Still working hard on this project... cos... really what else is there for me to do at moment while still looking for a job and such...


Made some changes since the last shots were taken.  Have changed from scrolling levels to 'flick-screen' for a number reasons.  One being speed concerns on a real CPC (while many games did feature scrolling, the results would vary and screen sizes were generally kept small to compensate) and this way I can have a slightly bigger on-screen play area.  Also I find level design a hell of a lot easier with flick-screen games as I can do each bit of the level in screen-sized chunks and it's easier to make various level segments the focus and completely in shot.  Mapping is a lot easier too as I can now refer to an array of low-digit co-ordinates for each screen of the levels.  Have framed the screen using some of the small tiles that make up the status bar too (yay for memory-saving recycling).   Done a lot of re-coding stuff to optimise, tidy things up and also make it easy for later coding.  The game seems to be taking on a slightly more 'adventure game' type of tone with some story bits and puzzles (mostly solved by jumping on things or shooting things but hey...).  Also still coding it with anything that I don't consider necessary classed as '128k machines only' and trying to get as much of the crucial stuff in so hopefully it can be coded to run sufficiently on a 64k system hence why I have to do a lot of graphic recycling (may as well make the most of what's already loaded into the memory).

I usually cut the big black borders in the screenshots but they're here in this one to show that's generally how games looked on the CPC (and other 8 bit home computers).  It was possible to make the screen bigger and cut into those using overscan modes but it usually wasn't worth the hassle.

This shot shows the improved scanline optional configurations.  I just noticed if I zoom out of the image there with Firefox's imagezoom extension it goes to normal size aaand the pixels shown are the game's true palette due to the way it scales out cleanly. 

EDIT:  updated screenshot with the more recent versions of the mountain tiles that do not have selout and stuff...

Carnivac, have you tried spacing the scanlines out a little more so the image isnt as dark?  I like the scanlines actually, but wonder if it might be better a little more spaced out.  They look better in the new screenshot though, probably because the added darkness works with that scene instead of against it.

Please, enough about the scanlines... seriously.  I've just had a bit debate about it all on a CPC forum and even modified the game engine so now it has seperate options for both the horizontal and vertical scanline overlays (so they can even both appear at same time as shown at http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=6865.0;attach=9250;imageand both have independent transparancy values of 0-10 with 0 turning that scanline overlay off and 10 being full black)... I'm sick to death of the subject.  I just want to work on the actual gaaaaaaaaaame...   

sorry if that came out a bit rude or angry.  I didn't sleep last night and I just wanted to get a lot of work done on this project today and it seemed I had to spend about 3 or 4 hours having discussions about scanlines which aren't even part of the game so just got very frustrated.  Didn't mean anything by it all.

I doube the stats could go far that back.  I'm sure it was a different site back then.  Different address, different host, but still Pixelation.

The problem is that scanlines do not really look like that. Tho if you would play it like this on a CRT it would look like real scanlines, because glow/blur/phosphor decay and all that. And I am sure the CPC had a border as well, like the C64 and other micros. So if you add a black border around that image or have it fullscreen it will not look quite as dark.

It's a simple cheap effect which I happen to like which doesn't add any unnecessary colours (unless you set it to transparent) so the palette of screenshots is kept identical to the actual pixel art in the game and doesn't have any impact on the game speed at all.   

Also the game does have big borders (still gotta get round to the fake-loading bar effect for my 'loading screen').  I just crop it down to a 4 pixel width border for screenshots, particularly for my Tumblr where my blog width is too small to show the full image with borders and would scale it badly messing up the pixels.

Anyways here's another screenshot but as a link this time cos I don't want to clog up this topic with my crap too much.  This be of me revamping the old castle tileset but with a colour scheme I came across accidentally (when I was colour swapping tiles and messed it up but it came out nice and interesting) and hasn't really been done much on a CPC before.  Same 16 colour palette as the previous screenshots but totally different scheme.  Bricks look a bit too.. new though so I might go study some castle pics and their brick work though the way it is now does make it very easy to tile without using too many tiles.
http://media.tumblr.com/5700953abed7513b811468e8720fe6cc/tumblr_inline_mn5ha892X51qz4rgp.png

Which is why I'm not surprised when human beings slam their faces into glass screen doors, much less poor birds.

That's what I remembered a lil while after posting about the bird.  Cos I did a very similar thing when I was a kid staying at my nan's house in kent and accidentally kicked my ball over the fence into the neighbours garden and went next door to go get it.  The old man there invited me in but I seem to remember not noticing which way he went and I seemed to find myself in the back room with the french windows overlooking the back garden and thinking that's where he went I walked right into them banging my face so hard into the glass I had a nose bleed.  Those windows must have been extremely clean or I was just stupid.  Maybe a bit of both.  When I went back into my nan's house with the ball and my nose still bleeding she freaked a bit and probably thought the neighbour had hit me or something     Anyways a bit later on I'm gonna go downstairs and ask the old lady what happened to the bird.  Hope it's ok.  I like animals and birds a lot and would hate it if my window killed the bird.

Come to think of it I watched a Frasier episode on Netflix about the same sorta thing a while ago. Bird hit window because Niles wiped off what Martin referred to as the 'safety smudge'.