20 replies to this topic

[bfg.gamepassion]

Hi,

i've decided to create this topic to present my new work day by day (or week by week ...). This topic is not for teasing, but to have opinion and advice.

Now i'm presenting my new project. This project is initiated by retroillucid, who have made the GFX and choose the game. The game is :



Here is what i've done in development day 1 :



So now my request :

Do you know someone who play very well this game ? I'd like to understand 2 things :

- How the cop move : When i've try the arcade game they look intelligent, one chase me, and the other turn around a wall to catch me up from another way. Do you know a document who describe the ennemy movement and AI like what we can found for Pacman ?

- How the difficulty raise ? Ennemy faster ? Smarter ?

From know, each game i've adapted (Pand, Puzzli, Bombliss) was a game that i was playing a lot. I'm just discovering Lock'n Chase so, if someone who have play this game for hours can give me advice, i would be delighted

Thanks for your attention.

Edited by bfg.gamepassion, Fri Mar 25, 2011 2:51 PM.

[Pixelboy]

I'm no expert at Lock'n Chase, sorry, but I just want to say....

KEWL!!!

Lock'n Chase is finally coming to the CV!

[youki]

This guy never sleep!!!!

[retroillucid]

I can't be more happy today!

I always been jealous of Intellivision for having Lock n Chase, and now it'll become a reallity on CV



Whoo ooo!!

[NIAD]

This is awesome! I hope you (J-F) are able to keep up with all the new releases.

[cmart604]

WOW! Very cool! Great choice of game, I've never played the arcade version but it's one of my favourite games on my INTV. Excellent news!

[ColecoDan]

We used to play this game for hours on Intellivision and when I saw it in collectorvision's list I was definitely happy. To see you are actually working on it is aweome. Unfortunately I can not help you with the cops. I know they always used to piss me off though

[Yurkie]

Sweet another Arcade Port for the ColecoVision. I have never played this, but it looks interesting.
Thank You for your efforts.

[cmart604]

Yurkie, on Fri Mar 25, 2011 7:54 PM, said:

Sweet another Arcade Port for the ColecoVision. I have never played this, but it looks interesting.
Thank You for your efforts.

You'll be getting a chance to try this on the INTV.

[bfg.gamepassion]

Day 2 :



First, the game is more fluid without my catching vidéo tool. I've done the video from a netbook, so the game slow down when i capture the video.

What's new :

- Added preleminary Cop AI. For the moment, they are only in CHASE mode. One cop, chase you all the time, another cop chase you but try to catch you going front of you, and the two other have another algorithm of my composition ... As you can see, the Cop can be stuck, and waiting for your movment to decide where to go, this must be corrected, but i's a first test

- Added preliminary sprite flicker. It's far from perfect, but it work.

- Added "Teleport" from side to side for the player and the Cop.

- I have many idea for increase level of difficulty on adding a SCATTER mode in IA (they stop chasing you in going in each corner of the screen). For example on level 1, if you take a bonus, the Cop stop then they go in scatter mode for 5 seconds. If you eat 30 pills, again they go in scatter mode for 7 seconds for example. In higher level the SCATTER mode will take less time ... That's the theory.

Problem during this dev phase :

Performances !! I was far of thinking that the game can slow down with my AI code and player movement code !! I've done some basic optimisation, and it's good.

But, i must add a better flicker sprite, better IA, bonus and collision between sprite, animation, and the CLOSING DOOR i hope it won't be too hard to optimise !!!!!!

Stay tuned !!

[youki]

You can record video directly with blueMSX.

And see your MPs on my forums.

[Pixelboy]

bfg.gamepassion, on Sat Mar 26, 2011 3:56 AM, said:

- Added preleminary Cop AI. For the moment, they are only in CHASE mode. One cop, chase you all the time, another cop chase you but try to catch you going front of you, and the two other have another algorithm of my composition ... As you can see, the Cop can be stuck, and waiting for your movment to decide where to go, this must be corrected, but i's a first test

If replicating the cop AI of the arcade version is important to you, then one suggestion I would have for you is to play the arcade game in MAME, and record your entire play session as a video in parallel. Then you can playback the video as many times as you need, and study the behavior of the cops at your own pace. For a game like this, just a few such recorded play sessions should be enough to determine if all cops follow the same algorithm, or if they have specialized "personalities" like the ghosts in Pac-Man.

[retroillucid]

Thats going great!

[bfg.gamepassion]

Day 2.5 :



- Better AI (Not "perfect yet")
- Better Sprite Flickering (not so good on the ripped video with Fraps but the blue MSX version took 1.90gig !!! So i continue to use FRAPS )
- Player Doors (Need collision adjusting with player/Cop).

That's all for today !

Edited by bfg.gamepassion, Sat Mar 26, 2011 9:52 AM.

[5-11under]

For the player, is the red sprite at the same location as the blue sprite... if yes, I'm wondering if moving the red sprite down to near the bottom of the blue sprite would help for flickering (so there's little or no overlap between the two).
Looking good so far, by the way. Fast, too... I'm wondering when your next game will be finished.

[Kiwi]

At this rate, retroillucid going to have a ton of games to publish this year . Keep up the awesome work!

I'm still working on my projects. I just need to get over the anxiety(Due to it crashing) and get it finished(still needs to learn more C, and pixel more graphics.). I have the Atari-age blog on my progress.

[bfg.gamepassion]

DAY 3 :

No new video today, because i've broken and repair a part of the game.

For detecting if the cop can can go a direction or not, i was testing the character next to the Cop directly in the VRAM, and i must check if it's free, a door or a Gold Coin, and that for each Cop.

Getting data in VRAM seems realy time consuming (at the beginning the game slow down because i was reading too much in VRAM), and all the possibility of characters render the code dirty. So, i've designed a simplier Map for the ghost movement it looks like that :



Green (255) and Yellow (254) zone is were the ghost can go, so if i read in the Map a char > 253 it's Ok.
Yellow is the zone were the player can create door.

When the player create door, i put door in the vram, but the collision test is done in RAM with a playerDoor Structure.

And so on ... For the moment everything work well.

Next to do, the "random" auto door, then collision detection between Cop and Robber !

Edited by bfg.gamepassion, Sun Mar 27, 2011 12:01 PM.

[bfg.gamepassion]

Day 4 :



- Added "moving" door
- Added all collision sprite/sprite, sprite/backgroung
- MAJOR SLOWDOWN so before coding bonus and score, i must optimize ... simple to say.

Edited by bfg.gamepassion, Mon Mar 28, 2011 10:36 AM.

[bfg.gamepassion]

Slodown fixed. Change boudary box collision by pixel to char collision, work very well too and FASTER. Need to adjust now the collision between player and cop. Then hope that Bonuses won't commit another major slowdown ...

Edited by bfg.gamepassion, Mon Mar 28, 2011 2:21 PM.

[bfg.gamepassion]

Day 5 :

This is the last video until a release candidate :



All the basic gameplay are implemented. Now it's the longuest part to do :

- Add the Game Life cycle (loose life, game over ...)
- Add more animation without slowdown
- Make the level, and balancing the difficulty (In this video i assure you that it's hard )
- Adjust some collision between you door and Cop. Sometimes they pass through ... (As you can see in video)
- Sound
- Splash screen
- ... evrything that need a game to be complete

As i said, the it's longuest part after coding the game engine.

Next video will be in principal forum for Release Candidate, in less than one month i think.

[bfg.gamepassion]

Just a post to say that this thread can be closed, i'll use the Blog possibility of atariage to talk about my development