Novice game-dev, experienced enterprise dev. Looking to eventually collaborate in making a good game.
I've seen several carts that implement a cool "laser" bullet effect and without seeing the code, wanted to be sure I was able to reproduce an approximation to the effect without botching collision detection.
Thanks to doc_robs for his splendid series of videos where concisely and with patience explains how to properly do hit box collisions on sprites:
In my journey I still need to learn, amongst many other things, to be able to do better sprite animations. But I must admit I love pico-8 for what it is: an amazing platform that favours convention over configuration so one can quickly prototype and publish an idea without getting bogged down on platform or delivery choices.
It's so cool to be able to have an idea and just quickly cook something up. And the amount of published gems from incredibly talented people on splore is at the same time inspiring and humbling.
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As a kid, I remember sneaking to my neighbors house to play his Atari. One of the games that I enjoyed was Kaboom!, where a mad bomber man with unknown motivations dropped bombs in sequence that the player had to catch with stacked buckets.
As a homage, I attempted to remake something the likes of it, being the first game I've written in pico-8 that approximates ~somehow~ a completed state. I abandoned the stacked buckets idea and still went for the concept of a madman with obscure motivations that simply drops cherry bombs over a wall to his neighbor. Why? maybe just to be annoying. The neighbor just went for a pail of water as the only thing quickly available.
I've learned a lot making this: screen shaking, particles animation, game states, sprite contouring, text handling, enemy movement. My art + sound skills are pitiful, so please be forgiving in how it looks and sounds.
Next steps:
- parallax backgrounds behind enemy
- save score across plays (hi-score table)
- increasing difficulty
- fancy game over animation
- sound loop
- bonuses? rewards?
Fireworks
This is an example of how to create a "firework" type effect using particles. I have been also fiddling with tweetcarts (carts that fit into a single tweet) so that's why I've been using the reduced syntax, instead of the standard functions. As with everything in gamedev, the more you're able to model a visual effect into its math/symbolic representation teh better you get. It's hard work and a talent, I guess.
Walking with rythm
When learning a new language or tool, I tend to create a lot of POCs (proof of concepts) to cement my knowledge. This is just one of them, nested oscillating circles that demonstrate a simple implementation of Lerp (Linear Interpolation).
One of the common mistakes one may make when beginning to use lerp is to forget that the value being affected must be re-calculated as an aggregated or iteration, typically over consecutive game loops. That is, it's effect is dependent of the previous value in the iteration.
I have used some of the basics taught in pico-8's manual to understand clipping, table iteration and random terrain generation using random functions.
This cartridge is a sample of those concepts in practice.
