Entry: XILEF

[E-Penguin]

Title: XILEF

Genre: Platform/Infinite Runner

Original concept: Yes
So original I've not entirely decided on what it's going to do.

Expected game size: Infinite is the plan - it should procedurally generate new levels until you die (or maybe reach some MacGuffin)

Team members (Real or forum names):
Just me. I may use some open-source MODs if I run out of time/skill. Will be credited accordingly

Targeted spec: A500 512k+512k

Tools to be used: blitz2 & notepad++

Description of game:
I'm no artist or game designer so my plan is to procedurally generate as much content as I can. Taking inspiration from Rogue and Temple Run, the plan is to generate a new level each time based on a random seed, then you have to get to the end of that level, and generate a new seed, etc. I've not really worked out the mechanics of it yet.

This will be my first Amiga game and I have no expectations that it will win, or even be playable. At the moment I have some purple blobs wandering about the screen, which I consider a major coding achievement - this should give you some idea about how successful this endeavour may be.

[Ian]

Please remember this thread is for E-Penguin to post his updates only.

The discussion thread for this game is here:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=93654

Any other posts will be moved into that thread and all updates copied in there.

[E-Penguin]

This may look unexciting but I've got infinite scrolling (horizontal) working. I've had to put in a couple of hacks I don't fully understand but it seems to be scrolling and not jumping about anywhere.

For those interested, I'm using a wide bitmap and using the draw-behind-and-ahead method. I seem to be around vpos 64 so that gives me quite a bit of margin for the rest of the game.

Ideally I'd scroll both horizontally and vertically, but that might have to be something of a stretch goal.

If anyone know how to easily turn winuae output into an animated gif, I can show you scrolling in all its glory.

[E-Penguin]

Still randomly generating the scrolling background, and now with double-buffered foreground, in the shape of a purple blob I can move about with the joystick. That's pretty much the graphics engine sorted then.

To do:
1) generate a map rather than a meaningless bitmap and keep the current position in sync with the bitmap view
2) draw some proper map tiles
3) draw some proper character animations & some baddies
4) draw some coin/treasure sprites
5) collision detection between hero & treasure and baddies
6) learn how to make music on the Amiga
7) create some mod files and sound effects

I'll probably do bits of these in parallel. I'm currently thinking of making a playable demo of my work so far to get a feel for the overall concept.

Words of encouragement appreciated.

[E-Penguin]

I've been a bit distracted by work but the latest is the infinite scrolling works fine, and I have an idea for the procedural generation of levels.

I was having a think about controls. Let's assume we are always running in a given direction. There will be two sorts of obstacle - things to duck under and things to jump over. We cannot reverse direction but can turn 90°. And shoot baddies.

So...

         UP
    UL       UR
LL                 RR
    DL       DR
         DN

If you were going left to right,
UP = rotate 90° left
UR = rotate 90° right & jump
RR = jump
DR = rotate 90° left & jump
DN = rotate 90° left
DL = rotate 90° left and slide/duck
LL = slide/duck
UL = rotate 90° and slide/duck

Fire button = fire in the direction of travel

The controls would themselves rotate 90° when the direction of travel does, such that pushing towards the direction of travel jumps, away slides/ducks and orthogonal turns.

I hope that makes sense.

Graphically I want a chaos engine style top-down-ish projection. I may steal the sprites for a test.

aszu
Definitely yes please but I want to get to a certain level of development before asking others to commit their time. It wouldn't be fair to ask for graphics if I don't complete the game.

[E-Penguin]

Finally had a spare evening to work on this. It turned out my randomly-generated map wasn't actually that random so I had to rework the scrolling code and the collision detection code.

Anyway, as a result of testing it, I created a demo so playable that it kept the Mrs occupied for ten minutes. She's easily pleased.

Anyway, see attached archive, for the thrillingly named scrolltest.exe. I've only run it under winuae / a1200 so I've no idea if it'll start on an a500. I guess it will, it doesn't really do anything.

You, a red blob, start with three lives represented by yellow squares, although when they're gone it doesn't mean much. The score is on the top left. Avoid the green squares - they take a life. A collision is illustrated by a white bounding box.

I've not really got double buffering working so it's horribly flickery. I've been instructed it's my bedtime so I'm not going to fix that now.

Anyway, you get the general idea of where I'm going with this game. Comments & encouragement welcome!

[E-Penguin]

I've not given up, work has been relentless of late. I plan to get back to this over Christmas.

I tried to knock up some graphics and I've come to the conclusion that I'll steal repurpose some from elsewhere if I can. Appropriately credited of course.