Mini Competition #4 -Do it

[krakatomato]

That's looking proper nice

[bignobody]

Ta! One thing I've been loving is the latest Pico-8 version has a 4x4 2 colour fill pattern set by a bitfield. I'm currently just chucking in random numbers, but some of the repeating patterns that have been produced have really been surprisingly beautiful.

[bignobody]

mas_1.gif (687.23 KiB) Viewed 1424 times

Moving pictures...

[notrobot]

Looking pretty sweet there!

As for my own efforts,
OK, tileset knocked together in GIMP, check....
Python script to convert tileset and palette to assembly source, check...
Map knocked together in tiled using the above tileset, check...
Python script to convert the map into tile values, check....
PCEAS assembler sort-of working, check... (after fixing a really crappy bug in their writing of listing files where it failed to convert hex values properly and I was getting numbers like 0x00PPP, maybe I shouldn't use random versions of assemblers I find on Github!?)
Mednafen PC Engine emulator running, check...
Code for setting up hardware registers, well, it'll do for the emulator which initializes most registers and memory to 0 automatically, wouldn't trust it on real hardware though.
Code for copying the tile palette to the VCE, check....
Code for copying the tileset to VRAM, check....
Code for copying the map data to VRAM plus adding an offset to ensure that the tile addresses are correct, check... (I spent ages trying to get the offsets work nicely and automatically in the assembler but since you can't define a compile-time function in one source file and use it in another, I'll just do it at runtime until I figure that out)
A lot of swearing and staring at the Mednafen built-in debugger and single-stepping and resetting and single-stepping and resetting and...

OK it's not much, is it? But it's the journey that's important, or something, apparently.
I need some sleep. I have to get up for work in two hours. (OK I've only been awake for three hours, and it's too hot to sleep anyway...)

[bignobody]

That's crazy! You're crazy. Must have been a good code-high when it finally rendered the way you wanted.

I'm just writing LUA-like scripts and issuing a few limited draw commands.

I'm glad you're still going, though. It was getting lonely in here!

[Havie]

That's crazy! You're crazy. Must have been a good code-high when it finally rendered the way you wanted.

I'm just writing LUA-like scripts and issuing a few limited draw commands.

I'm glad you're still going, though. It was getting lonely in here!

You make it sound so simple - I'm pretty sure there is some cleverness going on...

[bignobody]

Thank you. It's probably fair say any videogame making requires a certain amount of cleverness. Probably the most clever thing I am doing with Pico-8 here is swapping between 2 checkerboard fills (black and "transparent") every frame for fake alpha transparency on my HUD background.

Currently fancying up my planets. Saturn just wouldn't be Saturn without rings! Of course, Pico-8's limited drawing commands do not include ellipses so I have to draw them myself with lines. And these fill patterns are great! What if they were animated? I'm looking at you, Jupiter's Great Red Spot...

Once I get the planets spiffed up, I need to decide if I want to do anything else with this.

[bignobody]

Didn't spiff up all the planets. Added asteroids instead. I guess now I have to add lasers...

mas_3.gif (487 KiB) Viewed 1347 times

[notrobot]

Looking pretty good there!
I'm not going to do anything over the next two weeks as I am AFK in Spain., without a computer. What a nightmare!

[bignobody]

Enjoy Spain! We have no deadline on this one.

I've added collision so you can bounce off the asteroids, and bullets so you can shoot them. I guess I need particle effects to make asteroid destruction less boring. I've also improved the star and asteroid spawning. I think I've mostly eliminated popping and dead-spaces now.

At this point I'm envisioning 2 modes: Asteroid Miner and Explore Mode. Asteroid Miner will be what is says on the tin, with hull damage, fuel supply, money and ore collecting. Explore Mode will have no money and no point to collecting ore, but also no damage and no fuel drain. Then I'm probably done with this.