Entry: Vamp and the Pork Pie Escapade
 

Title: Vamp and the Pork Pie Escapade

Genre: Single screen platformer.

Original concept: Hopefully.

Expected game size: Unknown, but at least two levels. Need to keep expectation low. :D

Team members (Real or forum names):
Mainly me at the moment.
Forum member jvdw007 will probably contribute graphics.

Targeted spec: A500, 512K or 1MB depending on inefficiencies ;)

Tools to be used:
Amiga:
Devpac 3

PC:
ConTeXT
GrafX2

Description of game: Probably a cutesy horror theme.

What have I done this week? Not much, but I've moved my development environment onto a different machine and managed to get it working (I'm very rusty :D). Now I have some hard thinking to do about what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it.

My head hurts already.

A week on and what have I done?

- Managed to get the keyboard interrupt code working correctly I think. On previous projects I didn't bother getting it working properly, it was never a big problem really but always annoyed me.

- Plugged in phx's Protracker+effects module. I used it on MobyDX so it was just a case of linking my previously built binary in.I had some weirdness with it despite it working before no problem, but then I have weirdness everytime I code on Amiga and it is working fine now.

- JVDWhathisname007 has mocked up some sprite concepts so that is nice, here is an example.

Weekly update time I suppose.

Some stuff done. I've hacked together some of my routines I've previously used in the Moby games for blitting stuff to screen. They work well enough as they did before but they're horribly inefficient. I need to try and get my head around blitting stuff in one blit using the modulo (so I've read anyway) to do the clever stuff as setting up three separate blits for for each monster leaves me... somewhat flaccid.

I've done some bug fixes on some of the stuff I did last week. Expect that to be a recurring theme throughout :)

No name game name yet either.

Added in some joystick controls. I will support two fire buttons in this, but give the player the option to select between an up for jump or second fire button for it. So that's nice, yep.

Oops, I took one and a half months off. Back on it now though.

We're testing animations out at the moment, so far they look crap :)

I've updated the game name. Would a mod kindly update the thread with the same? Thanks :)

Done, and also updated this thread: Discussion: Vamp and the Pork Pie Escapade ;)

Slow progress as always. I've finally put in some jumping code. It is pressure sensitive. Well not really, more hold it down longer for a higher jump. I've also spent time with the Hardware Reference Manual figuring out a glitch in my sprite code that I've re-used from the Moby game. It worked fine there because sprites were never low enough on screen (I wasn't setting the VSTOP high bit in SPRxCTL; that's fine until stuff starts dropping down low). I also spent lots of time implementing the gravity and platform detection. It naturally glitched but I finally figured out why.

The deadline is February 2020, right? :)

Finally after weeks, nay, years of overthinking interleaved bitplanes I finally understand how simple they are and I've recoded all my graphics routines to use them. Today is a good day.

I've spent some time writing the generic enemy movement and animation code. Every step forward comes with several steps back with bugfixing as always so I've taken inspiration from McGeezer's debug information read-out he has at the bottom of his screen and written my own. It immediately helped speed up bug fixing so that is great.

I've also moved over to building with vasm/vlink on the PC today which has also increased efficiency.

JVDWhathisname007 has now supplied four sets of enemy sprite graphics which look great.

Suff continues to move at a snails pace but Rome wasn't built in a day apparently.

Hey, I am actually making progress. Might need another year before it is finished though :)

https://youtu.be/uobFHUaJXs4

Not much game there yet but lots of fundamental things have been implemented that don't visually amount to much yet.

I'm afraid the timeframe was too tight for my own situation so I will not have anything submissable by the deadline. Good luck to all the other projects! Some great stuff being worked on.

This project will continue outside of the competition - when I start something I generally see it through to completion.