Powersaurus [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Tline Terrain Demo (Worms/Scorched Earth terrain)

Sun, 10 Mar 2024 00:30:07 UTC

tline_terrain_demo

by Powersaurus

[Click to Play]

Tline Terrain Demo

Worms/Scorched Earth deformable/destructible terrain demo.

Arrow keys move target
X to destroy terrain
O to toggle debug mode, showing the vertical slices.

Maybe of use to someone?

For a long time I have wondered how to make Worms/Scorched Earth style terrain and make it work reasonably well. My first ever (unreleased) game on pico-8 was a Worms clone, that used a 2D array of pixels and pset to draw the terrain. It blew the CPU budget and was slooooooow.

Micro Murder on Pico-8 managed a really slick solution drawing circles over the top of the terrain, but I wondered if there was another way. Fast forward some years and I'm still thinking about it. Most discussion about this type of terrain suggests some form of bitmap to store the terrain.

This implementation uses a 2D array of vertical slices, then uses tline to draw a bit of the texture for each vertical slice. An explosion either shrinks one end of a slice, or carves it into two, removing the original slice. See the code for more.

Terrain graphics come from my game The Wizard Pig.

Moon Miner 2580

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 23:13:52 UTC

Moon Miner 2580

by Powersaurus

[Click to Play]

Look, I’m not exactly pleased to be here either, but this much of that green ore is too good to turn up. Yes, the moon is increasingly unstable but carve as much as you can using the rockerizer, get it back to the tele unit and we’re out of here in an hour. Not the time to be asking why we aren’t sending a bot. If we had the money for one we wouldn’t need to be here. It’s a very decent payday.

Your hazard suit will absorb a fair amount of punishment from the molten rock, but the surface instability means it’s leaking between gaps in the ground. Nothing like a bit of motivation eh? It’ll mean your journey back to the TU will be trickier than the outward trek, so use the nano waypoint device to mark a path back. Anything marked will have a bright yellow glow in your HUD just like the TU. It’s got limited juice though, so go easy. Oh yeah, worth saying - just remember that less rock means more lava.

See you in a bit!

x - start/restart game

arrow keys - move

x - mine rock/ore

z/c - mark waypoint on hard rock

Credits:

Made for pico1k game jam by Ben Jones using pico8 in 1023 bytes of compressed code. Raycasting engine based on Lode Vandevenne's Raycasting Tutorial - licensed under BSD 2-clause license - check it out, it's brilliant.
Licensed under the 2-Clause BSD License

Code:

See below for the original jam code. Cart is annotated with comments

r=3::_::f,x,y,o,v,cx,cy,a,t,l,w={15,1,1,6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6,9,9,9,0,0,2,2,3,1},16,16.5,1,0,0,.75,0,0,100,8pal({1,141,137,130,133,141,133,141,134,4,9,135,131,3,139},1)memset(8192,9,4096)
for j=1,30 do
for i=1,30 do
k=f[1+rnd(#f)\1]mset(i,j,k)f[16+i%3]=k
end
end
mset(14,16,11)
mset(15,15,11)
mset(15,16,1)
mset(15,17,11)
mset(16,15,2)
mset(16,16,2)
mset(16,17,2)
mset(17,15,2)
mset(17,16,2)
mset(17,17,2)
fillp(0xa5a5)
::l::
if r>0 then
if(r==1)?"ore mined: "..a
if(r==2)?"signal lost"
if(r==3)?"moon miner"
if(btn(5))r=0goto _
goto l
end
t+=1
for j=1,30 do
for i=1,30 do
k=mget(i,j)m=i+rnd(3)\1-1n=j+rnd(3)\1-1
if(t%360<1and k==3and mget(m,n)<3)mset(m,n,3)
end
end
s=0
if(btn(2))s=.05
if(btn(3))s=-.05
if(mget(x+o*s,y)<4)x+=o*s
if(mget(x,y+v*s)<4)y+=v*s
s=0
if(btn(0))s=-.01
if(btn(1))s=.01
i=mget(x,y)
if(i==3)l-=1?"\ag4"
if(l==0)r=2
if(x\1==15and y\1==16)r=1
m=mget(x+o,y+v)
if(btn(5)and (m==15or m==6))mset(x+o,y+v,rnd(2))?"\ag0"
if(btn(5)and m==15)a+=1?"\ab3"
if(btn(4)and m==9and w>0)mset(x+o,y+v,12)w-=1
i=o
o=o*cos(s)+v*sin(s)v=i*-sin(s)+v*cos(s)
i=cx
cx=cx*cos(s)+cy*sin(s)cy=i*-sin(s)+cy*cos(s)
cls(3)for z=0,127do
local sx=2*z/128-1
local r,s=o+cx*sx,v+cy*sx
local ly,g,w,cy,sx,sy,sd=127,1,0,0,1,1,0
local i,j=x\1,y\1
local lc=mget(i,j)
local c,dx,dy=lc,abs(1/r),abs(1/s)
if(r==0)dx=30
if(s==0)dy=30
local u,v=(i+1-x)*dx,(j+1-y)*dy
if(r<0)sx=-1u=(x-i)*dx
if(s<0)sy=-1v=(y-j)*dy
while g do
if u<v then
sd=0u+=dx
i+=sx
else
sd=1v+=dy
j+=sy
end
c=mget(i,j)
g=c<4
if(sd==0)d=u-dx
if(sd==1)d=v-dy
local f=128/d\1/2+64line(z,ly,z,f,80+lc)
if(lc<2)line(z,127-ly,z,127-f,sget(16+lc,max(0,min((d-1)/3\1,3))))cy=127-f
w=128/d+.5\1
if(c<2)c2=6line(z,max(cy,-w*2+64),z,-w/2+64,bor(max(c2-2,c2-sd-d/3\1),shl(max(c2-2,c2-(d+.5)/3\1),4)))
ly,lc=f,c
end
h=-w/2
if(lc>1)h=-w*2
c2=c
line(z,max(cy,h+64),z,w/2+64,bor(max(c2-2,c2-sd-d/3\1),shl(max(c2-2,c2-(d+.5)/3\1),4)))end?"\ff◆"..a.." ♥"..l.." ˇ"..w
flip()goto l```

Portalsaurus

Sun, 25 Jul 2021 07:30:56 UTC

Portalsaurus

by Powersaurus

[Click to Play]

Intro

Recently I decided to dig into portal renderers and start to build my own, inspired by this excellent write-up of BUILD. This is currently work in progress, no guarantee it will turn into a full game but thought it was interesting enough to share.

I used a lot of stuff from other projects

From Caped Feline Arena

Player movement
Floor and sky casting
Palette functions

From Cab Ride

Palette

I also revisited Lodev's raycasting articles, specifically the code to render sprites without fisheye distortion as they behave similarly to the ends of the walls.

Implementation Notes

01/10/21

New features including
Variable height sectors!
Distance based lighting!
Large performance gains!
Island sectors!
This is all thanks for being a bit smarter about how many walls to cast each ray for
After flooding portals, the walls of each sector are grouped into subgroups (referred to in BUILD terminology as 'bunches')
The bunches are ordered near-far (thanks to traversing the portal graph)
Island sectors get inserted before other bunches an enclosing sector (this would cause glitches with concave sectors, out of scope for now)
Walls within a bunch are ordered near-far, and projected into screen space, where they are further chopped down, grouped by walls that touch at one end
Portals take account of differences in sector height - this allows for doorways/overhangs
A very simple buffer keeps track of which x coordinates have had a wall drawn, to prevent overdraw of walls
Rays are cast for the walls nearest bunch (from the lowest to highest x coordinate). If a hit is recorded, the 'x buffer' is updated, so no further drawing happens - that coordinate is now occluded
Palette is set for each vertical slice of wall, based on distance from the camera

Original post:

At the moment it relies on casting a ray for every column of the screen to determine which walls to draw
One wall per column at the moment
Casting a ray traverses a subset of potentially visible walls
Potentially visible walls are calculated by traversing the portals in the world structure, starting with the 'sector' the player/camera currently occupies
World is represented by sectors, which hold references to a set of walls that border the sector
A portal is a wall shared by two sectors
Traversing the world tests which walls of a sector are in front of the camera, if any wall is a portal, it is currently discarded and the connected sector is visited, up to a hard limit of 10
The current sector of the player/camera (or starting sector for rendering) is determined by casting a ray to the left and the number of intersections with walls is counted. Even means outside the sector (and connected sectors are tested), odd means within the sector. A short description of this is found in the 'Inside a concave polygon' of the BUILD write-up
The world is created when the cart starts and builds a model of how sectors are connected to each other
tline() is used for floor and sky
No collision detection currently

Controls

Arrow keys - move around
X - toggle map view (off by default)
C/Z - strafe

Next up??? Maybe?

More performance
Sector based floor textures
Collision detection
/ 'Island' sectors for columns
Basic level editor

Cab Ride

Sat, 30 Jan 2021 16:09:12 UTC

Cab Ride 1.2

by Powersaurus

[Click to Play]

(16/07/22 - Corrected license in description to match that attached to cart :facepalm)
(30/01/22 - Happy Birthday Cab Ride! 1 today!)

Drive a train, forever, through a dreamlike land.

Transport passengers to their destination.

Watch the world go by.

Listen to chilled out chiptune music.

In Cab Ride you can drive thousands of different train routes through rolling hills, winding tunnels and weaving between the tall buildings of vast cities. You can drive the train for as long as you like. When you're ready to end your journey, hold down the left arrow key to announce the last station. Stopping at stations along the way means you can pick up and drop off passengers. Try and stop at the marker at each station for a high rating. Or don't! It's up to you.

Cab Ride is a casual train simulation, not aiming for real world accuracy, but like a real train, it takes a while to brake. If you're overshooting stations, watch for the alert for the next station and reduce the throttle so you're ready to stop.

Controls

X - horn/start/restart the game
C - open/close doors at station (must have stopped just in front of signal)
Up - increase braking/decrease throttle
Down - accelerate/increase throttle
Left - hold down to announce the last station (will end the current journey)
Right - turn Express mode on/off aka Screensaver Mode

Version history

v1.2

Fixed - memory leak if you run the game for a long time

v1.1

Added - second track with train
Added - Weather - different cloud patterns and periods of rain
More performance fixes

v1.0.3

Changed - tweaked station stop ratings - slightly more forgiving and more consistent
Changed - all green signals when you're in express mode (after first couple of stations)
Fixed - all passengers would eventually get off if you opened the doors enough times at a single station
Various performance improvements

v1.0.2

Added - pause menu sound toggle - deals with no hardware button in mobile view - may fix in a different way in future
Added - 'very chilled' mode - no goal/help messages, no HUD other than station name messages, just driving trains - good for screenshots or screen savers (even better than what I claimed was a good screen saver mode before)
Fixed - another way to drive through the last station (activate Express mode after announcing last station)

v1.0.1

Fixed - crash bug where you could drive out of the last station when in 'Express' mode
Changed - you now have to hold down the right key for 2 seconds to enable Express mode (announcing the last stop also has a 2 second delay) - this is to prevent ending up in that mode by accident and locking the controls

v1.0

Initial release

Credits

Programming - Ben Jones / @Powersaurus Twitter

Music - Stephen 'rych-t' Jones / Twitter / Soundcloud

Based on code from the Pseudo-3D Racer tutorials by Tom Mulgrew/@Mot https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=35767 licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

License

All source and assets are licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Pre 1.1 version

v1.0.3

Cab Ride

by Powersaurus

[Click to Play]

Caped Feline Arena V1.0

Sun, 28 Jun 2020 05:12:20 UTC

caped_feline_arena

by Powersaurus

[Click to Play]

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

tline Rotation Demo

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 18:16:22 UTC

tline_rotation_demo

by Powersaurus

[Click to Play]

I was excited by the new tline function in 0.2.0, immediately tried to plug it into my project and ran into problems.

I made this demo to break down rotating the map to a fairly minimal program. I've added comments to explain the different data points and what they achieve when plugged into tline.

The demo shows a rotated 2D view into the map.

Left and right keys move the view. X toggles the unrotated map to show the direction of the rotated view relative to the map.

I hope this is useful to you! :)

ROAD REX

Sat, 15 Jun 2019 21:54:51 UTC

road_rex

by Powersaurus

[Click to Play]

ROAD REX
After a day's work Road Rex just wants to get home like everyone else. Road Rex is a giant dinosaur with laser eye beams.

Get home as fast as you can! Beat your arch-rival, the quick and messy Blue Dinosaur (tm). Stop tv traffic choppers from getting footage of the mayhem you cause. Try not to get a speeding ticket from a speed camera (speed limit is 70mph in the UK) - but if you do, make sure you do it in style for extra points. Shove cars out the way and spill delicious lorry loads of kebabs, shoes and beans. Try to exit the motorway in the left lane and don't get lost!

Controls

Arrow keys right and left - accelerate and decelerate
Arrow keys up and down - switch lanes, aim lasers
X - LASERS
Z/C - charge jump (release to jump)
Credits

By Ben Jones (Powersaurus on Twitter)

Parking Masters

Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:07:58 UTC

Parking Masters

by Powersaurus

[Click to Play]

Parking Masters is a game I made over a weekend for a friend's birthday. Said friend is fond of driving and once took a photo of his car parked very close to another which has become a running gag (many ridiculous photoshops).

I have turned the photo into a little arcade game/"very serious" simulation of parking in a manual car. I thought it would be a fun thing to do, turn a photo into some sprites for a PICO-8 game. Pleased with the results - photo-realistic action!

Controls

Up - gas pedal
Left and right - shift gear
X - Clutch
C - Brake

Park as quickly as you can, as close as you can! Try and avoid stalling and also from shunting the other car!

The Wizard Pig

Sat, 15 Apr 2017 18:28:37 UTC

The Wizard Pig

by Powersaurus

[Click to Play]

Aim
Score 10 belief points by keeping your followers happy. They like trees and plants, and eating tasty corn. They don't like swamps, being stuck in one place or things being on fire. You can also win by making your opponent's (Omnicow) followers unhappy.

Controls

Arrow keys - move
Z - use power
X - change power

Story

Once, Henry was just a regular pig. He dreamed of being a magnificent wizard who was popular and cool. Through the sheer force of his own will and the belief of the nearby villagers, who saw promise in him - he became a giant flying head with reality bending powers. Summoning a mountain from the earth, he marvelled at his power.

"I will use my powers for good, and make my followers happy, with lovely forests and magical instant-corn from the fields"

As he said this, the earth shook and a giant cow's head appeared from behind the mountain he had just conjured, spitting fire from its eyes"

"Or maybe I'll just ruin someone else's day"

Powers

Raise power (yellow mana) raise the landscape. Followers cannot walk up steep slopes, and any upward slope will slow them down
Lower power (yellow mana) lower the landscape
Fire power (red mana) Create fireballs from your eyes. Destroys terrain and foliage
Forest power (green mana) Puts out fire and creates new foliage. Cleans out swampy land.
Rain power (blue mana) Puts out fire and cultivates fields that yield follower-pleasing corn. Too much rain makes the land swampy though.

2D Terrain Demo

Fri, 03 Mar 2017 13:17:16 UTC

2D Terrain Demo 1.0

by Powersaurus

[Click to Play]

Demo cartridge for creating 2D terrain. I'm using this for my own project but thought it would be useful for others. If you think you'll find it useful, please use in your projects. :) For more information see here - https://medium.com/@Powersaurus/journey-into-the-hills-part-2-8a209905d3de

Controls:

X - Regenerate landscape
Left/Right - change graphics mode
Up/Down - change amount of randomness

Amateur Cat High Five Challenge

Thu, 16 Feb 2017 12:19:38 UTC

Amateur Cat High Five Challenge 1.1

by Powersaurus

[Click to Play]

Hi all!

This is my first finished PICO-8 cart.

Its an arcade game where you high five and fist bump cats.

High five the cats with your hand moving at speed for more points. Build up a combo to get a chance to pull off a secret handshake.

Controls:

Arrow keys - move hand
X - Switch arm position
C - Switch between open hand and fist

This is version 1.1 - I tweaked the hit detection for high fives and added a tutorial skill level.

Hope you enjoy it! :)

Powersaurus [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Tline Terrain Demo (Worms/Scorched Earth terrain)

Tline Terrain Demo

Moon Miner 2580

Portalsaurus

Intro

Implementation Notes

Controls

Next up??? Maybe?

Cab Ride

Controls

Version history

Credits

License

Pre 1.1 version

v1.0.3

Caped Feline Arena V1.0

Controls

Credits

License

Old bits and bobs from 2020-2021 original post

Controls

What's new?

Still to do

tline Rotation Demo

ROAD REX

Parking Masters

The Wizard Pig

2D Terrain Demo

Amateur Cat High Five Challenge

Powersaurus [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Tline Terrain Demo (Worms/Scorched Earth terrain)

Tline Terrain Demo

Moon Miner 2580

Portalsaurus

Intro

Implementation Notes

Controls

Next up??? Maybe?

Cab Ride

Controls

Version history

Credits

License

Pre 1.1 version

v1.0.3

Caped Feline Arena V1.0

Controls

Credits

​License​

Old bits and bobs from 2020-2021 original post

Controls

What's new?

Still to do

tline Rotation Demo

ROAD REX

Parking Masters

The Wizard Pig

2D Terrain Demo

Amateur Cat High Five Challenge

License