screen is temporary and prints some random stuff - not intended but I had bigger fish to fry
• Probably the odd bug that I've not yet spotted  although lots of base code has been rewritten and bugs and glitches taken out.

Road Map for EXO

• Music! - @Synthpopalooza will be flexing his musical muscles in the future all being well, to provide some EXO with some POKEY musical goodness
• SFX - right now I'm using @RevEng's fab library of SFX, the plan is to make custom effects and replace all of these. POKEY effects are something I want to experiment with.
• Non-linear progression. You can tackle World 1, 2 & 3 in any order. World 4 is accessible once all three team members are rescued.
• Saving - the plan is to allow saving between levels, so complete level 1, you can save your progress and you don't have to repeat it (unless you want to improve your time...)
• Instructions and status - these will be available on the barracks screen and status will be available in game.
• Timers - yep, for a bit of fun, your world runs will be timed (and saved when you save the game - viewable from the status screen in the barracks), so you can show off your best times for bragging rights. 
• World 2 and 3 completion, this is actually a lot closer than the demo suggests, I have haven't had time to implement the designs yet.
• Boss Fights - Each level will have a boss fight (hopefully). Boss 1 (The Warden) is mostly done but wasn't quite stable enough to include in the demo. 
• Atari Vox support - The tech guys at the secret EXO base were able jury rig some rudimentary translation code in to the Wasp's flight computer. That's why you can see the room names taken from the enemy database on each world (and why sometimes they don't make much sense!) - but now you will also pick up radio snippets and even insults from the bosses that you will fight. 
• Slimming down the Wasp by 1 pixel (yep, it sounds trivial). This actually makes things a little easier for the player in my tests. 
• Probably more stuff that I've forgotten about.

I know at the start EXO was blindingly hard and unforgiving & I appreciate all the feedback & encouragement that I received on the project that helped to shape it and smooth the difficulty curve. Thanks! 

 

I also got to thinking, maybe a map might help folks. I put one together before, which was just the layout map of an old version of world 1 (attached for comparison). The map for Spire of the Ancients was super cool ( @SmittyB ) and got me to thinking I should update the old map so here it is. Pretty much a one off and it doesn't show room names or secrets. Some switches are visible as they aren't hidden on World 1. The Artifact room isn't shown either, or how you get to it.

 

You can zoom it in a bit too.

 

As always, I appreciate any and all feed back, even if it's "this bit is too hard", or "that bit has a bug". 

 

Thanks & have fun!

 

new map

 

old map

EXO_Alpha12_Dec2020.a78

[SlidellMan]

I just played the demo, and have to say that this is an excellent mix between horizontal shooter and exploration. The planet intro cut-scene was really nice with the background layering. Maybe for the next version, you have a weapon roll-out a la Axelay?

[+bhall408]

2 hours ago, Muddyfunster said:

• EXO is a 512KB binary - Works fine on Dragonfly (Sorry Concerto owners). Testing and working fine under BUP, A7800, JS7800

Appears to be working fine in Argon as well! Big update -- congrats!

 

[+Muddyfunster]

1 hour ago, bhall408 said:

Appears to be working fine in Argon as well! Big update -- congrats!

 

Thanks Brian, added that to the update post.

 

[+mksmith]

Loving all the additional animations Lewis! Putting the 512k to full use!

[CPUWIZ]

5 hours ago, Muddyfunster said:

 

 

 

 

This is looking pretty good. ?

 

EDIT: Video anyone?

[+batari]

Impressive, and of course I will try to support with Concerto down the road.

 

Probably could have kept it 256k for a while longer, though. Of the 512k, 375k of the binary is just zeros, but I assume with all the planned features, eventually the rest of the 512k will be used up.

[+Muddyfunster]

12 hours ago, mksmith said:

Loving all the additional animations Lewis! Putting the 512k to full use!

Thanks the plan Matt, the code plan fell in with more banks thank I had with 256k so it was a case of cut some stuff out which absolutely was an option, or add some stuff to fill; up the extra space. I went with the latter because the cutscenes and little cinematics add to the story.

 

12 hours ago, batari said:

Impressive, and of course I will try to support with Concerto down the road.

 

Probably could have kept it 256k for a while longer, though. Of the 512k, 375k of the binary is just zeros, but I assume with all the planned features, eventually the rest of the 512k will be used up.

Thanks Fred, I know if there is a way to get stuff like this running on Concerto, you will find it.

 

On the 256k point, you are quite correct. I could theoretically run it on 256k right now but it would mean altering the structure and stacking some stuff up to share banks etc for now. I would also have to reorganize some of the graphics blocks.

 

Also to be candid, that's a pile of extra work for me to change the development path in the short term to 256k to do that, and then move it again later after I've already set out on a plan with the code. When I was doing this for the Mateos builds,  I couldn't be sure if a bug was down to my original code being wrong or if I had introduced in when working on pushing it into 128k for those test builds. I lost nearly 2 weeks chasing ghost errors that weren't errors because of things like that.

 

I also have a real plan with the code and the final game will probably need every byte of the 512k. What's there now is probably 30% of the actual game (1 full world and a few teaser parts of world 2 and 3) and about 25% of the cutscenes and cinematics.

 

I know you aren't attacking my choices, but just for insight, green is code present -more than half full, orange some code present or partial complete-less than half full, blue =code written but not yet integrated, grey is reserved. I like a modular approach on this project. oh and there is music to fit in yet as well

 

 

 

[+Muddyfunster]

No one found the Easter Egg on the station screen ? 

[Trebor]

13 minutes ago, Muddyfunster said:

No one found the Easter Egg on the station screen ? 

Are you keeping up with the Commodore?  

 

Exquisite is probably the best adjective I can utilize to describe this game.  Depth of play and graphics is absolutely off the charts.  I've only begun to scratch the surface.  The updates/upgrades since the last Alpha release are fantastic!  Just when I thought this game couldn't look or play much better...there you go, proving me wrong. 

[+Muddyfunster]

2 minutes ago, Trebor said:

Are you keeping up with the Commodore?  

 

Exquisite is probably the best adjective I can utilize to describe this game.  Depth of play and graphics is absolutely off the charts.  I've only begun to scratch the surface.  The updates/upgrades since the last Alpha release are fantastic!  Just when I thought this game couldn't look or play much better...there you go, proving me wrong. 

Ha, Thanks Trebor. Appreciate the feedback and kind words.

 

That's a good shout on the Easter Egg  However, that wasn't the one I had in mind, so I guess that's 1 deliberate Easter egg and one accidental

 

The deliberate Easter egg is "interactive". 

 

 

 

 

[Trebor]

28 minutes ago, Muddyfunster said:

The deliberate Easter egg is "interactive". 

Hmm...Looks like I need to up my hunting radar.

 

World 2, the lava is grand; however, World 3 is my absolute favorite so far (Figures it has been deemed to ultimately be a hard level...lol). 

 

The details with the foliage and vines are absolutely ridiculous.  It gives the illusion of depth of field and various (sun) lighting that is spectacular.  This hints of background wall shading just magnifying it all the more so.  Plus I am a fan of horror as well as Greek and Roman mythology.  The environment nails it.

 

  

 

P.S.  The only constructive criticism I had to offer - make the collisions more (accurate and) forgiving - you already covered..."Collisions with between the ship and patrol / blocker aliens isn't 100% perfect. A new collision system is being written to make the collisions more accurate and forgiving." 

 

There were a few times I reacted similar to, "Really?...That barely touched the tip of my nose".  Mind you, not impossible by any stretch of the imagination, just a tad too strict, IMHO. But, you already have that covered.    Awesome work! 

[gambler172]

Hi Muddy

plays very well on my Dragonfly.

greetings Walter

[SlidellMan]

Just keep at it, Lewis. You may just give even Einhander and Radiant Silvergun a run for their money.

[+Muddyfunster]

2 hours ago, SlidellMan said:

Just keep at it, Lewis. You may just give even Einhander and Radiant Silvergun a run for their money.

I had to look those up as I had no idea about them  I'm not of the Playstation era for shmups

[+sramirez2008]

This game is an absolute visual treat. I find myself just looking around within each area that you have so richly created. @Treborsaid if best, this game is exquisite. As I play, I actually have a sense of wonder. I don’t mind dying in this game. Yes the collision could use some tweaking, but you can progress through this game, without frustration. I really love this game. There’s so much here, it’s several games within the game. 
Looks and plays well on my UAV modded 7800 via DragonFly multicart. I can’t wait to see more.

 

I did notice that as you enter the final screen of World 2, you’re ship can get stuck with in the “This is only a snippet...” box. However, you can back out of the screen and get by the box. 
 

Please continue with this game.

[+Muddyfunster]

4 hours ago, Trebor said:

There were a few times I reacted similar to, "Really?...That barely touched the tip of my nose".  Mind you, not impossible by any stretch of the imagination, just a tad too strict, IMHO. But, you already have that covered.    Awesome work! 

 

The best way I can explain it is like this :

 

 

Right now the game engine treats collisions with the ship really simply. Did a thing enter my box? yes?, ok you're dead.

 

It's simple but it's also unfair because the ship isn't a perfect box and has zones that have no ship bits in them. The problem area is where you really notice it, on the scribble above. When things hit there and you die, that feels unfair. Solution is for more fidelity in the detection, which is what I did with Danger Zone to take that "zone of unfairness" out (pun not intended!). So yep, next major update will have that. 

 

 

 

[+Muddyfunster]

Thanks for posting screenshots ( @sramirez2008 - I don't think Trebor has a Dragonfly?) , I really wasn't sure about the palette tweaks on NTSC on real hardware. I brightened a lot of shades  up. I have to say, based on your screenshot they look ok

 

I wondering who will unlock the artifact first on World 1.

 

[+sramirez2008]

11 minutes ago, Muddyfunster said:

I wondering who will unlock the artifact first on World 1.

Challenge accepted! However I need to dedicate more time to your game.
 

Today I’m trying out all of the 7800 games. The DragonFly is great! ?

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I will see if I can get time to try this out in an A7800 or something later. My DF cart isn't quite ready yet so I can't test on my stuff here until later in the month at the earliest I would imagine. But first I've got two Lynx to finish today.

 

[+sramirez2008]

3 hours ago, Muddyfunster said:

I wondering who will unlock the artifact first on World 1.

Darn! No artifact. Wonder where it might be.?

I miss my Commodore 64.

[+sramirez2008]

2 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

But first I've got two Lynx to finish today.

Glad your able to revive so many Lynx’s. I hope we can all get together and Comlynx someday soon.

 

@Trebor it’s up to you to find the artifact. Your our only hope.