Made for the 114th one hour game jam, themed "The Midas Touch": http://onehourgamejam.com/
So here is "Midas Dog", my 1st game jam ever. 1 hour is short... but probably longer than your playing time :)
2 comments
There's already a tweetjam thread, but how about a movie focused tweetjam thread? That's twice the fun :
- viewers have fun guessing the movies
- coders have fun figuring how to suggest a movie in a 140 chars max program
Besides the 140 chars limit, the only other obvious restriction is that it must be about movies, or TV series, cartoons, animes, etc. To make it short: if you can find it on imdb, there it goes. Beyond that, you are absolutely free to do what you want. Making something animated or not. Give clues or not. Hide the answer, give a link to the imdb page for people to check their guess without spoiling the title, or even clearly give the name if you don't want people to guess. You can make something new or an already submitted movie. Anything.
When putting then on Twitter we should use both #movie and #tweetjam tags. Currently, used at once they return no results, so we can make the pair our own while still being part of the global #tweetjam.
One last note:
Viewers can already see our code with the "code" button under the program frame, so there's no need adding it in text area. Let's keep this a visual thread.
Let's begin!
Here we go with 2 movies from the same guy:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075860/
Here is a function I made that is small and simple but may be useful to everyone. It launches a bunch of functions you've set, checking how many times each can be called in a frame and print sorted results so that the quickest function shows first. So, tailor made for optimisation or just know which is the fastest of many functions achieving the same goal. For example I needed to answer this agonizing question: when drawing a single big "+" sign, is it better to use 2 rectfills but draw twice the center zone, or to draw 3 rectfills (middle bar, plus left and right bars) so that no pixel is drawn twice? Now I'm ready and prepared to meet the Sphinx.
The running example here shows what is the fastest way to clear a screen between a cls or a rectfill (well, I made the wrong choice for months!) Just for fun I added clearing the screen with a bunch of lines and even psets. Surprisingly, lines are not that a bad choice against cls. Maybe there are more efficient ways I don't know, with peek or so. With this function they're easy to test.
The use and process are simple, the code above should be clear enough. If not, just declare an array containing your functions to test, each as an object with 2 properties :
- name: used for showing results
- f: your function
Then in _update (or _update60 if you want to get results every 1/60 second) call stat1comparator() with your functions array as argument. stat1comparator will then launch each function as many times it is possible before going beyond one frame and show results once it's done. For precision results also show how many iteration were called before going outside of the frame, and what were the precise time needed (with the limit of Pico float precision). The ratio iterations/time is used to sort the list. Just be aware that to get consistent results stat1comparator needs entire frames, so don't call it after any other processing.
And for the "+" enigma answer, I let you find by yourself :).
Hi,
I was listening to Amiga music the other day and fell on "Vaxine", a game I played on those days for quite some hours. You ran on a flat matrix, shooting at viruses that kept trying to gather. "That would be a cool game to make in Pico 8", I thought, and voilà! Just the beginning of course. Never made anything in 3D, and well this is neither, as it's just a bunch of factors thown together to bring fake 3D. But it looks cool imo so let's see how far this can go this way.
I still have my "WhoDares" to finish though, that takes all my spare time (update very soon), so Antidote is not in a rush for now.
Hi,
A soon as I got Pico-8, I wanted to remake one of the Amstrad CPC games I played most in my teens: Who Dares Wins 2. Of course there will be differences from the original, but here are the things I liked most and would like to keep:
- Fixed screens (no scrolling). It gave a bit the feel of a puzzle game, with each screen having its own gameplay. And once a screen was cleaned, it was suddenly calm, with a bit of imagination you could almost hear birds chirping and you had time to explore as if there was something to do... which was not the case. But that might change.
- The ability to enter buildings. Well, it was more ruins than building. And it didn't quite look as if the dev planned that. Plus, again, there was not much to do, but that may change too.
- Then come the outposts! Frantic action! Mass murder! Be a hero!
- Saving some friends from execution. After all, we're the good guys.
- Launching grenades and picking ammos.
- I liked how it looked both on color and monochrome (green) screens. Well that was true for most Amstrad games. That means I plan having the possibility of remapping colors to play any screen versions (including more exotic grey and amber monochrome versions). Well, there are not much green colors on Pico-8, as the original game was in mode 0, so with 16 green values. So, we'll see. Not the hardest part anyway.
There are also things I plan to change, because what's the point in fac-simile?
- Different levels of difficulty
- Saving a friend will give you a bonus life. Maybe that'll be the only way for extra life (none based on score like the original)
- When killed the foes will randomely drop ammo. The falling crates may stay too as getting to them was fun.
- More weapons for you besides the gun and grenades: machine gun, mines and, erh... lasers?
- Maybe limited ammo for the base gun too. If no more gun, you'll have to get close to a foe and kill him with you last resort knife. Kinda Counter-Strikey, eh?
- Mines. Well placed grenades will clean them. Chain reactions.
- Swamps. They were in the original, but here they'd slower you and make you an easier target.
- Nighttime, rain and snow; For the beauty of it and the consequences on gameplay (visibility, moving).
- Scrolling. Yep. I discovered yesterday a video of the game on C64 where each level (that is, between 2 outposts) is scrolling. But maybe I'll stick to no scrolling, for gameplay sake or if I use palette mapping in a way that brings issues with scrolling. Plus, scrolling makes the game look more like Commando and, well, WDW2 ain't Commando.
- Different AIs. I mean, the original game way with foes randomly walking and shooting is fun, but, well... let's have some elite soldiers!
- Artillery from both sides: your side will randomely drop bombs to help you kill ennemies, while your foes will target you more precisely. Any side they come from, they force you to keep moving, as they can all kill you. You'll really hate swamps.
- Entering buildings, and more widely background interaction. Free a prisonner for extra life, pick weapon, ammo, order artillery...
- Instead of several lives, maybe only one but with energy level. This point and the previous ones to give a bit RPG or adventure flavour to the game. While still a shmup first.
That may feel over-ambitious as I've only made one small pico-8 game, "Stuck!", for the 1st Collab16. Maybe it is, but well you have to start somewhere! Anyway the best will be to bake the essential cake first and add cherries later.
My rough development plan:
- Moving the main character, and have him firing.
- Differents enemies, their movements, AI, unfriendly interaction with player
- Backgrounds and levels
- Ordering the drawing so that things on top of screen are drawn first and stuff at the bottom last. Now I have no idea on that, as the people move freely and their position is pixel-precise. Would they be on a grid, it would be easier. Oh, that may be a clue.
- Music & SFX. Most probably the Great Escape theme for the menu, and either other tunes from the movie, or my own ones, or none.
- Menu. It'll be accessed with a long press on 2nd button.
Well, let's begin and watch your little fellow move, ain't he cute?
Anyway, while there's not much to see now, I'd really be glad to read about your opinion on that, your experience, what you think are DOs and DONTs... And of course whether you think or not that should be a cool game you'd like to play.
Hi,
A soon as I got Pico-8, I wanted to remake one of the Amstrad CPC games I played most in my teens: Who Dares Wins 2. Of course there will be differences from the original, but here are the things I liked most and would like to keep:
- Fixed screens (no scrolling). It gave a bit the feel of a puzzle game, with each screen having its own gameplay. And once a screen was cleaned, it was suddenly calm, with a bit of imagination you could almost hear birds chirping and you had time to explore as if there was something to do... which was not the case. But that might change.
- The ability to enter buildings. Well, it was more ruins than building. And it didn't quite look as if the dev planned that. Plus, again, there was not much to do, but that may change too.
- Then come the outposts! Frantic action! Mass murder! Be a hero!
- Saving some friends from execution. After all, we're the good guys.
- Launching grenades and picking ammos
- I liked how it looked both on color and monochrome (green) screens. Well that was true for most Amstrad games. That means I plan having the possibility of remapping colors to play any screen versions (including more exotic grey and amber monochrome versions). Well, there are not much green colors on Pico-8, as the original game was in mode 0, so with 16 green values. So, we'll see. Not the hardest part anyway.
There are also things I plan to change, because what's the point in fac-simile?
- Different levels of difficulty
- Saving a friend will give you a bonus life. Maybe that'll be the only way for extra life (none based on score like the original)
- When killed the foes will randomely drop ammo. The falling crates may stay too as getting to them was fun.
- More weapons for you besides the gun and grenades: machine gun, mines and, erh... lasers?
- Maybe limited ammo for the base gun too. If no more gun, you'll have to get close to a foe and kill him with you last resort knife. Kinda Counter-Strikey, eh?
- Mines. Grenades will clean them.
- Swamps. They were in the original, but here they'd slower you and make you an easier target.
- Nighttime, rain and snow; For the beauty of it and the consequences on gameplay (visibility, moving).
- Scrolling. Yep. I discovered yesterday a video of the game on C64 where each level (that is, between 2 outposts) is scrolling. But maybe I'll stick to no scrolling, for gameplay sake or if I use palette mapping in a way that brings issues with scrolling. Plus, scrolling makes the game look more like Commando and, well, WDW2 ain't Commando.
- Different AIs. I mean, the original game way with foes randomly walking and shooting is fun, but, well... let's have some elite soldiers!
- Artillery from both sides: your side will randomely drop bombs to help you kill ennemies, while your foes will target you more precisely. Any side they come from, they force you to keep moving, as they can all kill you. You'll really hate swamps.
- Entering buildings, and more widely background interaction. Free a prisonner for extra life, pick weapon, ammo, order artillery...
- Instead of several lives, maybe only one but with energy level. This point and the previous ones to give a bit RPG or adventure flavour to the game. While still a shmup first.
That may feel over-ambitious as I've only made one small pico-8 game, "Stuck!", for the 1st Collab16. Maybe it is, but well you have to start somewhere! Anyway the best will be to bake the essential cake first and add cherries later.
My rough development plan:
- Moving the main character, and have him firing.
- Differents enemies, their movements, AI, unfriendly interaction with player
- Backgrounds and levels
- Ordering the drawing so that things on top of screen are drawn first and stuff at the bottom last. Now I have no idea on that, as the people move freely and their position is pixel-precise. Would they be on a grid, it would be easier. Oh, that may be a clue.
- Music & SFX. Most probably the Great Escape theme for the menu, and either other tunes from the movie, or my own ones, or none.
- Menu. It'll be accessed with a long press on 2nd button.
Well, let's begin and watch your little fellow move, ain't he cute?
Anyway, while there's not much to see now, I'd really be glad to read about your opinion on that, your experience, what you think are DOs and DONTs... And of course whether you think or not that should be a cool game you'd like to play.
Hi,
Pico-8 already works on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Raspberry, but are there any plans to release it on Android too? If so, any tablet with a physical keyboard (or even virtual keyboard?) would then make a marvelous take-it-anywhere game making platform! I already own a pocketCHIP but the screen's a bit small. I can totally see a 7" tablet being the perfect size: not too small, not too big. And, maybe with the help of a pen, the touchscreen might be precise enough to not need a mouse. Imagine how it would be nice to make games and play them anywhere... Any thought or info on this?
