Follix - new game for AGA Amigas [WIP]

[Tsak]

Well done Saimo, this looks great!

[saimo]

@manossg @gimbal @Tsak

Thank you, guys!

Originally Posted by gimbal

Looks like the type of game that could do well on mobile platforms.

A piece of background story (I still have to write down the whole story, which will be included in the manual)...
This is the 4th time I remake this game, always for Amiga. Sometime in 2009/2010, however, at some point a couple of friends of mine were supposed to make a port for iPhone, precisely because we thought its mechanics were perfect for touch screens. I rewrote the game from scratch in C (so that actually increases the total number of versions to 6), making it work on AmigaOS 4 and Windows, and designing the code so that to get it to run on iPhone all that was needed was implementing a HAL for audio/video functions. Unfortunately, my friends only questioned the design (which was already known right from the begining, given that the first game had been made in 1994) and never produced anything, so the project quickly died.

But it also gives me a head ache, this is like the Power but even more difficult.

I don't know Power, but I can tell you that this version should be easier than the original game due to the following design changes:
* in the original game, the tiles were the pieces of a picture, i.e. each tile had to go to a specific place, whereas this version, in case of multiple occurrences of a letter, the correspondings tile can occupy multiple places;
* in the original game, the player had to guess the place where to reconstruct the picture, whereas this version indicates the right spot(s) for each tile (the original game had a cheat that revealed the area occupied by the whole picture, though);
* I removed the two most difficult puzzles;
* I increased the time limit a lot.

I wonder how you design the puzzles!

You know what? I can't say First tutorial puzzles aside, which I created specifically for this version, I designed the puzzles way back in 1994. All I remember is that it's been just brainwork based on the knowledge of the game mechanics and that it's been a very demanding job. I got to taste a little bit of that flavour again when I designed the tutorial levels: basically, it's a mix of how the final puzzle has to look like, how simple/convoluted the tiles paths/moves have to be, how many and what kind of "traps" are to be included, etc.

[gimbal]

Thank you for trying to dig it up from your brain It is something that I have been curious about for a long time. Take Chip's Challenge for example - and especially Chip's Challenge 2 which has far more puzzle mechanics, the later levels are completely mental. So big, so complicated. How were they made? Completely at random is not an option because then you run the risk of creating unsolvable situations.

I can only imagine that it involves creating the end scenario and then basically "move backwards", shoving things around in reverse until you have changed the level enough that you have created the starting scenario. Using that approach the level should be completable... But not necessarily fun to play of course. It probably takes a special brain to "envision" fun puzzle levels.

[saimo]

Never heard of Chip's Challenge before either
Yes, the process is mostly backwards, but there's more to it. One of the key thoughts was: which new sub-layout/moves can I add here?

[saimo]

Today I played all the levels again for the 1000th time. At the same time, I made some adjustments, and (I think) I have now the final version ready for release. Here's another gameplay video - I know, it shows the same levels again, but you don't want more levels to be spoiled, right?

[ Show youtube player ]

If all goes well, the game will be released this weekend...

[Neil79]

Looking cool man, although if it's released this weekend it's doubtful I'll be able to feature it

[saimo]

Thanks for the intention of featuring Follix! Yesterday evening AmigaBill told me he'll show the game in his sunday's stream, so I thought that the ideal release time is right after the stream.

[wairnair]

Definitely checking this out, looks great! Thank you for creating this.

[saimo]

@wairnair

Thank you!


@all

I had already finalized the distro files, but then an old idea returned to my mind: what if, when the menu screen appears, the logo also moved (while fading in and alpha-cycling)? I couldn't resist...
You can see this final change in this new speedrun video:

[ Show youtube player ]

The game now has also its own itch.io page and is going to be released tomorrow, right after AmigaBill showed it on his live stream (Sunday July 11th, 2 pm EDT / 6 pm UTC / 7 pm BST / 8 pm CEST)!

[Mrs Beanbag]

oo nice work!! i am getting the Doing Things Envy from this lol

[saimo]

@Mrs Beanbag

Never heard "Doing Things Envy" before. I'm not sure I get it.


@all

Follix is out!
Free download: https://www.retream.com/Follix / https://retream.itch.io/follix

And, since I didn't tell it yet, here's the full backstory...

I was 16 when I bought a stock Amiga 1200, in the fall of 1993, finally making the jump from my beloved Commodore 64. Back then, I was isolated in a little town, knew nobody who was into software development, owned no programming books and had no software, apart from a bunch of floppies containing 3 pirated games I got as a bonus from the shop I had bought the Amiga from. However, having heard I was interested in programming, some friends put me in touch with an older guy who had an Amiga 4000 loaded with several original productivity programs - among which AMOS Professional - and sitting on a desk in his shop, doing nothing. The guy (who eventually became a close friend) allowed me to go to his shop and use his Amiga at will (years later, he even let me take it with me to another town!) and provided me with a copy of AMOS (registered in his name).
I started learning AMOS and improving the little programming skills I had built with the Commodore 64 User Manual and some tapes that taught BASIC. I did not consider another language because I was totally unaware of other options and, anyway, AMOS felt like a natural step from Commodore 64's BASIC and gave me the feeling that I could finally satisfy my desire of making a whole, proper game.
Still, my skills and knowledge were limited, my unexpanded Amiga (which was the computer I did most of my programming on anyway) was not exactly a workstation and AMOS had its limits, so most of my ideas were doomed to remain just that - ideas. Yet, I was quite interested in puzzle games, which often have little hardware demands. And so the first game I ever created ended up being a puzzler. It was called Follia NBA¹, and the year was 1994.
The concept was stol... erm... heavily inspired by Thalion's Atomix², which I had seen on an MS-DOS computer of one of the aforementioned friends. It was a bit different from Follix: the tiles of a level were the pieces of a picture depicting the logo of an NBA team³; as a consequence, there was only one correct place for each tile; the player had to guess the area where the reconstucted picture fitted; for every 2 minutes left, the player was awared a bonus that, at his/her command, would automagically put a tile in the correct place.
That first version was really bad: some design choices were completely wrong; most of the graphics were ugly; the code was messy, inefficient and, in places, uselessly complicated; the sound effects were taken from various tracker modules. In all, it mirrored perfectly the fact that the development had been a learning process. Though, it did work (I am somewhat amazed by how the patches to the workarounds to the fixes to the bugs produced, in the end, the correct result); moreover, the puzzles were actually good and the game was indeed fun.
In those days, I could not imagine I was sowing a seed. Through the years, I reworked/remade the game 4 times (plus an additional attempt that brought a prototype to AmigaOS 4 and Windows, as a byproduct of an iOS version which somebody else was supposed to take care of), with Follix being the result of the last effort. The motivation behind it was not only to make the game better, but also to make it technically special through ALS (enhancing Follia NBA using CSS, the ALS predecessor, is something I had been wanting to do for ages), to put ALS to good use and to get rid of the basketball theme (which, at some point, no longer felt appropriate to me and certainly is not everybody's cup of tea). The code and the assets of Follix have been created from scratch, but the puzzles are still the original ones (except for Follix' first 4, which are new and purpose to introduce the player to the mechanics gently, and Follia NBA's last 2, which have been excluded because of their sheer difficulty).

¹ "Follia" is Italian for "madness".

² Follix = Follia NBA + Atomix

³ Such an odd choice is due to the fact that at that time I was a lot into (and played) basketball.
By the way, those logos resulted surprisingly good, despite:
· the wrong technical choices made at the beginning (i.e. HIRES resolution and very saturated palette of just 15 colors - color 0 was not usable for graphics as it was reserved for a background rainbow effect);
· those were my first real pixelling experiences;
· since I had no better tool, I was (painstakingly) pixelling the logos (some of which were downright huge), eyeballing them from a magazine, with the AMOS Object Editor, which was not suited at all for such a proposition.


@admins

Could you replace "WIP" with "RELEASED" in the thread title, please?

[manossg]

Congratulations for the release, I will definitely enjoy this game!

[vulture]

Congratulations saimo!

[saimo]

Thank you guys, have fun!

[klx300r]

@saimo

Thanks Simone! truly a fun game to play with great gameplay, graphics & music and puzzles get quite challenging as you progress

[saimo]

@klx300r

Thanks for the nice feedback!


@all

Also Follix received its little maintenance release

v1.1 (18.07.2021)
* Fixed writes to POTGO: OUTLX and DATLX were set to 1; POTGO is now managed properly by means of potgo.resource.
* Fixed graphical glitches in information screens on unexpanded machines.
* Added controls information to pause screen.
* Replaced raster beam Y reading procedure with faster and interrupt-proof machine code routine.
* Made a tiny optimization.
* Improved manual.

https://www.retream.com/Follix

[saimo]

A quick heads-up to let you know that I released a little update.

v1.3 (21.02.2023)
* Fixed endless floppy drive motor spinning.
* Fixed graphical glitch that could happen in the transition between the game and information screens.
* Made disappearance of game area when passing to the pause screen happen in a single frame instead of two.
* Added clearing of CPU caches after the loading of the data file (as that contains also a couple of machine code routines).
* Changed the conditions of many If, Until and While statements and turned For ... Next loops into Repeat ... Until loops to have the AMOS Professional Compiler produce shorter and faster code.
* Sharpened the top/bottom sides of the menu buttons.
* Recompiled against ALS v2.3.
* Optimized executable with custom tool.
* Touched up manual.

https://www.retream.com/Follix
https://retream.itch.io/follix

[vulture]

thx for the continued support saimo!

[manossg]

Cool stuff for a cool game! If I may so bold as to wishlist a game mode without time limit for some casual Follix fun?

[saimo]

@vulture

My pleasure!


@manossg

Originally Posted by manossg

Cool stuff for a cool game!

Thanks!

If I may so bold as to wishlist a game mode without time limit for some casual Follix fun?

No, sorry
The time limits are generous and, if one really needs more time, it's possibile to accumulate time from the previous levels up to 15 minutes - more precisely:
* base time for level L: 60+(540*(L-1))/29 seconds
* the remaining time from the previous level is added to the base time
* the resulting time is cropped to 900 seconds (i.e. 15 minutes)