itch.io

Looks interesting. At first glance my main suggestion for an improvement would be to have tabs at the top so different modules (e.g. player, enemy, IRQ, Hud, GameOver) can be kept separate rather than a huge scrolling area. Perhaps with a separate panel that allows access to labels defined in other modules. 

Although it seems to be aimed at people who already know 6502 and the C64 very well and just offers a different way of working, the drag & drop format with a bit of tweaking seems like it would be perfect for teaching beginners.

For example 'LDA IMM 35, CMP 52, BNE COURSE_NOT' means nothing to a beginner but 'Put 35 into  accumulator, compare accumulator with 52, if accumulator is not 52 goto COURSE_NOT' is more understandable, and the underlying instructions could still be shown so they begin to make that connection.

Hey, that's an interesting project, can't promise anything as I'm busy at the moment but I will put it on a list for the future along with 'Black Beetles'.

Thanks very much for the kind words.

Thanks, appreciate it!

Thanks for the video as always!

Thanks very much for the kind words. Yes I agree the sound isn't perfect but sound design on the SID is not my forte, I wouldn't know where to start to get closer to the arcade on that front.

Obviously this is just for Speccy, if you're building for a different platform a similar change might be needed in that engine code

Anyone having an issue with shrapnel never despawning if the window size is full screen:
Go to the folder SuiteZX/AGD within the MPAGD folder, and edit EngineZX.asm:

Around line 799, replace the right edge detection code with this:

       inc hl              ; point to right edge.
       ld a,(hl)           ; fetch window edge X
       add a, 15           ; add width of sprite
       cp 255              ; ARLASOFT - is on screen edge?
       jp nz, nowrp        ; ARlASOFT - no, dont worry     
       ld a, 251           ; ARLASOFT - yes, move boundary far enough left to catch fast travelling particles
nowrp
       cp (ix+5)           ; compare with window limit.
       jr c,kilshr         ; off screen, kill shrapnel.

Just posted a solution to this at the top of the comments

Was watching a stream last night with Andy Walker, an 8-bit developer from the 80s who brought up an old C64 sheepdog game as one of the worst games he's played. Got me wondering if it had ever been done properly and came across your game.

It's very well done, are you going to pick it up again at some point? No judgement here, I have too many paused projects to count! 

The sheep behaviour is great, they respond as you'd expect, they herd together or wander off randomly on their own just the right amount. 

Should be fixed now in V1.02. Thanks for letting me know!

Great, thanks. I'll see if I can replicate, that's the first bat stage I assume?

Ok thanks, not seen that bug, just played through and it worked, will investigate.

Will check this, did the blood animation and 'good hunter' message show?

Nice one, very cool - I didn't even know you could do that! I'll look into your request for borderless-window mode.

Out of interest what type of controller are you using, and real C64 or emulator?

Try as I might I can't get any of my controllers to trigger twice from one tap unless I purposely hold down the button.

Which version of VICE are you using (if not a real C64) and what type of controller? Currently there is a 5 frame cooldown which is applied whenever the fire button is pressed, I could increase this by a few frames to help with controllers with slightly sticky fire buttons.

Version 1.03 uploaded with an increased 8 frame cooldown, let me know how you get on with it.

Just downloaded v102 to double-check, seems to work ok for me. What version of VICE are you using?

There's an email on his reddit profile, might be worth a go: localthunk.contact@gmail.com

That's a shame, try and reach out to the developer rather than his over-zealous publisher if possible. The guy's made ten million plus from this game out of nowhere so I'm sure this is no threat to his livelihood or the publisher's profits.

I have permission to convert a couple of equally popular PC games, I just mailed the developers directly.

Suggestions for features that would make it something I could see using for a big project as a bit of a change from .asm. Just little things I've noticed from some brief noodling around with the tool.

• Charpad import (mainly charsets with colour attributes and screen layouts)
• Spritepad import
• Ability to select multiple items in a list using first item > hold shift > last item
• Right-click on cell in screen designer to clear cell with char 32
• Ability to see how much data the game resources will take up (my project would have 100 screens)
• Ability to delete items using delete key instead of right click menu
• Scaling below 100% (font is massive on my ultrawide screen)
• Character Tags using the upper 4 bits of char colour table (see Charpad Char Materials)

Thanks very much, love the game cover :)

Hi, that's very kind - I do have a page at https://ko-fi.com/arlasoft, I believe you can use cards there without a paypal account.

I have done, but in this case I can't be arsed converting to soft sprites. Tempted to do 2600, Channel F and PDP-1 versions though!

Great info thanks, especially the bonus triggers, I couldn't find anything on the net about that. I did think it might be linked to completed ingredients but there also seems to be a delay between a piece landing and the bonus appearing which took me in the 'random' direction.

I'll implement these improvements in the coming days, thanks again!

Ha,I do have a lot of graphics drawn for that already, no code started though. I'm not above bribery! ;)

Thanks! Yeah I haven't been able to work out how the arcade does it, it doesn't appear to be on a fixed timer, sometimes it can be 30 seconds or more and sometimes they appear within seconds of another one disappearing which suggests some randomness. I can easily increase the chance of them increasing though. 

Congrats on the top 15 finish! I see there is a timelapse, any chance of the full VOD being uploaded, as someone who mainly codes ports due to a lack of game design skill s it would be great to see your thought processes.

Yeah, sorry about with that. What with a job, a business to run, being a husband and parent, while also making 30+ FREE games in a matter of years, it must have slipped my mind. The code is available on Github, why don't you do it?

That says it can emulate Pacman hardware so should be ok as long as it also allows running roms where the checksum doesn't match. 

Just played your snake game btw, really cool - might have to port that to something obscure if that's ok ;)

If you're on Windows everything needed should be in the Github repo. I've added some comments to the make.bat file which explains everything that's going on, and also the macro.c file so it can be compiled for mac/linux if required.

The instruction set is pretty good, all the usual stuff is there - if you can do F8 this is no problem!

Yes, I used the same scrolling approach for my Pacman port to fit the full 1-1 arcade map.

Very cool. How flexible is the engine in terms of porting other GB titles?

Btw, if you fancied having it playable in the browser at the top of this page, this site has an .html export feature for C64 games:
 
https://lvllvl.com/c64

Thanks! Not sure what the font is called, it's one of five fonts built in to this site and just comes under the generic name 'pixel' alongside 'serif', 'sans serif' etc. 

Somehow the changes I made yesterday aren't there, must have had a different working folder open :-$ Replacement .d64 file up.

Ok must be some other code interfering somewhere, I'll have a look at some point.

Update uploaded with a fix to turn off the ghosts tunnel code, and also a fix for the high-score bug on the normal game.