[ongoing] Trap Runner

[phx]

Late announcement, as the project nearly passed beta testing to final release status now, but here it is:

Trap Runner by Night OWL Design, distributed by Retroguru.

It is a classical horizontally scrolling Jump'n'Run, and the second game I did together with my brother Gerrit, after "Solid Gold" (http://aminet.net/package/game/jump/SolidGold).


It features 5 worlds with different graphics and four stages in each, always completed by a bonus level. So there are 25 levels, followed by a special boss fight in level 26. Additionally there are few extra levels you can warp to, like jetpack-flying levels.

The game is designed to be always fair. So it is not like Sqrxz, but you have to be alert all the time to evade all of the traps, obstacles and monsters. Besides the genre-typical jumping and running you can duck to evade flying monsters and use magic in later levels, after collecting potions, which enables you to fill transparent ghost tiles with colour, to make them solid. There are also magical pills to collect, which make you change your own colour and render tiles with the same colour passable. Collect lots of other items to increase your score, gain extra lives or fulfil one of the special level missions (like: collect all four puzzle tiles in a level to open the exit). Two of the four levels in a world have a mission. The other two are free runs - just reach the exit.

Some technical details:

• Runs on any classic Amiga. Minimun requirements: 512K Chip-RAM and 1 MB total.
• Written in 100% 68000 assembler.
• 50fps, soft parallax scrolling, more than 50 colours.
• Handdrawn pixels.
• More than 25 soundtracks and about the same number of different sound effects.
• Options menu with joypad-button configuration, ECS-borderblank, sound-check, etc.
• Passwords for each level.
• Writable options and high score table.
• Intro and outro story.
• Comes as fully packed disk (Doynamite compressed) with trackloader.
• Development started for real around February 2018.

Development tools used:

• vasmm68k cross assembler
• any C compiler (for the tools, not for the game)
• TilEd map editor
• Renoise and Milkytracker for music
• Gimp for graphics

Credits:

• Programming: myself
• Original concept, graphics, music, level design: Gerrit Wille
• Beta testing: Denny Müller (Retroguru)
• Doynamite LZ packer: Johan Forslöf
• Support and PR: Shahzad Sahaib (Retroguru)

Sorry for the boring text. No pictures and videos for now, because the game will be officially presented at the Function 2018 demo party in Budapest (http://2018.function.hu/). You can be sure I will post some pictures and Youtube links thereafter!

And sorry for the late announcement. But you may know that I don't like to talk about unfinished projects. The advantage is that you only have to wait few days now.

[Predseda]

I can not be more nervous, I am SO looking forward! Solid Gold is Ace!

[DamienD]

Sounds awesome phx, can't wait to play this

What's the cost for digital download?

[phx]

Originally Posted by DamienD

What's the cost for digital download?

LOL
You know the answer.

I removed the PayPal link from my home page, to avoid conflicts with some new laws, but voluntary donations are taken here:
https://www.paypal.me/phxhf

As usual, some time after the official release also the full source text will be available as public domain.

[seuden]

Sounds great.

[Predseda]

I am going to buy it boxed immediately, no matter what it is

[Aladin]

Nice Game (First place for me)

[LeCaravage]

Just watched you're game on stream.
A bit short but cool one !
How did you managed the parallax btw ?

[Aladin]

The replay:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/307379836?t=08h56m26s

[phx]

This was embarassing! It was not the right recording at the party. We had a nice one with the real sound effects, but in this video you can hear the title music all the time ... and no sounds!

Fortunately they started the game themselves on a real A500 for 30 seconds in the end, so you can hear sound effects.

The parallax effect is done by multiplexed sprites. The game uses 5 bitplanes.

[Tsak]

Really nice man! Another top work!
Feels quite polished and the mechanics are interesting!

Is it 16 colors (part from the copper sky obviously)?

[redblade]

How do you do the items/score overlay?? 4 colour sprites?? The pic looks real nice. Well done

[phx]

Originally Posted by Tsak

Is it 16 colors (part from the copper sky obviously)?

The graphics may look like 16 colours, but, as I wrote, they all have 5 bitplanes (32 colours).

Originally Posted by redblade

How do you do the items/score overlay?? 4 colour sprites??

Indeed, the sprites don't need that much colours, but I'm multiplexing attached sprites with 15 colours. Otherwise I run into trouble with my colour palette, where COLOR16-31 are also used on the bitmap.

[dodke]

Looks like it's available here: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=78069
Is it the final proper release?

Going to try it now on the a600 ...

[phx]

Originally Posted by dodke

Is it the final proper release?

It's the party release. It is complete, but we might do some more polishing, before doing the official release.

As promised, here are some more screen shots:

[DamienD]

Looks sooooo good phx, can't wait to play this

Originally Posted by phx

I removed the PayPal link from my home page, to avoid conflicts with some new laws, but voluntary donations are taken here:
https://www.paypal.me/phxhf

Donation sent my friend, well done

[phx]

And even some more...

[StingRay]

Just played it, very well made as usual. Thanks for yet another great OCS game.

[Asman]

@phx - Great job and of course I am waiting for sources

[phx]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Donation sent my friend, well done

Wow! Much appreciated. Thanks a lot!