24 Hour Game : Roll Up

[Chainclaw]

I needed to take a break from my current project and work on something else. I figured I would attempt to finish a game in less than 24 hours. Started on this last night, and just finished it.

 

It's a simple game called "Roll Up." Think Katamari Damacy, Bubbles, Feeding Frenzy, Flow, and any of those other "eat to get bigger" games. You play as a guy pushing a ball around, rolling it over things to make it bigger. You can only roll over things that are smaller than your ball. The fire button charges up a roll-attack, and when released, the player will dash in the direction held.

 

The purpose of the game is to get the highest score in the time limit.

 

It's pretty simple, and there was a few things I would have liked to get in, but ran out of time for, such as multiple levels, bigger items hurting the player, and moving items.

 

I'm finished with this project, just needed to "finish" a game to get myself the energy to keep working on the other game. If someone else wants to work on this project for some reason, go for it, just try to credit me if you do.

 

RollUp.bas

RollUp.bas.bin

Edited December 14, 2008 by Chainclaw

[ginnidog]

I`ll have to try it out when i get home from woik..

[lucifershalo]

for a 24h game

it is quite funny

[Impaler_26]

Nice game! I couldn't program something like that in 24 years...

[Chainclaw]

Any other thoughts on this? It's been half a month.

[A Sprite]

We're avoiding any comments that sound like "Are you going to make it a full game now?" Some of us can't even successfully execute a dos prompt, much less make a game in 24 hours...

 

Any suggestions or criticisms are off the table, leaving us only to gape in awe. Or plan ways to eat you, so that we might steal your powers.

[Chainclaw]

Thanks for kind words, but it's actually not that big of a deal. Like a lot of the homebrew writers here, programming is my day job. This was actually a project meant to be easy and relaxing, my other homebrew game is stalling out a bit.

[Kurt_Woloch]

OK, here's some feedback. Basically, the "eat something and get bigger" game genre is already covered by "Go Fish!" on the Atari 2600. But your game offers some interesting twists on it. Here are some suggestions to make it even better:

 

1. Introduce more player sizes. Right now, you start out as a 4-pixel ball, which grows to 8 pixels, but after that, you immediately go up to 16, and then to 32 bytes. What if you put the double-size sprite down to the 4-pixel version again, which grows gradually, and the same with the quadruple-size sprite?

 

2. Right now, the game seems to be "strictly timed", that is, there's no way to extend the time. Here's my suggestion how to improve this:

- Make the player consume "energy". The bigger the ball gets, the more energy it consumes. Let's say it consumes 1 energy point per second in its smallest size, and that goes up by one point per second with each growth. The objects you eat give you back energy points, depending on their size, let's say 1 point for the dot, 2 points for the roll (or whatever it is), and 3 points for the square. This way you could play the longer the quicker you make it to gobble up relevant objects.

[Chainclaw]

OK, here's some feedback. Basically, the "eat something and get bigger" game genre is already covered by "Go Fish!" on the Atari 2600. But your game offers some interesting twists on it. Here are some suggestions to make it even better:

 

1. Introduce more player sizes. Right now, you start out as a 4-pixel ball, which grows to 8 pixels, but after that, you immediately go up to 16, and then to 32 bytes. What if you put the double-size sprite down to the 4-pixel version again, which grows gradually, and the same with the quadruple-size sprite?

 

2. Right now, the game seems to be "strictly timed", that is, there's no way to extend the time. Here's my suggestion how to improve this:

- Make the player consume "energy". The bigger the ball gets, the more energy it consumes. Let's say it consumes 1 energy point per second in its smallest size, and that goes up by one point per second with each growth. The objects you eat give you back energy points, depending on their size, let's say 1 point for the dot, 2 points for the roll (or whatever it is), and 3 points for the square. This way you could play the longer the quicker you make it to gobble up relevant objects.

 

Excellent suggestions, because they would not be that difficult to implement, and would add a bit of depth to the game.

 

The ideas I had for making the game more interesting when I was working on it, were too difficult to do in Batari Basic quickly. I wanted to have one mode where the objects moved around the screen, but I realized that it would be difficult, and take a while to write movement code for the objects that did not make the game frustrating (I wanted to finish this project in less than a day, so how quickly I could add features was important)

 

Maybe I'll do a second pass on this game at some point in the future.

[djmips]

Nice! I just played it on the Cuttle Cart and it was very entertaining. Nice work for a single day.