New Game (maybe) - GogoPogo

[LuMan]

I've been toying with writing a 'real' game for the Amiga since about 1990, but never got around to it (other than a text-based version of Luna Lander, that I wrote in C). However, I recently started playing with Blitz Basic 2 again, and decided to see what I could do with respect to scrolling games, using sprites and bobs, and generally messing about.

So, here is a very early preview of GogoPogo - Pedro's Predicament.

[ Show youtube player ]

Pedro has just bought a pogo stick from his favourite toyshop and needs to get home. Unfortunately he's missed the bus, so needs to get to the Train Station. Seeing as he's not got any money left for a train ticket, and his bus ticket is not valid, he must pogo about to find enough ticket stubs to make a full ticket.

The video only has Pedro, the toyshop and another building, plus a platform, and is a demo to check that the player animation works, along with the scrolling and platform collision code.

Pedro can hop slowly, quickly, and do a big hop. He can also change direction mid-flight ('cos he's THAT good at pogo-ing).

The finished demo will be 5-screens wide (maybe with a bonus screen) and have original music (which I'm writing at the mo).

I was going to have a parallax-scrolling background, but overcooked the number of colours, so I can't. I may reduce the colours for the sequel and put a bit of parallax in for effect.

So, feel free to comment. If enough people like the concept then I'll finish it and perhaps do one of the other Pedro Pogo adventures that I have in mind.

Thanks for watching
LuMan

[Reynolds]

Nice stuff, go on with it mate

[Amiga1992]

Big ups for using Blitz and not some garbage like Backbone. Looking forward. Really love the animation on the main sprite!

[Franchute13]

Good preview/test demo

[Retro1234]

I like the animation

[Havie]

Looking good. Can you share how it's done - perhaps on the Blitz thread?

I guess that you are using an extra wide screen and harware scolling? How are you working out when pogoman has landed ona platform - zones?
I guess Pogoman is a bob?

I think Blitz has a lot of potential that isn't often tapped and partly this is down to poor documentation. Anything you can share would be great!

I've also got a bit of a game sitting on my harddrive - an Amiga version of a famous phone app. My main aim was to work out the best and fastest way to Blit stiff. If you can guess it, I'll upload it...

[Predseda]

The main sprite is cute and I really, really like the animation! Looks very promising, simple cute platformer that everyone must love.

[LuMan]

Thanks for the comments. Even these few posts have given me the inspiration to finish this first demo. Hopefully I'll have it done in the next couple of weeks. All the ideas are there, but I need to do the graphics and sound, and they are slowing me down a bit. I'm not an artist by any stretch, so it takes ages to get graphics that look just about OK.

@Havie - I didn't think of posting any tips on the Blitz thread, but, as you've mentioned it, I'll start a thread with explanations of how I did various things. None of it is mind-blowing, but there are some tricks that I have used to try and squeeze some more speed out of Blitz. Hopefully it will inspire some more Amiga Homebrew

[vulture]

nice job so far m8!

[LuMan]

I've done a bit more to Gogopogo, in case anyone is interested

I've added the rest of the buildings and a couple of platforms, along with the station, power-lines, crawl-line and a kid with a toy helicopter.

To do:
1 - Add remaining platforms
2 - Add collectables
3 - Add remaining baddies and obstacles
4 - Add sound and theme tune

This is just a simple demo to see if it would work as a game. The coding is not the best, and I've cut nasty corners left, right and centre in order to get it to a useable state. Because of this, it will only run on a 1MB Amiga!

Once I've done the above 4 bits I'll post it for you all to enjoy (or not).

Future Plan:
I have an idea to expand the game a lot more. It'll still use the same character (Pedro) and he will still have a pogo-stick, but I'll change how the levels get assembled and tighten some of the code so that the levels are imported as level files, as opposed to being hard-coded inefficiently, like the demo.

For those with a techy/programming/Blitz bent, you may be interested to know that there is no double-buffering used. I draw the screen directly during the vertical blank (at least, I think that this is how it works!). This does speed things up, but is a nasty way of doing it. I'm reworking the engine to use proper double-buffering.

Anyway, here's the link to the latest vid:
[ Show youtube player ]

Enjoy and feel free to comment, good or bad

[Predseda]

Nice, only the long jumps look weird.

[vulture]

looks interesting, keep it up m8, I think it'll make of a good game in the end!

[jbenam]

Nice work, mate! Will definitely play it when it's done

[LuMan]

Originally Posted by Predseda

Nice, only the long jumps look weird.

You mean when he does the quick hopping? I can see what you mean, but I wanted to make sure the base of the pogo stick didn't appear to slide as he goes along. I may tweak the anim for the full game if I get time.

Also, the big jump is really naff - it just goes up and down uniformly, resulting in a very boring 45-degree travel. I've already addressed this for the full game, so that Pedro travels in a nice arc, as opposed to a straight line when he jumps.

[hooverphonique]

Originally Posted by Predseda

Nice, only the long jumps look weird.

probably due to the vertical speed not being parabolic...

[LuMan]

This is more of a 'teaser update' than a full update, but I thought I'd let anyone who's interested know what has been going on.

Development stalled a bit due to me not being able to get the game to do what I wanted, work commitments and the arrival of our second daughter! However, a couple of people pinged me to ask if the game was nearing completion, so I dragged out the old code and started going through it again.

I've completely re-written the code, re-done the palette and re-mapped the levels to overcome my coding limitations with respect to having huge, scrollable levels. Rather than spend ages perfecting a new scrolling technique (which I hadn't managed to get working up until yet) I just decided to be clever with level design and implementation. So, each level consists of 4 zones, plus an end-of-level baddie! So far I'm putting the finishing touches to the first zone of the first level, in order to test the engine fully before adding the remaining zones.

Title screen and music are done.
Level title screen is done
Level 1 (Street) graphics re-drawn
Other levels planned: Train, Forest, Castle

I've moved development from my A1200T to my A600, as the A1200T was causing issues when creating the music in SoundTracker. The upside is that I get a better idea of how stuff runs on a lower-spec machine.

I'll endeavour to get a playable level out as soon as I can

[Lonewolf10]

Thanks for the update and congrats on having another daughter

[LuMan]

Cheers, Lonewolf. She'll be getting her first Amiga for her 1st birthday!

A bit more update:
I've now sorted the level-loading, and it seems to work OK, which is good, as I can now look at an efficient way of getting all 4 zones into 1 load (1 level = 4 zones). Because I decided to use 32 colours, I'm not sure it will run on anything less than 1MB, but I can't see this being too much of a problem nowadays....

The game 'process' seems to work, too, with the title screen, then the level screen, then the game working as it should, with a clean return to the title screen when you die.

No baddies as of yet. I plan to add these when all four zones of Level 1 are done....