One observation I've made in #retrogamedev is that while computers used to benefit from having much more RAM than game consoles, that benefit is now diminished.
The reason is that our ROMs can be as large as we want, and still target the stock console. Cost is no longer a factor that holds back ROM size.
But if we want to target a stock C64/Amiga/IBM, we have the same RAM as always, meaning we have to resort to loading more data from disk, which is trickier and slower than fast ROM access.
This took me a couple days—had to do some tricky stuff with the copper and sprite hardware to get it to work. The artwork decompresses into RAM already allocated by the BG and other stuff. It uses about 9kb compressed, which is acceptable. The lines are sprites and presented their own challenges, such as reusing one graphic for multiple sprites, and sliding them off the top of the screen without them abruptly disappearing.
Made some upgrades to my workflow—it now takes less than 1 second between hitting build and testing my changes.
Part of the magic here is AppleScript, which is criminally underrated. Post-build, I kick off a script that brings the emulator into focus, sends a keystroke to start the program, then toggles "warp mode” for 300ms to uncap the frame rate while the program loads. After testing, I hit a key to load a save state back to DOS.
First finished cart for Oh Chute 🙂 Boxes (ordered), booklets (mid-design) and box inserts (blocked on boxes) to go... And much flashing and soldering of EPROMs... #retrogamedev#gamedev#amstradcpc#gx4000#8bit
Ok, it's pretty cool getting to see your own retro game running on a console in the living room 🙂 Plays much better on a 12" CRT really, but still... #retrogamedev#amstradcpc#gx4000
Working on the "hub level” where you can select one of the Magicores you've collected so far to equip as a powerup. They will eventually each contain a unique graphic rather than just a placeholder number.
My game engine is pretty robust at this point, it took <200 lines of Assembly to construct this scene and its interactions. But there is still some UI stuff to do, like up/down arrows and description text.
its easy all you need to do is answer 1 2 or 3 to simple sum of the numbers 1, 2 & 3 before the timer runs out and get the highest score you can. the timer gets progressively shorter the more you score.
there are other versions too. #retrogaming#retroprogramming#basic#amstrad#retrocomputing#cpc464#amstradcpc
only managed to get a wee half hour of coding last night on the CPC. Had to go out. But still managed to mess with some basic sound routines on it. think I have the timer sound sorted for easy as 123
Currently working on three projects using a custom API.
A Zorro-inspired platformer (did you know that Zorro is in the public domain? Have at it!).
An Ultima-V-inspired tile-based micro-roguelike—with “faked” indexed color mode using a shader—the lighting effects are palette swapping, using a modified Pico-8 palette.
Xenophobia-inspired sci-fi adventure—started in Unity, got fed up, switched to the same API as other stuff.