GALL

[chickendude]

Yep, yet another unfinished project!

This is a shoot-em-up, but i'd like to turn it into something more like an RPG where you gain experience and can get better equipment/ships/weapons, etc. and with more emphasis on story and dialogs. The Cemetech Contest #11 gave me the motivation to actually start this, as it's an idea i've had floating around my head for about half a year now.

Right now it's just a basic Phoenix-style shoot-em-up, but i just started working on it on Friday, so...

Here are some screenshots of the first few waves:




I've only added one level with five waves, so it's not huge, but it's a start. I can't say that i'll actually get much work on this anytime soon, but i would like to at least keep thinking up ideas for when i get the time and motivation to pick it back up.

I'll post the executable/source when the contest is over.

[Deep Thought]

How do you get such an impressive demo working in two days O.O

It really looks great. The weapons look fun to use too.

[Madskillz]

I agree looks good chickendude. I like the idea of gaining XP for better weapons and upgrades. Judging by the amount of bullets coming at you...I'd probably die a lot ha.

[chickendude]

The most exciting weapons were left out of the screenies

And thanks, i won't be able to put any work into for a little while but i'm going to get back to it when i get the chance. The last couple waves in particular are rather tough, but since it's such a short game it doesn't take long to get there.

[NanoWar]

The spaceshit is pretty "long". Maybe remove the upper one pixel that's a bit weird anyways?

Yes you can remove the upper one pixel, and I think you can even remove the other one located in the blank square...

[chickendude]

To be honest, i kinda like that weird long look. The other ships i drew looked really boring :/

Also, as promised here's the current source:

[chickendude]

I should have some substantial updates for this within the next couple days

EDIT: Maybe not, all the work i've done the past few days seems to be lost. I guess i copied the folder to the wrong place and it got erased when i wiped the disk

[chickendude]

And the moment you've all been waiting for! Well, maybe not, but here's the latest screenie (aka the introduction)!


I jumped into the shooter part at the end just to show that it is indeed the same game! I've written (yet another) tilemapper, and this time i've coded in scripted cutscenes! Here's the intro:

Code: Select all

cut_intro:
      TEXTB(cut01_txt0) ;text on black screen
      LOADMAP(2,0,0)          ;load map 2 with map coords at 0,0
      LOADNPC(0,0,4)          ;0 governor
      LOADNPC(2,1,3)          ;1 soldier
      LOADNPC(2,1,5)          ;2 soldier
      MOVENPC_R(0,4)
      TEXTN(cut01_txt1) ;normal dialog box
      TEXTN(cut01_txt2)
      MOVENPC_R(2,2)
      TEXTN(cut01_txt3)
      TEXTN(cut01_txt4)
      MOVENPC_U(1,2)
      DELAY(10)
      MOVENPC_D(1,1)
      MOVENPC_R(1,3)
      MOVENPC_U(1,1)
      DELAY(10)
      MOVENPC_D(1,1)
      MOVENPC_R(1,1)
      TEXTN(cut01_txt5)
      EFFECT(5)
      TEXTB(cut01_txt6)
      LOADMAP(1,0,0)
      LOADPLAYER(5,6)         ;x,y
.db $FF

I had drawn animations for them to walk, but with the blur you could barely see it so i commented them out. As it sits the game (including all the parts of the shooter from the previous screenshots) takes up a whopping 9k!


Ok, the idea is that you'll go back and forth between the ship. All battles will be done in your ship, but when you land on a planet you'll be able to explore it, buy parts for your ship, repair your ship, etc. When you're in battles/campaigns, you can gain experience for shooting down enemy ships and i was also thinking of adding in random battles for when you're traveling between planets where rather than fight a full screen of stupid enemies you'd face off against 1-5 slightly more intelligent enemies (or at least more mobile), which you would gain experience for killing as well. With experience you level up, get stronger, open the door for more powerful weapons, etc. It's all confusedly floating around in my head, and seeing that i'm nearing 10k already fitting it all in seems is looking to be an issue. Around 4k is code.

[chickendude]

I've done a bit more work on NPCs, now you can't walk through them. I've still gotta assign them dialogs. I also added a bunch of stuff to the cutscenes and text routines, including basic menu support:


I'm still trying to figure out a way to handle events so that, for example, once you leave the house you won't see Alice/Calvin if you go back in (or at least change their dialog). This part has got me a bit stumped.

[chickendude]

I got events working for the most part, and today i added in the shop and item support. NPCs also have dialogs.


I think that's pretty much everything for now. I've still gotta clean up the interface a bit, like give descriptions for the items since they're not really self-explanatory. But after that, i think i really just need to work on tying this part into the battle system (the shoot-em-up part). While working on the tilemap/rpg part of it, i came up with a few ideas to add to the shooter portion to make it a bit more complex and give it a bit more depth than Phoenix, since as a shmup it really can't stand up to Phoenix (or the other shooters out there, like Phantom Star). I'm gonna try to put a bit more emphasis on the story.

I'm hoping that if i get my stuff together i can release a short beta version of the first "level" here and hopefully get some feedback/ideas from you all. It's already huge, so i'm half debating whether or not to split each galaxy into a separate program/appvar and just reading stuff in from archive. I've drawn a map out (on paper) with six "galaxies", each with 2-4 planets. There are a total of 19 planets, so 19 relatively large maps plus their sub-maps. I'm hoping i can fit the beta into one program, though. I've still got 3500 bytes of code before hitting $C000, the total program size is just under 12k. I really don't feel like dealing with the hassle of an app. Sometimes i really envy the old GB developers

[Madskillz]

Looking good chickendude...Looks like a lot of different things tying this game together game play wise. Can't wait to see what you have in mind for the ship shooter aspect.

[chickendude]

Thanks, it'll become pretty obvious soon. Basically, whenever you're outside a town you'll be traveling in your ship, so all battles will take place in the shooter part of the game. Also, instead of dungeons, you'll go through Phoenix-style levels (where you can collect items, gain experience, and save the world).

I've updated a bunch of sprites and advanced in a couple other things, added another cutscene and now i've gotta draw a couple more maps for the empty houses, put in one last cutscene, after which you go into the first battle. If i can fit in the time to work on it, a demo might be available next week or the week after with the first town/scenario completed (though perhaps without levels/experience built in). Then i'll need to work on the space maps (the overworld maps) that connect the planets.

I think within a few days it should all start coming together. The cool thing is that (i think) the hardest parts of the game are both done with: the battle engine and the map/text/event engine

[NanoWar]

How did you do the events? Looks very good.

[chickendude]

The events just use a block of memory (right now i think it's about 20 bytes, or space for 160 events), then i added a few routines to check if an event has been set and if it has to act accordingly. When loading a new map it checks which events affect that map. If an event is set, it runs a little code before loading the map. Texts and other things are dependent on events, too. So far i've just got 4 events that affect game progress:
;event 0 answering "my house" (reset) or "the safehouse" (set)
;event 1 leaving the house
;event 2 entering Emily's house
;event 3 entering secret house
The event 0 decides where everyone will meet up later, event 1 removes the NPCs from your house when you leave (once you leave that house, so do Calvin and Alice), event 2 is required before you can meet your friends at either "my house" or "the safehouse", and event 3 is... a secret!

The past week i've been working on a tool for GALL, hopefully it'll make it easier to continue the game

I'm excited because it looks like i have this planned enough (story and code) to actually get far enough to build something you can play! And like i said before, most of the work from here on it is design, not code. Though i will probably have to separate the levels into external files...

This game idea reminds me of a game called "Tyrian 2000" for MS-DOS I think, which was a cool game, a bit heavy on the story though, but meh.

[chickendude]

Hmm.. i'm not sure how similar it really is to that game (i've never played, just read the Wikipedia article) as my idea is more focused on the storyline and RPG elements. It's just that battles will all take place in your ship.

[chickendude]

Ok, i should be sleeping now but wanted to load my calc up with games for a long bus ride tomorrow (Wizards is on there!) and, not meaning to toot my own horn, but playing through the demo of this (the shooter and the RPG) reminded me how cool it really is. I really love the cutscenes! Unfortunately it seems like one of the screen transitions is overstepping the gbuf and causing it to crash, gonna have to investigate that later. I really wanna pick this up soon and get the first world out to give people an idea of what my plan for the game is.

Aww, that's too bad, at least you have Wizards to play
Also: [mom voice] Go sleep, now. [/mom voice]

Another also: Is the "current source" from the previous couple of posts the real current source?
Actually, I just realized you wont be able to respond until you get back.. Nevermind then

[NanoWar]

You REALLY need some kind of transition from overworld to fight mode, like a jet takeoff or some jumping in the spaceship in some kind of hangar or so. Isn't the place a space station (pheta hahaha)? Do you have a map of the whole thing? I'd like to see more. Also... shops, upgrades, teleports, power ups???

Hey chickendude, didn't realize that you were still working on this. It's looking great though by the way.

[chickendude]

I've already programmed in shops/buying items. Weapon upgrades have been implemented, too (you can see that in the first screenshots, i upgrade the weapon each wave), though they aren't exactly fused into the main game yet.

I'm also not exactly sure about the current source, i can add a repository to github with the latest source, though.