Entry: Dangerous Rooms

[Hurrican]

Title:
Dangerous Rooms

Genre:
Single-screen platformer

Original concept:
Yes

Expected game size:
at least 10 levels with time limit of about 1-3 minutes per level, more levels possible

Team members (Real or forum names):
Virtual Dimension:

• Hurrican/Dennis Pauler (coding)
• Michael Sacher (graphics)
• Markus Holler (music)

Targeted spec:
A500 with 1 MB RAM (512/512)

Tools to be used:
AMOS
PPaint
ProTracker

Description of game:
Do you dare to enter the Dangerous Rooms? Will you be able to avoid lurking monsters and bombs while collecting dots and moving from platform to platform with ladders, conveyers and more?

[Ian]

Discussion thread is here:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=94002

Please keep this thread clear for Hurrican's updates only.

[Hurrican]

Hi everybody!
The first week of programming is over. Coincidently I had vacation this week, so I managed to have some solid progress right at the start. :-)

There is an inital level with platforms and ladders where the player can walk and climb. The player bob is already animated and can also fall to its death.
Additional elements like bombs and conveyers are already visible, but not yet animated or functioning.

BTW: This is not my first AMOS-game, but it's the first time the player movement and animation is entirely written in AMAL. It's a powerful sub-language with structural similarities to Assembler. Tricky at times, but definitly worth checking out in more detail.

Please also find attached a first screenshot. :-)

[Hurrican]

Week 2: After building the base game logic, I put my focus on animating the game. I managed to have the conveyor belts move left and right using color cycling. I also made the large white dots (they a pills that will give you a shield for some time) twinkle using color register manipulation with the Flash operation.
Also, I changed the bombs to (P)bobs and animated them. They will now explode if you walk over them. However, this led to a significant frame drop on the A500. It's fine on the A1200, but on the A500 it will need additional optimization...

[Hurrican]

Week 3: I managed to optimize performance on the A500 by defining AMAL-programs earlier. I also switched to use the Turbo-Extension for the pasting of icons, which further improved speed. Now I still need to tinker with timing and double buffering, because there's a lot of flickering right now.

[Hurrican]

Week 4: No updates this week due to lack of time.