Finally "done" :)
> You awake from your rest in the void with a voice repeating in your head.
> It says: 'meow meow meow meow mexow' and you know what must be done:
> It's time to retrieve the book of Magu F'ahn.
You're a cat, you're magical, it's you and your wand against insurmountable odds, cats, and infinite pigeons.
A retro fps with 8 singleplayer maps and 3 "botmatch" maps. Select maps from main menu, all botmatch maps unlocked from the start, singleplayer maps unlock as you complete them.
You can also play this on the PICO-8 BBS
Controls
- Arrow keys - move (strafe if mouselook enabled)
- Z/C - strafe/sidestep (hold, then press left and right, unused with mouselook enabled)
- X - shoot
Note: mouselook does not work on the BBS version. Please use the pico-8 app, or the itch.io version of CFA
Credits
- Programming, art, sounds - Ben Jones
- Music by Steve Jones aka rych-t
- Raycasting engine based on Lode Vandevenne's Raycasting Tutorial - licensed under The 2 Clause BSD License
- PICO-8 heap sort by Morgan McGuire
- Point-line/line-line collision based on 2DArray's Gamedev tutorials
​License​
Source is licensed under The 2 Clause BSD License.
Assets are licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International​ ​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/​
Old bits and bobs from 2020-2021 original post
Impressive - the game plays well with keyboard only and cats are smart/stupid enough to make it fun!
Some levels are quite a feat with a raycasting engine fitting in a single cart - kudos!
Gameplay wise:
- add some hit marker (right/left/back/front) to avoid being killed from an unseen enemy
- water blocks player, texture is not clear (imho)
Tech/code remarks:
- you've gazillion of tokens to reclaim using short variable declaration:
-- no local a=1 local b=2 -- yes local a,b=1,2 |
- particles are showing through walls
- ceilings should have been done with tline! this is tanking cpu
@freds72 - brilliant feedback - thank you!
The hit marker is something I'm planning on adding. I'll also take a look at improving the water texture. The particles beng visible through walls should be an easy fix, the z buffer just needs checking (wasn't doing it for performance reasons, but I'll see if I have the budget to do it).
The ceilings/tline() thing is a bit tricky. Because I do a second raycast pass for overhangs/doorways/outdoors-indoors transitions, there is always a chance I will draw over some of the ceiling with the second pass.
e.g.
Hmmm, now thinking about it, maybe a vertical tline() solution could work. That would probably save some cpu on the floor too. Going to try that.
Tokens - thank you - seems so obvious now! Off to do that now.
I understand the issue for floors/ceilings - it was the main design drivers for my doom engine (had to depart from ‘traditional’ bsp rendering to make better use of tline). note that horizontal tline will break your distance shading :/
@freds72 - changing local variable declarations saved over 100 tokens without msking things totally unreadable - thanks again :)
You're right about the vertical tlines not working withe distance shading, but I removed it for ceilings anyway, so in theory would look fine. Would need to profile whether 128 small tlines is better than <128 wide ones.
I'm looking forward to your DOOM engine and enjoying the progress so far!
Awesome graphics and fun theme / concept! Really feels like a good arena shooter with originality.
I wonder if shooting / not shooting near the enemies could affect their awareness of you, or if there could be a delay when holding the shoot button, if you'd like to discourage holding down the shoot-button at all times with the default spell. The other spells do provide a nice variety.
I was missing the score board for a while, because I'd always be shooting when I died (even when not holding). Maybe respawn could be another button or a button combo? Or e.g. have a menu option to show the scores at any point.
(I also find moving a bit tricky but that's just me being spoiled by modern control schemes I guess :D)
Cool stuff, looking forward to another or the final update :)
@noppa thank you for the feedback!
At the moment cats target the nearest opponent, and select a new target if they can't reach their current one after a few seconds. If you hit them, there is a chance that they will target you. I am continuing to tweak the weapon speed + damage, it was loosely based on the Quake 1 weapon profiles https://quake.fandom.com/wiki/Weapon_(Q1) . I might make the starting wand slower to fire, but with higher powered fireballs, so that you have to consider your aim+when to shoot.
Related, and regarding the movement, I changed it just before this release, by decreasing strafe speed+strafe speed friction so you'd start sliding once strafing allowing you to circle strafe (which the cats can do, with high effectiveness). I'm not sure it is 100% a success yet. Before I added this though, I was making the fireballs less powerful as cats were too good at targeting you, so I might have messed the balance up.
The scoreboard - you're right, I'm going to add a 0.5-1 second delay before accepting any input you see the scores.
Nice wizard/cat mash up ! the raycast engine is cool.
As a early doom player, I find the game hard :D (Yes i admit..) but I should take some more times to learn the maps and weapons.
My suggestions :
-I find there is too much momentum when turning
-You could put strafe on player 2 left/right buttons
-One or two seconds invulnerability while respawning could help some times
Did you try Tripplefox shellsort ? You could gain some CPU and tokens, but lose a bit of precision
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2477
@dhostin Thanks! I have a build nearly ready to go with updates based on all the suggestions above. Will upload tomorrow with details. I'm going to leave strafe as a toggle though, I'm keen to stick to the one set of controls for this project.
I didn't know about shellsort! I picked Morgan3D's one from that thread as it was "state of the art" at the time, and never changed it (see extremely old git log below :D ). I will probably stick with it at this point, unless I get desperate for tokens.
Uploaded a new version with the following changes:
- ADD light viewbob
- ADD damage indicator
- ADD new map Tower Of Confusion
- ADD basic single player map support (with sample map)
- ADD 1 second delay on scoreboard
- ADD 1 second invulnerability on respawn
- CHANGED cat AI tries to find a wand if possible/pick up your stuff after frogging
- CHANGED player movement
- CHANGED minor texture improvements
- FIXED Particles obey zbuffer
- FIXED Sounds cutting off
- FIXED Cats using incorrect palette when far away
New version, with the major addition of keys, vital for a cool single player map!
- ADD single player red+blue keys+doors!!!! Check single player test map for an example
- FIXED showing scoreboard upon being frogged in single player.
- No more tokens left!
Next up, finishing off a couple of maps and level editing guide.
There aren't enough pico-8 deathmatch arena cat wizard games. So cool.
Is there any way to switch weapons, besides running out of ammo?
1) i don't know where the hell am i going because all blocks are same if there's map it's easier but when i played this i just wandering over and over again and memorized map
2) no cross hair, difficult to aim
3) no way to recognize enemy behind me until i get shot
4) have to memorize all of enemies, hard to avoid bullet due to limitation
https://armorgames.com/darkraid-delilah-game/19310 i think this can be good reference, if you making doom like stuff
@joealarson no, running out of ammo or picking up a different weapon is the only way. I did this to try to support to pico-8s 6 button layout (not including the pause button, although I know this was an option). Tried to balance things that there wasn't a "bad" choice, but broadly in terms of damage/ease of use it goes bombwand > chainwand / double-barreled wand (tied) > starting wand.
@OWD5238 most encounters require at least some circle strafing - this should minimise getting jumped by enemies/them getting behind you. I'll patch in the keyboard controls to honour the sensitivity setting (based on the original comment). The directional damage indicator + enemy barks upon "seeing" you are alerts that an unseen enemy has engaged you.
Thank you both for playing!
i really like this, although the mouselock doesnt work? im on a web player btw if that changes anything
Very cool, feels like a fever dream. The graphics, the trippy music, everything's dark and those scary giant cats awaiting behind every corner. Nice!
[Please log in to post a comment]
