[ongoing] Catagon

[BSzili]

Greetings lords and ladies!

I have decided to venture into the classic realm, and create my own Amiga game: Catagon. It's a clone of a LoadStar game called Paragon, originally created by Nick Peck for the C64. SoftDisk later released few different remakes (two for DOS, one for Windows 3.1). I started writing an Amiga version from scratch. This is hack job is the result of a week of work:



Here's an early gameplay video: [ Show youtube player ]

Description:
- clone of the C64/DOS/Win 3.x game Paragon
- written in system friendly C
- runs well even on an unexpanded A500 with KS 1.2
- 640x256 PAL, 16 color graphics

[s2325]

Nice job Could you explain gameplay? Something like Crillion but you can grab pipes/ropes?

[BSzili]

The idea is that you can only control your character, when it's attached to a rail. It's all about detaching from it at the right place and time.

[s2325]

Thank you.

[BSzili]

Here's a new screenshot, featuring a vastly improved player sprite:


The items and other converted tiles are also gradually being redrawn. There have been a lot of changes under the hood, mostly speed improvements. This video shows off the level change, when all the items are picked up:
[ Show youtube player ]

[saimon69]

Seem stupid but i think you can put some word-play in the game text like CAT READY, PURR-FECT, GAMEOWER and such :P
Maybe a fictional sponsor, like CATORADE? :P

I also found a cat verse that might be good when you lose a life, saved as iff and wav and attached here


mad_cat.zip

[BSzili]

Sounds like a neat idea The name Catagon is also a wordplay on Paragon. I googled it once, and found this picture:
http://www.worth1000.com/entries/261271/the-catagon
I'll try to prepare some early demo this weekend, it might not be a public one though.

[BSzili]

The first demo is here! I added a lot of features in a rush (animated slime, status bar, joystick support, music playback, etc.), so there could be some performance problems. There's currently no way to save your progress or your score, and the collision detection is still not perfect. These problems will be solved in the future, I just wanted to put the game out there, so people can test it. Huge thanks to saimon69 for the music. Without further delay, here's the disk image:
http://bszili.morphos.me/stuff/catagon_demo.adf

[BSzili]

It turns out that all the problems (jerkiness, attached sprites falling apart, etc) were caused by ptreplay.library. It pains me, but I had to disable the music for the time being. If anyone knows any other solution to play ProTracker music, I'm all ears.
In the meantime I noticed a news item about my game on www.amiga68k.de. It has been subsequently picked up by many Amiga sites Too bad they decided to use the oldest screenshot available, which does not represent the current state of the game. Oh well, it's nice to have some publicity anyway. Here's a new screenshot showing off the status bar, and more redrawn items:

[Foxman]

Originally Posted by BSzili

In the meantime I noticed a news item about my game on www.amiga68k.de. It has been subsequently picked up by many Amiga sites Too bad they decided to use the oldest screenshot available, which does not represent the current state of the game. Oh well, it's nice to have some publicity anyway. Here's a new screenshot showing off the status bar, and more redrawn items

http://www.amiga68k.de/?p=3924
Updated with the new image

[BSzili]

Thank you very much for doing that, and the shout-out too

[Arnie]

I don't know if this is supposed t happen but, I started level 2 with 1 life left, lost a life, and was thrown back to level 1 with 0 lives?

[BSzili]

It looks like the status bar is not updating the lives counter on game restart. If you lose a life it will probably display the correct number. I'll fix this in the next version.

[saimon69]

@bszili
do the presence itself of the ptreplayer.library provide slowdowns or is only if called inside the game?
Mean if you have an intro song in the main screenshot but no songs in the game is the presence itself of the library in memory - though not called - that slows down stuff?

[BSzili]

If I remember correctly, having the library initialized and CIA interrupt server installed didn't cause much problem. Only when I started to play the music is when I started getting all the hiccups. Either way, I have no intention of cutting the ingame music, I just have to find a better protracker replayer. Unfortunately most of them are written in assembler, which makes them a bit tricky to glue to C code.

[saimon69]

@Bszili

Long time since last updates on this: did you find any reliable routine? If so i can try to add some more musics, like three to cycle in levels; another suggestion might be why don't you treat the music as another task in interrupt a la good old 8 bit style?

[BSzili]

I did got a player, not for protracker, but the modules can be converted. I haven't tried it yet though, I didn't have much time to play with Catagon. The most pressing issue with the game is the collision detection. The current bounding box approach is not precise enough for the gameplay to work properly.

[saimon69]

@Bszili
glad to see things are going on, even at a dead man pace: i will do another couple tunes to add but will take it easy