Artwork produced in The Gimp based on real Apple 2 colors

same file on apple 2 win emulator

same file on real Apple II computer

just FYI =)

re-bootstraping my retro computer cause its like 3 am and I forgot to swap floppies, oh well 10 min out of the 48 hours, could be worse

I have a apple 2 High res color palette made up for the gimp (all 6 individual colors lol) and a lua script whipped up where I can make appropriate resolution and palette graphics in the gimp and a second later spit them out to the apple II

that is pretty much the hard part considering the framework of things, should be starting on game logic early Saturday (and its simple)

I had not planned on doing a full deal, and may end up in the jam compo anyway but I have an idea, its easy and timeless and being more relaxed about it,  and having a way out if everything goes to crap sure does make the entire weekend much more carefree

here is a picture of my desk, its the same desk, same computer as last time, though I have an addition on top, that is a Apple //c computer. I grew up with these and have owned them for just about as long as I have had all my PC’s in total (though this particular one’s serial number dates it to 1985), so yea I am going to make a game for it, something I have not done in a very loooong time

nothing special software wise, I will be using basic (though compiled to A2 / 6502 machine instructions for speed) no ASM (I do know a little just not enough to barf out a game in 48 hours), and I cant ever seen to get the couple of C cross compilers working right

The machine is a 1mhz AII machine with 128kb of ram and a 140kb per side 5.25 inch disk drive, and its serial video and audio ports are jacked into my PC for development, though a windows based emulator will be doing the bulk of the lifting, its there to ensure things work right on both the real metal and the emulator (which will be part of the final product so everyone can play, retro computer or not)

PS: though I show windows 7 loaded on the screen, my TV tuner card decided it was going to be a PITA and not switch over to composite input 2, so I’m in linux Mint which is not bad but just in case anyone follows this blog they wont wonder

yay!

to those who are not … I wish you the best of luck!

I am going to go take a shower

And Bob the Kitten is not really helping much

Greatly scaled back the scope of the game from wicked baddass epic side scroller, to high score survive as long as you can deal

I actually did that much earlier this afternoon, but just now admitting it (stupid 48 hours)

90% of the game’s element is there just need to add my tractor beam and test, after that its all fluff, unlike most of my LD games if you figure out a way to cheat on this one, it will screw you over! the game’s score is based on time, so if you manage to hit a spawn (its randomly generated at start, and randomly manipulated per cycle) that allows some dead space that you can hide in, the asteroid fragments quickly increase in velocity assuring you a quick “death”

so, if we were to have a high score contest, its in your best interest to interact with the game (evil laugh)

If I have time in the next 18.5 hours I would like to have a win situation, and I have an appropriate idea of how to do that, but time will tell

oh yea, screenie

yea its a spaceship + tractor beam game

for a red bull

Ramen and some appropriately named “Dr Perky”

got my (non animated, cause I am being realistic here and need to focus on code) sprite sheet up and ready, and mapped, next is to do some polygon magic to set bounding boxes

for those who are not in the know, the gimp and most other image packages have the option to do “web slicing” which in the gimp fires up a window and you can outline what you want and it spits out a plain text file for use on the web with xy coords, along with rectangle and circle you can also do polygons, which makes it point n click easy to slice up a sprite sheet and define bounding “boxes”

I am no artist, but if you know your vector image editor (inkscape in this case) and a little bit of image editor (gimp in this case) you to can produce some meh sprites heh

Since ippa mentioned it, here is the flow I am following

1) Figure out your general idea
2) Try to make most of your sprites
3) Start on your gamelogic

I have the idea worked out, I have all my sprites worked out and the rest of the “art” can be done in code and hopefully I will be on game logic very soon, just have some stuff to think about before hand

Good luck to everyone!

its fun what you can do with 3 rounded rectangles, 1 ellipse and 4 calligraphy strokes in inkscape, add a little bump map in the gimp and BAM decent looking critter

Dont worry I have better stuff around, and my wife has been through 3 of these so it wont be 100% crap

OH

and a desk photo too

that works so much better for me after being up for 48 hours

I will be using processing this time, unless I really get stuck then I may have to jump back to love

and the usual assortment of tools (gimp sfxr)

and OMG is wordpress slooooooow on my work computer (more like my work computer is a chunk of )

see you all this weekend!

#1 yes I will be voting on games, but I also took a day off from work to LD, so I HAD to catch up on that

#2 thanks for anyone for playing my to big idea, all was going super awesome fast, then I hit a logic sequence bug that sucked 6 hours out of my day and the schedule went down the crapper! so at best i shoehorned in the very basic game mechanic and submitted it.

This game however is actually something I want to sit down and make right, and why not, I already have a “keyboard barf concept game” that (except for the last few hours) is reasonably openly scripted, even  if its cluttered and redundant

BUGS! yes I know, sorry

(more…)

I havent reported in yet today so yea, things are going smoothly, almost done with my map view after that its some simple path AI and balance the number system, the birth of a game

food is crap, well sorta a nice hot cup of stout tea, and a pre-packed honey bun

So progress, starting to feel nappy, hence the tea + sugar, I have been up since 7am, worked a full day and am now on hour 7 of ludum dare (4 am the next day, hardcore!)

have love loading my collision map no problem, and have the ui part of the game pieced together, about to start on the water animation

game mechanics seeming to be ok on paper, so far, so good

I have a basic game idea that (and lets face it) is going to be commonly associated with islands, but with a (hopefully) different twist, but more on that as I flush out logic.  For now I have my map made, collision mask, and  my UI decoration

the map is 4 layers to allow some basic animation to the water, the ui has 2 overlay layers for the feel good old monitor effect (ish), and another layer for buttons which change color depending on status

next I guess I need to hammer out some gameplay rules so I know what kind of swag I need to make

flattened for BLOG!

I just got this old apple //c up and running (yesterday) after some minor motherboard repair, and tempted as I may be (emulation is super ez) I dont have enough time to seriously ramp up my “hello world” skills in cc65

but maybe next time!