itch.io

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.

Downloads now available.

Downloads now available.

That's really cool, really pushing the NES to the max. The faster scroll speeds would be the main barrier to a C64 version, would probably also have to use chunky multi-colour graphics for the map in order to use colour cycling to approximate the flashy psychedelic effects. 

Thanks very much, I'll check it out!

Will see if I can get a download up tonight!

I'll try and put it on a D64 this evening :)

I have been using the latest, .251, but the hardware has been supported since 1998 so there's a good chance it'll work with most versions.

It should just be joystick control in Port 2? I haven't programmed any key controls. 

Possibly, the limitation with this sprite-only engine would be having tiles in between rows. I have tile-based engines from the likes of Pillars or 20 which might be more suited to that sort of game.

Assembler - had plenty of practice over the past 3 years so I kind of get in the zone and don't have to think too much about what I'm doing.

No this is exactly the same build, just got round to putting it up on my page with all the others. 

78! ;)

Thanks very much for the testing, I've re-written how the cursor sprite is placed, before it was being moved manually whenever an action happened (I was being lazy...) so it was possible for its screen position to get out sync with the selected cell. I now have a lookup table to re-position the cursor every frame based on the row/column of the selected cell.

I think the score glitch is because the score uses binary-coded decimals, when any component of the score calculation is  more than 9 it's putting the total out of BCD range. Should be an easy fix.

Thanks, I'll put that change in. Do you recall what action you had just completed when the cursor locked? 

C64 port is pretty much done, just need to tidy up the game over transition a bit and play around with the scoring. Will release the C64 .prg on Saturday morning when they tend to get more traction.

Password = orion.

https://arlagames.itch.io/hyper-harvest-c64

I heard they're going to do something similar in GTA6. Instead of mowing down enemies with machine guns, you tickle them with a feather and they laugh themselves off the screen.

Thanks for the info, I've got a tester in Canada who's going to run on real hardware and feedback what's happening.

Happening to me too, on a family-friendly Commodore 64 game that raises money for a children's heart charity. The ability to ban an account from commenting on all games would be a start, at the moment they just move on to posting on a different one.

I added an NTSC-only version, the title pages are cut right down until I can optimise them but the gameplay should work fine.

Good point and apologies for not mentioning it. Actually I just tried it and while the title screen does freeze, if I bypass that the gameplay and other screens run fine on NTSC. I'll try over the next few days to work out why the title screen locks up and then put out a patched version.