UnderwareDESIGN

hi all

just the latest game im tying to put together , i estimate a week or so , got the main control done now , not quite as i wanted it , but it works to a certain extent , is quite playable in its present form otherwise i would have given up on it

this is called house hunter at the moment , but many of you may reconize it looks very much like oil's well on the commadore 64 and atari 800
and it is very closley based on that game
as im using maps i will do as many levels as i can if game plays ok , but here is were i am at the moment , few loose ends in code but cant see any problems at the moment

back soon
mick ;D

looking fine mick. i had a look at the c64 game play. how are you translating that to buying a house?!?

hi all

yep blinkOk , was going to start in an old tatty house in street and as you dug in you garden , front or back you found objects under the ground , ie dog bones higher up , then old watches coins etc , that were worth money , that was used to upgrade your house on next level so your house got better and better or added things to your house, or moved to a better street
the layout is done using map , so levels should be easy to do , objects would be sprites as would be attacking snails , worms , catterpillers etc and i can always overlay gfx's over the map layout as pic as demo the pipe , depending if needed

but this is very much a oils well clone

was thinking about an attic first so would be other way round , but thought this sounded better anyway
hopefully ile get a playable level up in a day or 2

mick ;)

so the idea is that the snake you create cannot cross it's self and you can only go DOWN vertical tunnels. is that right?

hi all

Quoteso the idea is that the snake you create cannot cross it's self and you can only go DOWN vertical tunnels. is that right?

yep the snake , well drill cannot go across itself but can go up and down verical tunnels and back on its self , but not accross itself

i have been tuning up the controls at the moment as it is keyboard at the mo , im hoping to use mouse instead or as well
as like pacman games you have to be pretty accurate when turning up or down tunnels , which i am making a little easier
also been trying to do some better house graphics and layout of game ,but was hoping to have a different house on each level but my gfx's maynot streach to that,been quite a long time today on this so im knackard now but i will get a demo up asap

but this does pretty much play as oils well game
latest screenie

mick ;D

are you randomly generating levels or are they hand made?

hi all

Quoteare you randomly generating levels or are they hand made?

at the moment they are hand made just using maps ,

mick ;)

Mick, looks great already. I really enjoy these types of games (like Anteater in the old arcades?), and I really like the idea of finding more valuable objects the deeper you go with the drill. Getting enough wealth to move to a new street sounds like a good way to transition to a new level design. How about finding some dinosaur bones, those would be worth something, right? Overall this sounds really fun.

PM'd you mick

hi all

P'M you back BlinkOk

ok i will get a demo of the game mechanics up by weekend so people can see how it plays
resoulution , map block size etc
here is the new level one , with 50% of the pick up in and 1 enemy the snail

mick :)

hi all

well sorry no demo yet as its not all looped together yet , done 2 levels so far that play but do not interlink yet , no sound yet either , im going to do scoring , reseting and interlinking to get a 2 level demo up asap , then another 8 levels will be easy enough , just a bit time consuming getting gfx's and laying them out

anyway heres a screenie of first 2 levels , later levels will have dead ends etc

mick :)

  Looks good, and i think i remember this game..  So how are you setting up the levels ?

hi all

QuoteLooks good, and i think i remember this game..  So how are you setting up the levels ?

i had it years ago on the atari 800 , was not a long game only 8 to 10 levels i think and not that hard to complete
but had some quite good gameplay to it,

the levels are done as follows with maps and a loaded gfx file , the pick ups are sprites with just a few for next loops to put them in place
example
MyMap=1
 CreateMap MyMap,1
 MyLevel=1
 CreateLevel Mymap,MyLevel, 39,30 ;;;; 800 by 600 resolution
 ;=====================================================================================
 if level=1
    MakeMapGFX MyMAP,40,20,20,7,rgb(0,0,0)     ;;;  40 is the gfx's file image , if level 2 then image 41 would be loaded and so on
    PrepareFXMap myMap
     For Ylp=0 to 29
     For Xlp=0 to 39
          Tile=ReadData()
PokeLevelTile   mymap,1,Xlp,Ylp,Tile
     next
 next

  for a=1 to 19
  positionsprite pills(a).sprite,a*40,546
  next a
  for a=20 to 30
  positionsprite pills(a).sprite,(a-20)*70+50,486
  next a
  for a=31 to 40
  positionsprite pills(a).sprite,(a-31)*80+40,426
  next a
endif
and thats about it ,

mick :)

looks very good.

this is really looking stellar mick! superb job

Quotethe levels are done as follows with maps and a loaded gfx file, the pick ups are sprites with just a few for next loops to put them in place
example

   Yeah it all looks good,  just wanted to make sure you're not hard coding the levels into the program.  This is one of those games that benefit from having clear division between the game engine and data.    So the game engine should be able to load and play any level it's presented with. Providing the level makes sense.    

   The level data can represented a million ways, but one stumbling block people seem to the run into, is how to go about externalizing  character data.  The hard way, is having each character and all of it's properties stored in the level structure with the map data etc.   The issue with this, is that small changes the game engine will break the data.  So abstraction is better.

   A better way is to use a type of entity interface.     So the level stores the bare minimum data for each character,  basically it's position and type.     So the level loader reads the entity data and takes this info and calls the 'create character' of this type.  So the game engine fills all the little nitty gritty about the character..  

   For example,  if character entitiy could just be  a text file.   Each entity would have an ID/NAME whatever, which is then followed by it's  variables.  



[PlayerStart]
   Pos = 100,200


[Dragon]
   Pos = 1000,22

[Car]
   Pos = 200,100
   Colour = $0000ff

[Car]
   Pos = 220,100
   Colour = $ff0000




  So to load the level we read the text from disc, then run through it line by line scanning for tokens.  When a token is found it, it collects the properties of and calls the create object to add this character to the scene.    Pretty much everything can be done like this.  


 Entity Example (Loading Game Levels) (http://www.underwaredesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=3680.0)

hi all

yep thanks kevin for the example , i will bare this in mind for any other games like this , my stiing up is pretty simple for the level i am going to have

ive been busy looking for any other new houses i can use at top of screen for other levels , otherwise will always be the same houses , but i have not had much luck so far , but still looking , anyway its coming along quite nice now , will try and get a demo up soon , going to title screen sorted out over weekend hopefully and next level linked , see how it goes time wise
but here is what it looks like in action , you cannot cross over your drilling pipe otherwise it will break off and lose a life , when bugs/creatures  touch your drilling pipe it will glow red to warn you , and you can then recoil your pipe to try and kill then , but you have a limited time to do this , also level must be completedin a certain time ,

top left shows score , top right level time left and bottom middle damage to pipe done by bus/creatures , when this runs out you lose the current pipe
ok back soon with an update

mick :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HL_TldIUFs


Edit: added youtube tags.

  Looks great mick,  would love to put this on UW.com when you're done.  So um.. hurry up :)


   

That's impressive. :)

How are you storing the pipe - in an array of some sort?

hi all

QuoteLooks great mick,  would love to put this on UW.com when you're done.  So um.. hurry up

well going as fast as i can , getting gfx's is the main hold up , but slowly getting some kinda title screen ,
think you will have to see how it plays , seems ok to me

QuoteThat's impressive.

yep thanks buggage ,

QuoteHow are you storing the pipe - in an array of some sort?

well i tried about 5 differant ways to do pipe from using the poke and peek level tile to what i am using now , im using a list array using sprites for it at the moment as i wanted it to fall of the screen once it was dead either touching itself or bugs killing it , i dare say there is an easier way that someone will show us when i put the full code up , it wont be that hard to change it to something else
soon as i get title screen and level one and two linked ile post a download demo

mick :)

Quotewell going as fast as i can , getting gfx's is the main hold up , but slowly getting some kinda title screen ,
think you will have to see how it plays , seems ok to me

  I'm in no hurry..

Quotewell i tried about 5 different ways to do pipe from using the poke and peek level tile to what i am using now , im using a list array using sprites for it at the moment as i wanted it to fall of the screen once it was dead either touching itself or bugs killing it

  So each 'block' in the pipe is becoming a sprite ?  or it's stretching a sprite along each the axis when a change if direction occurs.      In nut shell, the more sprites you have in the scene the more nested collisions checks required to resolve it.   There's a section in the optimizing tutorial called spatial partitioning (http://www.underwaredesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=2548.msg17252#msg17252) (At bottom) which covers resolving nested collisions.

  However, I think you could use sprites to draw the pipe, but use rectangles to check for collisions.   So the collision pipe is stored as list of movements from one point to the next.  The collision checker, uses this length of each movement (from start to end point) to create a rect that represents this row (or column) of sprites and does a check upon that.  Which might remove a lot of the nested recursion.  But that's only speculation at this point.

  Tron (http://www.underwaredesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=3683.0) uses a similar system to detect overlaps in the trail.

Rather than using the sprites for collision testing, I would use an array to store each pipe piece's position (as well as another array for all the bonus items). Then only do checking against this array with the creatures - the first pipe piece could then check for collisions with the bonus items (even they could be part of an array). This method would be much faster than sprite to sprite collisions and just as effective.

However whatever you're doing now seems to be working nicely :)

i agree with buggage. everything else seem like over kill

hi all

yep guys thanks for the suggestions , if game turns out ok , then anyone can step in and adjust it if they want thats no problem , as i thought there must be an easier way to do it,
as im not that great on the programming side , as i said i have the pipe a a linked list using sprites and these sprites are small only 12x12 pixels
the head of the pipe is a sprite too , but slightly bigger, to collision test im using the slugs to see what they hit and if its the pipe then pipe turns red
if its the drill part they die , and another array to see if the pipe hits hitself , just testing the array to see if it overlaps , so no sprite collision testing going on at all there. at the moment im getting 300-400 fps on my pc and 180-220 fps on laptop so no problems with speed with a mid range pc

well spent one and a half days just trying to get a title screen , crazy aint it , anyway i have to move on , so i have settled for this , yep 1 and a half days for this , can come back to this later if needed.

so now will get the levels linked and add more levels to it , ile post back as soon as i get 2 levels linked with a demo
thanks guys
mick :)

Watch On YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Emhgc1EZoIM)

:)

Do you have a "quick return" option yet? This makes the pipe quickly retreat back to the start and is invaluable for helping to avoid/reduce pipe damage.

hi all

QuoteDo you have a "quick return" option yet? This makes the pipe quickly retreat back to the start and is invaluable for helping to avoid/reduce pipe damage.

yep thanks buggage , the controls are directions with arrow keys , you can back track this way , but the spacebar does a quicker return of the pipe

mick :)

very nice mick. the transition is perfect. i think i would use a font with a thicker line, it kind of gets lost in the sky. some fonts i like are;
ardvark (http://www.getfreefonts.info/free_font.aardvarkbold.html)
adlib (http://www.fontspace.com/alan-carr/adlib)
badaboom (http://www.dafont.com/badaboom-bb.font)
bd cartoon shout (http://www.dafont.com/bd-cartoon-shout.font)
bigfish (http://www.fontspace.com/floodfonts/bigfish)<--- my fav

All those fonts are nice, but...

The Ardvark font would be coincidentally appropriate, seeing as this game is based on Oil's Well, which was based on the game AntEater, which stars... an Aardvark!

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/99/Anteater_arcade.png)

;D

hi all

right thanks buggage and BlinkOk ,

im using paint.net , did not realize it uses the windows fonts as its fonts , thought i was just stuck with those that i had
just been to a font web page , well could spend hours there , but not got time a moment.
i have now changed title screen font , but still not happy with it but as i said it will do
just finished level link ups , just got to do starting link with a 3 2 1 count in and then the end of game gfx's
then all to do is the rest of levels layouts and some other gfx's for them
as soon as i do start 3 2 1 in , and end of game ile post a 2 level demo

mick ;)

Why not make the make reveal a downward pan ?  the foreground stuff (text tidbits) could fade in.   

hi all

QuoteWhy not make the make reveal a downward pan ?  the foreground stuff (text tidbits) could fade in.  

yes sounds good idea , i take it i could load all the map gfx's up then just scroll the map into posistion for each level , i will have to look at maps and cameras , the only problem is i have the jems as sprites will these scroll with the map using the camera command

anyway this is what i have done so far a 2 level demo , with just 2 creatures so far , i have a few more , but anymore whould be handy
also any map gfx's would be good as well as any other ideas/gfx's
there is no sound as yet and a few timing issues , just got to get the levels hardness right
ok controls are arrow keys and spacebar to backtrack

will put up code soon as i get it a abit tidy
mick ;)

see my next post

Quoteyes sounds good idea , i take it i could load all the map gfx's up then just scroll the map into posistion for each level , i will have to look at maps and cameras , the only problem is i have the jems as sprites will these scroll with the map using the camera command

If you'd used a camera, all it'd take is a reposition of camera on the y axis.    The current one looks ok though, just feels odd.


 Played the demo,  it all feels pretty good.   Only bug bear in this version would be the up/down movement.  The current solution works, but if you're a few pixels off the opening, then valuable time is lost in alignment.  I suspect there's an easy fix though,  as the player is pressing down (or up), but the drill head is not quite in the right position,  then in those situations the head moves towards the opening (left or right).. Which would make the navigation feel that little more seamless.  

 For the levels, you really should look into making them external.   Then the community can help make them, play test them.. etc

The demo plays nicely, but yeah the up and down controls aren't perfect and don't always work when you need them to. I presume your code is checking for LEFT/RIGHT first and implementing those over UP/DOWN. The time limit is a bit tight too, I lost more games due to lack of time than through colliding with the critters. I still made it to Level 2 though. I would speed up the pipe retract too.

hi all

yep ok guys , first of all i was thinking of making it harder as i can do levels with 10 -18 seconds to spare ,
but i think i am used to it play testing all day all about the timing of moves , lol

yep the controls on this was always a sticking point , as i did say to BlinkOk in an e-mail i was not happy with them.
as it is at the moment , if going left or right you must stop pressing left or right to press up or down , otherwise you will continue left or right , the map is made up of 20x20 pixel blocks and the pipe moves 5 pixels a time but times 4 , so it moves more smoothly but a full 20 pixels before direction can be changed , but if you press left of right and stop over a gap , you will be either dead over the gap or 20 pixels either side of it , nowhere in between , maybe someone can make this better at some point ,

yep i can make the pipe retract quicker thats no problem

as for external levels , well someone may be how to make a loader as all the level maps are in data statements and pickup sprites are pre laid in for next loops depending on levels , the 2 demo levels are the same , but later ones will be in different places

ok ile get some sound and tidy up in code and label some of it so people will know whats happening were and maybe someone can make it controls a bit better

mick :)

hi all

thanks for comments , here is my source code for game , ive tidy it up a bit , the main control is in the move pipe sub routeen , if anyone can improve this , all well and good , good luck lol , there must be a better way than i did it

mick :)

4 level demo a few post below

hi all

erm . think what ile do is over this weekend concetrate on making the pipe control better than what it is , before doing anymore levels , animations and sounds , they are straight forward ,
also if anyone has a better title screen or better name for game maybe?
hoping this wont take to long now to complete as i have other games to get going and eager to start on the next one

anyway lets see what i can do over this weekend , heres my topscore so far

mick ;D

Quoteerm . think what ile do is over this weekend concetrate on making the pipe control better than what it is

      Taking a bit a night off Dtab stuff and been having a tinker with a few ideas externally.  Been giving the corner turning idea a bit of go (what i mentioned above) and it seems to work, but it doesn't look at solid at time.   Like If you move past an opening and then press down say, it'll back up and go down.  When this occurs at speed it looks a bit shakey.      Got a few other tweak ideas if that doesn't pan out.   


      Only got around to having a look at your code before, I really can't stress enough that it's time to learn about functions.    A function is like user made command.  They're subroutines that are protected from variable collisions.  They're mainly useful in cutting down the amount of repeated code.  For example, you can pull the level initialization code inside a function.  The function can be called any time to set up the level, rather than inserting the same fragments of code over and over...which is error prone.     The beauty of wrapping your code up inside functions, then something goes wrong in your program it's easy to fix or change.  Since the code only appears in the program once, the program becomes more flexible and resilient to change.   

       Some examples.



          ; so draw the score and time
DrawNumber(24,60,digits$(score,6))
DrawNumber(687,60,digits$(time,2))

  ; user defined psub
Psub DrawNumber(Xpos,Ypos,T$)
For lp=0 to len(t$)-1
ThisCHr=mid(t$,lp+1)-asc("0")
      drawimage 200+ThisChr,Xpos,Ypos,1
Xpos+=22
next
EndPsub


     While this is more robust method,  I'd actually suggest converting the bitmap font stuff into a real compressed raster fonts (search for SaveFont on the boards).  Which would get rid a bunch of setup code and allow you to draw bitmap style fonts with the print and text commands.
   



   ; example level set up

  MyMap=1
  CreateMap MyMap,1
  MyLevel=1
  CreateLevel Mymap,MyLevel, 39,80
  MakeMapGFX MyMAP,40,20,20,8,rgb(0,0,0),2

    ; call the custom function to do the job
      ReadGameLevel(MyMap,MyLevel)


; function to read the tiles into the level
Function ReadGameLevel(Map,Level)
   For Ylp=0 to 29
For Xlp=0 to 39
PokeLevelTile   map,Level,Xlp,Ylp,ReadData()
   next
   next
EndFunction




    Stuff line the sprite routines, could be culled down into a common set of simpler functions.   So the custom functions are at higher level (do a bunch of stuff inside them).  Meaning you write less code to set up stuff.   

    ; Ie some stuff like this

  info=getfreesprite()
  createsprite info
  spriteimage info,300
  centerspritehandle info
  positionsprite info,400,265

  level_complete=getfreesprite()
  createsprite level_complete
  spriteimage level_complete,310
  centerspritehandle level_complete
  positionsprite level_complete,400,-100
  spritedrawmode level_complete,4
  SpriteAlphaLevel level_complete,0.95




 
info                 =MakeSprite(400,265,200)

Level_Complete =MakeSprite(400,-100,310)
        spritedrawmode level_complete,4
        SpriteAlphaLevel level_complete,0.95
 
Function MakeSprite(Xpos,Ypos,IMage)
Sprite=NewSprite(xpos,Ypos,image)
centerspritehandle sprite
EndFunction Sprite 
 

Quote, before doing anymore levels , animations and sounds , they are straight forward ,also if anyone has a better title screen or better name for game maybe?

     I don't mind the title, although I wonder if there's another game out there with the same name ?   Might be worth a google on that one.     

Quotehoping this wont take to long now to complete as i have other games to get going and eager to start on the next one

     Know the feeling :) 

 Turned the map movement thing into another source code example.  It's posted it over here 4 Way Map Movement (Moving through tunnels)  (http://www.underwaredesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=3687.0)


 To convert the numbers into a custom font, you need something like this.


// the location where the numbers are stored
path$="D\MicksGame\Treasure Trove_SRC\"

// location tp save the font
savefile$="d:\NumberFont.crf"

Image=loadnewimage(path$+"0001.png")

ChrWidth =GetIMageWidth(image)
ChrHeight=GetIMageHeight(image)
CreateBitmapFont 10,ChrWidth,ChrHeight,4

cls $442288

Zeros$=""
for lp=asc("0") to asc("9")
file$=path$+zeros$+chr$(lp)+".png"
Thisframe=loadnewfximage(file$)

rgbmaskimage Thisframe,$00ffffff
// Grab this frame into the font
rendertoimage ThisFrame
getfontchr 10,lp,0,0
rendertoscreen
Zeros$="000"
deleteimage ThisFrame
next

savefont savefile$,10

print "Done"
setfont 10
fontdrawmode 10,1
ink argb(255,255,255,255)
print "0123456789"

Sync
waitkey



    So once the font is made, we load and use it like so.




loadFont "NumberFont.crf",10

setfont 10

cls 255

Print "0123456789"

Sync
waitkey





hi all

thanks kevin for the code snippets , yes i think i need to start and do some function routeens for my simple games ,
well spent the last 2 days trying to make the players movement work better , but none seem to work correctly , so really 2 days wasted , nevermind , as the control sysyem is not ideal , i dont think i will wast anymore time on trying to better it
as the contols are far from ideal , all i am going to do now is add another level gfx's and make 3 levels for each of the 3 different gfx's i have so 9 levels in all , if player manages to get past all 9 levels then just start over again

its just i have other games i want to try and to wast time on this game thats not right seems silly
heres the 3rd gfx's that i will use
i will now put it all together and put in sounds etc and post soon

mick :)

Don't worry all is not lost, If I had more time i'd have crack at tweaking your movement,  however you could also try converting the collision areas into collision worlds.    Convert Map To Collision Worlds  (http://www.underwaredesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=748.0)   
 

hi all

QuoteDon't worry all is not lost, If I had more time i'd have crack at tweaking your movement

yep i still going to carry on , aint had much time last few days , but this morning i have added a new level 3 , level 4 demo now below with it now being a little easier , some sound added but not complete and sounds may change , also a quicker pipe retract
when finished i will spend a liitle time on another idea with controlls , its only a simple game so not work me spending to long on it..

mick :)

so any progress or ya ditched this one ?

hi all

well did spend a little more time trying to make the controll system better , but pretty much played the same , so for that reason i could not get that more excited about doing any more to this game but did have fun doing what i did so far , as i have been busy at work over the last week and will be this week to , but next week sould be back to normal so i hope to get another project off the ground , got quite a few to choose from so better luck next time
anyway thanks for trying to help me Kevin , but i really think you are right i must start using the function command more , i will really try to get this into practice..

mick  :)

Have you got all the artwork for this one ? 

hi all

QuoteHave you got all the artwork for this one ? 

well this is pretty much it all art i have done so far

mick :)

  Thanks Mick,  might actually have a go at knocking up a version of this.   Do you have any animations for the characters ?  

Quoteanyway thanks for trying to help me Kevin , but i really think you are right i must start using the function command more , i will really try to get this into practice.

 Your welcome man. The whole functions thing is all about making it easier to write your games,  but I realize that up front it can look a bit daunting.  

hi all

QuoteThanks Mick,  might actually have a go at knocking up a version of this.   Do you have any animations for the characters ?

well think if getting the control right it aint a bad game , no sorry i dont have any animations for creatures but i dont think it would take a lot , just a few frames would do i think

will be interesting if you do indeed have a go with this one

mick  :)

Mick,

Quotewill be interesting if you do indeed have a go with this one

    Well, that's the plan. For two reasons really..  Really in need of some more casual games for the site, and I just think it's neat.. :) 

    You'll prolly have to do the levels though and play testing.. and and..  :)



   

hi all

QuoteYou'll prolly have to do the levels though and play testing.. and and..

yep thats no problem ,

mick :)

It might be a while before i can get around to this, so you probably should get stuck into your next big thing.

hi all

QuoteIt might be a while before i can get around to this, so you probably should get stuck into your next big thing

ok whenever , well next snippet maybe , yep i am already tapping way , as with all games trying to get some kinda gfx's for the game takes time , anyway i will report back soon .

also just got myself a website at last , dont expect anything to exciting , be a while before i get it up and running but i am on it
, its www.micky4fun.co.uk

mick :)

Quotealso just got myself a website at last , dont expect anything to exciting , be a while before i get it up and running but i am on it
, its www.micky4fun.co.uk

  cool, that seems like a pretty good deal...

i would try
posterous.com or blogspot.com mick. much less hassle than setting up webspace (then just bounce your url to the blog)

hi all

Quotei would try
posterous.com or blogspot.com mick. much less hassle than setting up webspace (then just bounce your url to the blog)

thanks BlinkOk i will look into them as well , as yep its taking up a lot of time trying to put something together at the moment.

mick :)