My game projects in C/C++ and GameSmith

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by clebin

Quite a productive evening - I kept the background but added this old wooden TV with an LED-style display for the score.

Yo, I just found about this thread, you know, if you had made a thread for this game on its own, liek an announcement, it would have been noticed better I think. Thread title is too generic.

With that said I love matching games, Columns/Baku Baku animal types are great! And this looks really god!!

I just preferred the screen without the TV thing. The score was bigger and clearer, the "Next" too, and there was a better distribution of elements on screen. Now it's all too clumped to be inside the screen.
Just my opinion though, of course.

Keep up the great work and looking forward to your release! Can't wait to play it.

And may I ask: whatever happened to the Microbots clone?

[clebin]

Originally Posted by Akira

Yo, I just found about this thread, you know, if you had made a thread for this game on its own, liek an announcement, it would have been noticed better I think. Thread title is too generic.

And more than a year on, I just noticed your post! The plan is to announce Landfill in its own thread when it's ready for launch (hopefully in the next week). This one was more about getting advice on Amiga-specific C stuff as I didn't want to build up expectations when I was unsure of a release date.

With that said I love matching games, Columns/Baku Baku animal types are great! And this looks really god!!

I just preferred the screen without the TV thing. The score was bigger and clearer, the "Next" too, and there was a better distribution of elements on screen. Now it's all too clumped to be inside the screen.
Just my opinion though, of course.

Fair point - part of me agrees. I tweaked the background a bit since that screenshot to take away some of those bags on the right to try and open it up. I'm thinking I'll do more with the background as the game progresses providing it's something I can implement relatively quickly.

Keep up the great work and looking forward to your release! Can't wait to play it.

Thanks, I appreciate it! Having not really touched it for 18 months, I was pleased at how fun it was to play, so hopefully others will feel the same.

And may I ask: whatever happened to the Microbots clone?

Life I guess! First, a baby girl who wouldn't sleep, and then a freelance dev project that made me guilty to be working on Amiga stuff in my spare time when I should be doing that. I'm back on the Amiga stuff now so I may look at that next.

On Landfill, over the past week I've added saimon69's excellent music and fixed the double-buffering so it runs smoothly on a stock A500. So like I say, hopefully there'll be a release thread popping up in the 7 days or so.

[Gzegzolka]

Cool I am waiting for Your game.

[clebin]

Originally Posted by Gzegzolka

Cool I am waiting for Your game.

Thanks - not too long now I promise!

--

I decided I agreed with Akira and have gone back to the old layout. The TV pops up for New Combos, and there's 3 new backgrounds for the different game modes you can select from the menu screen. I'm planning to have the background change with rubbish added or removed as the game progresses.

Here's a WIP screenshot of a new game mode called NIMBY ('Not in my Back Yard'). The play area is wider, items drop from random positions and you get extra points (or nothing at all) depending on where you put them.

[kamelito]

@clebin
In the end was GameSmith worth it to develop your game? Any bugs you’ve to find workaround for? Did it help you speed up the development? Isn’t the Amiga API not enough?
Your view on GS?

[clebin]

Originally Posted by kamelito

@clebin
In the end was GameSmith worth it to develop your game? Any bugs you’ve to find workaround for? Did it help you speed up the development? Isn’t the Amiga API not enough?
Your view on GS?

It was a big help when I was starting out with Amiga C. It got me up and running with setting up the display, blitting etc. At that stage, you're overwhelmed with the sheer amount of bespoke crap you have to learn. Having any kind of manual and plenty of code examples really helps. I was surprised at the readability of Amiga ROM Kernel manuals though - I'd always assumed they'd be a complete headfuck but they're very usable.

No-one should think GameSmith is a replacement for Blitz or AMOS. It's really just a thin layer on top of the core libraries, so the learning curve is still steep. I think I'd have finished the game years ago if I'd used Blitz, although I'd have had to put up with BASIC syntax and the crappy editors.

No bugs as such, but I'm seeing some flicker on 68000 even with the double-buffered display. When I blit out a full 320x256 to an off-screen bitmap, the screen flickers quite a lot even if I don't flip to the other display at all.

I'm not sure if this is GameSmith's fault as such, but I haven't found any way of eliminating it, even writing to a 3rd bitmap and doing a memcpy. I'm tempted to strip out GameSmith and compare the result. That lack of confidence is a problem when you're abstracting away the hardware, even if only with a thin layer.

So it kind of falls between stools. I recommend it as a way into Amiga C but I don't think I'll use it in the long-term to be honest.

[kamelito]

Thanks for answering. If not then will you use the Amiga API or bang the HW in C?