It would appear that tomorrow marks the first anniversary of my last blog post. How odd, then, that I have news!

I’ve been working on Heavy on the Magick on and off for a while, but I’ve made very little progress. That’s not fair actually, I’ve made SOME progress, work on my XML map and game data, graphics ripping, moving sprites around, the normal stuff, but nothing that you could say was work towards HotM in particular.

The problem, you see, and I’m sure I may have mentioned this, is graphics. I’ve played around with ripped sprites, tidied them up the best I can, arranged them in a useable sprite sheet, blitted them to the screen and…… they still look shocking!

So then, what to do?

I’m not happy with my sprites but I want to get the engine working, I mean, if I have a proven working engine then I MIGHT be able to persuade someone to draw some pretty pictures for me. How can I do the game some justice without exposing the world to my gash blitting?

Ladies and gentlemen, I offer, for your perusal and comment……

Yep, you read it right…. ASCII on the Magick. I can cope with a bit of ASCII… And you know what? I’m getting somewhere. Using the power of the font, I’ve now got in:

Text input movement – working

A compass – working

Wall decor – Partly working

An ASCII map – working

And that’s just for starters…..

I’ll keep this up to date when I remember, but I thought I’d share my progress while I actually had some. So, as the title says, it’s a KIND of magick…..

One of the things that I have decided to do is, however, challenge myself with a second project. One that will start from scratch and be given a time limit.

Action Biker will be continued after the completion of this mini project.

Yes, with the latest demo of Action Biker on offer for three and a half days* over at RetroRemakesand not a single download having taken place, I think we can re-assign Colin to the bin. This isn’t a defeatest attitude, it’s not me taking my ball away, it’s simply that there are so many better things I could be doing with my life than remaking a game that no one wants and that, it would appear, nobody apart from me ever enjoyed originally.

This has made me think about what I consider the important elements to a game. I would seem to be in the minority here, because I like simple picky uppy and usy games. On the Spectrum my favorite games were things like ‘Everyone’s a Wally’, The Magic Knight games ‘Finders Keepers’, ‘Spellbound’ and ‘Stormbringer’ (yeah, I thought ‘Knight Tyme’ was OK too), ‘Sceptre of Baghdad’, ‘The Incredible Shrinking Fireman’ and, yes, ‘Action Biker’. It never occured to me that the whole shoot ‘em up thing was a bigger draw and this has kind of worked against me in my desire to remake (and ultimately make) games. My thing appeals to less people than most other people’s things. I can, as the weird hippies amidst us would say, dig that.

So where do I go from here?

I have several options I guess.

I can work on one of my old abandoned games, let’s face it, I have a stack of them. Pick one, go on… ‘Cyberun’ (I have some graphics for this too), ‘The Wild Bunch’, ‘Bard’s Tale 2′, ‘Rock Star Ate My Hamster’, ‘Tir Na Nog’, ‘Grym Jim’… All a little ambitious, possibly with the exception of ‘The Wild Bunch’, but then, FatSegal already made an ace version of that……

I can start a new remake but, as has been proven here, my choices tend to be either overly complex (for me, anyhoo) or that unpopular that it makes the time I invest in making the game worthless. Underlord is a good example of this, a year and a half of coding that seems to have had little or no impact in the world of gaming. Obviously it’s incomplete state does not help here, it’s the bain of my life trying to get good graphics for my games and Underlord suffers muchly for this, that and audio, plus a few bug fixes are all that are stopping this from being complete, so that gives me the next option…

I can finish Underlord. Ha! Are you serious? I couldn’t get Psyren to finish the graphics last time, what are the chances this time? Seriously, I couldn’t ask someone else to finish off the graphics that Psyren didn’t do for me, they would need to be started from scratch again. The audio needs starting as I don’t even have a beeps worth of sound for it, though this isn’t a major, I would have needed to do that anyway, but the biggie here is, who would I be doing it for? Certainly not for me, I know how to beat it, I’m happy enough with it as it is, I learnt a hell of a lot from Underlord and, as such, it was a bit of a triumph for me, but I doubt I’ll get much more out of it. I would also need testers, a component so rare in any of my games (see above) that it really isn’t worth contemplating……. No, none of those three options are really viable at the moment.

So then… What else?

I could learn a little more about the language? Yup, I’m still a wee bairn as far as C (and to a much greater extent, C++) is concerned. I can look, from a game developer’s point of view, how I could improve my C skills for when I settle on my next project. But do I want to stick with C & Allegro? Let’s face it, it’s not been that successfull for me has it? How about then……

I can learn a new language. Actually, not necissarily a new language, but I can learn to code for new hardware using new libraries. I’m quite keen on porting ‘Everyones a Wally’ to the DS, I think the game would be perfect for the platform. John Ward at Karmatoad and I have often talked about writing together for the DS or even possibly the Iphone. The problem here is, again, one of differing game genres. We haven’t yet found a game that we would both be happy to work on for the DS and, though we have had a cracking idea for an Iphone app, my Iphone dev skills don’t even include the ability to possess either an Iphone or a Mac to develop on.

I’m in a quandary, honestly, I am. What do I do when I’m in a quandary? I play games. The more I play, the more I want to develop, the more I want to develop, the stronger the itch to try something new. The Lord himself only knows what I’ll do next, but I dare say, once I’ve decided, I’ll bung it up here.

* I’m impatient, sue me!

AB was a Spectrum game I used to play all the time. It was a maze cum puzzle game that got me hooked from the moment I started playing it, despite it’s many and varied pitfalls and bug ridden problems. Yes, I’ll get it out the way right now, the C64 version (a completely different game, who’d odds it eh?) has a far greater following, yes, the game was near on impossible to complete, yes, of course there were better Speccy games out there, Christ, there were better AMSTRAD games out there, but I loved it. It’s still a firm favorite on the little DS if I feel a bit of retro emualted goodness is required.

So, that’s the original, what of the remake?

Well, firstly, let’s look at the actual coding of the game, that, surely, is what a dev blog is all about is it not?

THE TOOLS

I’ll be coding Action Biker in C and Allegro. Allegro, for those of you who don’t know, is a gaming library for C and C++ that takes all (or at least much) of the evil, nasty, yucky, low level talky to hardware type coding away from simple folk like me and hides it so that us thickies really just need to tell C what to do and Allegro does all the donkey work in the background.

For the record, AB is being written using freeware or GNU licensed software from top to bottom. I’ll be using:-

Code::Blocks - A C/C++ IDE to write the code
Allegro – A game development library
GIMP – A graphics manipulation package
Audacity – A sound editor

I’m sure there will be other bits and pieces bunged in, I’ll blog them when I work out what they are.

THE PROCESS

The idea of this remake isn’t just to do a vanilla remake. The original, no matter how fondly I remember it and no matter how much I still play it, was pants. I have already mentioned on this here blog and, in much more depth, on this here forum thread my plans to improve the game and, in many instances, take the game in new and interesting directions, but the game must still play like the original.

The development of the game will be broken down into manageable chunks. Though the list is bound to change and shift order throughout the development process, this is how I see it at the moment.

• Play the game to death – DONE
• Get the map – DONE
• Make a very basic map for testing purposes – DONE
• Build a test engine – DONE
• Mock up some programmer graphics for the testing of – DONE
• Make the engine work with the map data – DONE
• Sort out collisions for the streets – DONE
• Complete the map – DONE
• Sort out collisions for the houses – DONE
• Draw the house interiors (rough)
• Code the house interior sections
• Code the bike speed for turning / breaking / acceleration, etc.
• Draw the bike upgrades
• Code the bike upgrades
• Get a useable HUD
• Draw the underwater bike sprites
• Work on the lake*
• Code the ‘Skips’ and oil on the road
• Code the dark area and make it passable
• Code in petrol stations and the fuel indicator
• Draw the other road traffic
• Code the traffic AI
• Place bike upgrades randomly on the map**
• Create and stick in some audio
• Code the end screens
• Code the front menu

* The lake is a bit of a sticky point at the moment, I’m not too sure if I will keep it simple and just let the player ride freely across it or make the player keep to a grid system like the street.

** Bike upgrades will be placed in random houses over the whole map, some upgrades, however, will be places in certain sections of the map so that you actually have them before needing them!

This, by the way, is just for the remake part of the game. This is the first task and will determin how much further I go with the game.

That’s the plan, at least. I’ll start looking at problems and solutions soon, some I’ve found and overcome, some I know I’ll meet and some that I hope I’ll never see.

That’ll do for now though

The very first screeny. What a clever chap I am eh?

Yes, the time has, indeed, come once again to pick up mine fingers and code.

So why Action Biker? Because, as is so often the case, I want to. Yes, I’ll admit, it wasn’t the greatest game in the world. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it was a pretty dire game, possibly even terrible. Thing is, it’s only really in hindsight, and with the use of emulators, that I now realise this. Action Biker was, as it goes, one of the most played games on my little rubber keyed friend. It was up there with Elite, Spellbound and Wriggler. I used to love it.

Turns out it was badly put together tripe that was almost impossible to complete, even with pokes. And this, you see, is the reason for my return. I want Action Biker to be loved like I loved it, I want it to be remembered for the quirky fun elements that were there, not for the fact that it would more often than not put items needed to complete puzzles PAST the puzzle itself, nor the fact that in what was, at it’s very core, a game based on the principle of elapsed time, you would go and have tea at your mate’s house thus wasting hours of precious game time. Don’t even get me started about the location of the damn petrol stations!

So, anyway, I’ve started work on this in earnest this week. The origins of the remake, hovever, go waaaaaaaaay back.

Action Biker was the first game I started after the Underlord beta was released. It was just a little project while I sorted out some graphics for what should have been, but never turned out to be, an Underlord update. Underlord is still in beta, don’t expect that to change any time soon. But I started work on the Biker concept in later July ’08 with a re-write of Meditator, the map utility I’d written for Underlord. I reused code where I could but most of it was new. Once I’d got a working map editor I started ripping graphics and bulding me a map. That was when I stopped development. Around mid August I just lost interest. It happens occasionally, you know, I just couldn’t be bothered to finish the map.

Roll forward a few months, past the Wild Bunch WIP (I’ll get on with that one day), past the Cyberun WIP (ditto), past the two Xmas games I started but didn’t finish…. You get the picture, I’m sure. Mid March I stumble on the Action Biker map. How easy would that be to get scrolling? Shouldn’t take too long I’m sure……..

Mid March turned into early April and still no progress. I thought about coding a lot, I really did. I got excited about the prospect. Ultimatly I couldn’t be bothered.

Then I started working nights. Funny how it goes isn’t it, I go to work at 3 in the afternoon and come home at 10, straight to bed after tea and all of a sudden my mornings become my evenings. There’s nothing on the telly, there’s no-one around, what should I do?

Code, dear fellow, code.

So I have decided to write a code blog, for my reference more than anyone elses, but if anyone else gets anything out of it, even if it’s just a laugh at my appauling coding, then I’ll be a happy camper.

If you are really interested, I’ll also be keeping Retroremakes.com up to date with releases, screen shots and other, more useless, junk. If you do want to comment please feel free to do so either here or on my RR thread.

Wish me luck….

Using this as a ploy to kickstart my blogging habbit once more, I have decided to bung up a brief history of my games to date and also to keep a record of my current project. More of that later. First, however, a brief history of SIM.

SIM is the first game I can ever really remember wanting to play over and over again. I had a VIC 20 at the time but remember joining the computer club at school just so I had access to a BBC B so I could play.

SIM is basically a collect and avoid maze game spread over 50 or so screens. It involved solving puzzles, navigating invisible mazes and outwitting alien creatures, all so you could collect the 10 Simarals to drop into a well on one of the screens.

The game was written by Joshua Portway way back in 198* or so. It was released on the BBC and Electron platforms and, though it apparently sold by the shed load, I’ve not met anyone other than my computer club buddies who has ever played it.

Around early 2007 I started frequenting a shady side of the internet known only as Retro Remakes. Being facinated with 8 bit gaming as I was (am?) I began downloading remade versions of classic Speccy and C64 games but could never find any of the games I actually wanted. SIM, obviously, was right at the top of my list. I’d managed to grab an emulated version but it wasn’t cutting the mustard, oh no siree no. What then, you may ask, was a young man to do? There was only really one option left. I remade the game myself.

I started work on SIM in Feb 2007. I decided to use Blitz Basic, a new language to me, to code the game and rip and tidy the graphics and sounds from the original game. Around May 2007, after 3 months of almost constant coding, I had myself a game.

I’m not gonna go into the technichal side of the coding, partly because, as a language, Blitz is so easy it would be insulting to those trying to learn it, partly because I shoe-horned so much bad coding in to get it working that I struggle to follow the code, but mainly because, on reviewing the code, I really don’t understand what most of it does. I coded Eric in Blitz, it took me just shy of 2 months and then abandoned the language for the everso slightly more challenging C & Allegro combination.

SIM still remains my most complete game and, though the others are playable and completeable, SIM is the only one I am satisfied with the graphics on (they were never meant to be good, just useable) and is the only one to have ANY audio.

There are a few bugs in SIM, unfortunatly I doubt these will ever get fixed, I really can’t be bothered to re-install BB, this is a shame, but there you go!

The game can be gotten from the ‘Stairway To Hell’ clones section or you can simply get it here

• I’m unemployed – obviously this is a bit of a downer so I’ll get it out of the way first and not dwell on it!
• Underlord is complete! – Not entirely true, not even close to true, I’ll post on it’s status at some point in the near future
• The Retro Remakes Competition 2008 has finished and the judging has been judged. No official announcement concerning the winner has been made yet due to other matters but it’ll be soon…
• Retro Remakes was hacked. Badly hacked. Actually, incredibly well hacked. Oddbob has worked his arse off over the last few weeks to get some semblance of normality back to the site. He’s got new forums up and running and there’s a temporary front page. I gather he’s working on restoring the hosted sites at the moment. This has caused a huge postponement in the announcement of the competition results.
• The Ripon Charity Pantomime has been and gone. For those of you who don’t know, both my eldest daughter Kim and I are both involved in the panto (along with a lot of very good friends – Wochamate John, Gina, Et al) and, for the second year running I managed to bluff my way into another principal slot. I’ll get a full report up at some point, hopefully before next year’s panto…..
• My Facebook activity is going up and down like an uppy-downy thing. I need more friends so add me!.
• I’ve started and abandoned about a half dozen games, some have actually had code written and one has even had a map created which meant completely rewriting the map editor I made for Underlord. This is a GOODTHING.COM as there was at least one good thing to come out of the whole WIP > RIP process. The games I have ditched are as follows..

1. The Wild Bunch
2. Wriggler
3. Everyone’s a Wally
4. Gatecrasher
5. Bards Tale 2
6. Action Biker (ZX Spec version)

• I’ve been offered the graphics for one of my favorite shooters, Cyberun. This will most likely be my new WIP though I’ve not actually done anything on it as of yet (I’m waiting to see how many sprites I’ve got, sizes, etc).

I’m sure there’s been other stuff happen but it will have to wait till I remember it.

I’ve got things to do now, I need to get my 3 completed games up on this here site somehow as I just noticed today that there are absolutly no links on the web for any of then (how HAVE you been coping?)

I’m not a prollific writer. Not by anyone’s standard, not prollific at all, but I have never had an issue with written communication. I write for work, I write for pleasure and, for the last year I’ve been writing for an online community.

And this is where the problem lies. Not with work, that’s another thing altogether… Not with pleasure and not with the magical world that is the internet and in particular not the bit that hangs around the retroremakes part of the internet. The problem is with the writing.

Never before has the desire to sit down in front of my PC and tap away until something at least barely legible has appeared on the screen before me, been further away. It’s not the subject matter I’m having problems with. It’s affecting everything I love to write or write about. Gaming, coding, life, the kids, the wife, even ME! It’s a classic case of bloody writers block and I’m not happy about it.

So, I need to get on my backside and start sorting my life out! Well, the bit of my life involving the writting of things to be written.

And it starts here!

I work with the bloody things all day. Keep them ticking over nicely, I do, no probs.

So, why the hatred? Because my home server died this evening and I really CAN’T be bothered to do anything about it. Lazy, I know, but I really can’t

Tomorrow night I guess is rebuild night.

Now, what I write here is going to shock those of you that have been writing games for a while. Shock you and probably make you collapse laughing. Please, however, bear in mind a couple of things…

1) I’ve been coding games for only a year.
2) Underlord is my first scroller and only my 3rd game.
3) I’ve got absolutly no idea what I’m doing until I try something.

Are you sitting down? Good………

I had reason during testing some code to go to the windows task manager and terminate the Underlord process. It’s not something I’ve conciously had to do until then so I would normally not look. I saw immediatly why the game was running ‘sluggishly’. 99% cpu usage, mmm, OK, not good, BUT RAM useage of close to 300MB.

There you go, picked yourself up yet?

What to do? Well, I’ll keep it brief. The issue is I was stupidly loading all the levels into bitmap and blitting just the bit of the map I needed to the buffer.

This wouldn’t be so much of an issue if the following were not true…

There are 9 levels
Each level is 8000 pixels wide
Each level has a background, object map, foreground AND NPC map

 My maths is bad, but I make that 36 8000 pixel wide bitmaps loaded into memory ALL THE TIME

Not only was it hoarding memory, loadtimes were suffering.

Anyway, I’m now just blitting tiles directly to the buffer and, lordy lordy, RAM useage is down to 20MB. Performance issues should be less obvious now!

Onwards and upwards!