well, I have been waiting for this since forever, but you are not completely there yet... compared to the nes version graphics are gross. the music is not completely like the arcade one. and you cannot fire while being captured. A potential great game, but graphics and sound should improve.
The C64's hardware limitations make it impossible to improve the graphics in any meaningful way. You can either have hi-res characters, meaning you can define every pixel in a 8x8 character block or 24x21 sprite, but they can only be one colour, or you can have multi-colour meaning you can only define pairs of pixels but have three colours, two of which must be shared across all chars/sprites. I chose to go for more accurate colour over sharper sprites that are all one colour.
Contrast this with the NES that can have hi-res sprites with any three colours from a palette of 54.
Unfortunately some compromises are inevitable, if it was easy it would have been done in the 80s.
Same with the sound, it's as close I can get without the benefit of dedicated sound hardware built specifically to make Galaga's sounds that the arcade has.
I see that you can 'fire' when being captured on the arcade but this doesn't really add anything to the game, the bullets just fire off in random directions and I've never seen one hit anything. Because I'm drawing player bullets with characters, changing their X position in flight would take probably a couple of days to code, for very little benefit.
A potential great post but spelling and punctuation should improve.
I am reviewing this game right now for Zzap!, italian version (www.zzapmagazine.it). I know that the hardware (ie: commodore 64) has its own limitations. But Galencia is doing a better job graphics-wise.
Firing when captured is a plus: you can shoot enemies while being captured, and you could even free yourself (killing the capturer) if you are playing your last life. :-)
I appreciate what you are doing, don't get me wrong. I love that game too.
and please, forgive me when I type using my phone: I make many mistakes using a virtual keyboard. I guess you see my point, anyway.
It's a good game, but it could improve and it could become a great one!
Galencia's sprites are much bigger, so you can obviously add more detail. The smallest sprite in Galaga is half the size of a Galencia sprite.
But at that point they take up so much room compared to the overall dimensions of the screen it's no longer Galaga. In Galencia the swarm is virtually on top of you, it might look more like a zoomed-in Galaga, but it can't possibly play like it.
There are also less sprites so they don't need to use chars, and they have the advantage of not having to look like anything that came before so can be designed with double-wide pixels and the available colours in mind.
As I say, I'm no artist but I can't really see how you can make Galaga on the C64 look significantly better without compromising on gameplay.
If I were making a brand new IP like Galencia, built specifically for a 320 x 200 landscape screen as opposed to 224 x 288 portrait one, absolutely the graphics wouldn't be good enough. And I agree there are definitely elements from the arcade gameplay that I haven't quite captured yet. That's why for Galaxian I am porting directly the arcade code.
The choice is really down to chunky, less detailed sprites or no game at all. And there's no way I'm doing hi-res single colour enemies, this isn't a Spectrum ;)