Amidar WIP

[jotd]

made a lot of progress. new video below

[ Show youtube player ]

[mcgeezer]

This is fantastic work jotd, I remember being about 13 and playing this in the local sweet shop before I went to school. I always remember there was a girl in the shop who worked behind the counter who was absolutely brilliant at it.

[jotd]

thanks! beta version will be out soon. Totally playable as it is. Would like to kill some more bugs before beta test. And complete it for the AmigaGameJam you like so much

I always remember there was a girl in the shop who worked behind the counter who was absolutely brilliant at it.

good old days! I never was too good at that one. Unlike this guy

[ Show youtube player ]

[kamelito]

Great, difficult game, I was never good at it same as Styx. Since the PacMan board supported many games, does it mean that it is true to your code? Can it handle all games developed using this board?

[jotd]

Originally Posted by kamelito

Great, difficult game, I was never good at it same as Styx. Since the PacMan board supported many games, does it mean that it is true to your code? Can it handle all games developed using this board?

no this isn't MAME. This is a complete rewrite of all 3 games (Pacman, MsPacman, Amidar) using assembly.

The lowlevel code (blitting, copperlists, sound & music) is vastly re-used though. But the specifics of each game needs to be re-created.

That said, most of those games have 6 to 8 sprites, 16 colors, which is below the amiga specs, and allows the lowest amiga 500 to handle those without hassle if you code properly (my C++ port of Bagman is slow)

[jotd]

uploaded a beta .adf in the zone for you to test

also on itch as beta

https://jotd666.itch.io/amidar500

[Styrbjorn]

looks nice !

[jotd]

test with some slow/fast ram or with whdload as the nofast/nowhd config crashes as soon as you move. Will fix ASAP.

[frikilokooo]

I wonder if jotd can explain to me how is the pattern of the enemy chaser when he starts to chase you. I don't quite understand it, he chases you but sometimes not...anyway this is the most unfair part of the game and I have removed it from the game I am doing.

I don't know why Konami didn't release sequels or similar games. In my opinion it is much better game than Pac-man.

[jotd]

Ah, I figured it out by using MAME trainer: the thief was taking the path I had used to pick the dots, and not other paths, then I saw that it was explained in wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amidar

It's not unfair at all, and seasoned players are well aware of it...

At some given time (depending on the level) an alarm rings. Roughly one second after that, the target of the lone thief is set to your current position. The thief heads for it, using vertical moves in priority. Starting from now, player moves are recorded

When the first target is reached, the thief stops (seems that the time it stops depends on the time it travelled to reach it). After that pause, the thief follows the player recorded moves.

It's not unfair. What would be unfair would be to target the player at all times. Would mean cutting corners and all, which is not the case. The only thing that the thief doesn't follow is the player pauses. If player pauses, the thief doesn't. And it has the exact same speed as the player so it catches on, until the player completes the 4 squares and kills it. At this point, the target is reset to current player position (with a pause from the thief) and it starts again following the player trail.

Each level has one special enemy (the "Tracer", colored white) which, at the beginning of each stage, simply patrols around the perimeter of the gameboard in an anti-clockwise direction. However, following a certain number of "laps", The Tracer will begin to relentlessly pursue the player by following the path their on-screen avatar takes. While the Tracer cannot deviate from following the player's exact route, it does not mimic any pauses the player makes, meaning that hesitations or backtracking will eventually allow the Tracer to catch up and kill the player.

So basically I store player movement (only if changes) rounding it to the "tile" (8 divide, saves memory). The thief points at the beginning of the list of positions and changes targets each time it enters the targetted tile. Works a treat, not a lot of hassle to do that actually.

[frikilokooo]

thanks for the explanation, I thought it was more unfair but I was wrong

[jotd]

what is unfair is the insane amount of enemies at higher levels. 6 amidars at 1.5 times the player speed plus one tracer that chases you immediately.

it is an arcade game it has to kill the player at some point so others can feed it coins

[ransom1122]

I had a little play...

[ Show youtube player ]

@1.50 to @1.55 I tried several attempts to turn left Into the line and was having problems doing so...

It seemed I had to perfect the exact line coordinates before it worked...

Very strange as this problem never happened any other time...

[jotd]

yes, it's in the bugs list and one of the reasons this is still beta

- no animation when falling after normal music resumes
- 3200 points awarded at level 1: not possible
- turn correction not perfect, sometimes character blocks or goes the wrong way <===== HERE
- intro: wrong start move, maze check rework probably caused that
- undo_paint: not perfect but pretty close
- paint: missing bottom right corner

BTW do you know that you can eat the monsters when the alternate music plays and monsters change color? because it doesn't seem you know that also use jump to get past the enemies. When they're jumping if they touch you it does nothing.

thanks for the video

[ransom1122]

Originally Posted by jotd

yes, it's in the bugs list and one of the reasons this is still beta



BTW do you know that you can eat the monsters when the alternate music plays and monsters change color? because it doesn't seem you know that also use jump to get past the enemies. When they're jumping if they touch you it does nothing.

thanks for the video

This was the first time playing this game... I never saw it as a youngster in the arcades, and never gave it the time it deserves with MAME...

But now on Amiga it has my attention...

Keep up the great work

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by jotd

BTW do you know that you can eat the monsters when the alternate music plays and monsters change color?

To do that color the four edges of the playfield

[jotd]

released final version (unless a big bug is found)

https://jotd666.itch.io/amidar500

Which makes 3 entries for AmigaGameJam now

[DanyPPC]

Hello Jotd, the game is awesome, like the original arcade.

Tested successfully on my A1200 Blizzard 1230, MiST (minimig core) and V4SA.
Many thanks for this other great conversion for Amiga.

[malko]

Congratulations for this new achievement in game creation.
Thank you !

[zzbylu]

A little gameplay - final version:
[ Show youtube player ]