XeO3: Improvements

So here we go again....

• I've made some of the harder baddies easier to kill


• I've added the drift to the coin and made the arc slightly higher (although as Luca's aready pointed out, it still has to get off screen pretty quickly!)


• I've added the scraping sound as you get hit.


• In the final game, there will be a sheild recharge pickup, and it'll get recharged at the start of each level.


• I'm still unconvinced about moving the ship faster....


• I've made the harder baddies a static frame so you can tell they're hard to kill. This will chance in the final game to a different baddie graphic so each TYPE will have its own strengths.

We will release an update in a few days to see what you all think about the improvements, and all going well, we'll plow on with the actual game.

I also just spotted a worrying bug in visual SourceSafe. It would just refuse to check in a modified file for some reason! I'd check out a file, change it, and then check it back in; but the file wouldn't actually change! This seems to have affected 2 files. My turret source file, and the front end logo characterset. I've now managed to fix them both without losing anything, but thats a worrying turn of events!

XeO3: First bits of feedback.

The biggest agreed one was that it you need a sound when being hit, or when you hit a wall, the next is people think its just too hard. After that it gets a little more generic with no real consensis. Being thrown back to the start of the level seems to be an issue and there also appears to be the need to move a little quicker. So lets address some of these...

You now get a sound when being hit, or when hitting a wall. I have to use sound effects sparingly as the TED sound system is fragile, this means I cant go overboard on different sounds for various events..

I'll tweak the harder baddies and see if that helps

I'm not a big fan of restart points, and if you did I would have to punish you more for diying. Currently you dont lose all you weapons, I think if you restarted, you should. I don't really like that. I could just bring the player back on screen at the same point, but again, you'd have to lose all your weapons or it would just be too easy.

Speed... This is a tricky one. Because we're software sprites in MCM, I have to double the speed of the ship (not just move it a little), and that might mean you miss bullets. But we can certainly look at it - possibly as a power up.


Remember there are 2 coin sizes. Small ones fall from individual baddies, and larger ones from groups of baddies. This means shooting a whole wave will sometimes drop a large coin and you get more of the coin bar filled at once! Currently I think theres too many falling early on, but we'll see how that works out...

2 bullets at the start should be fine, particually as you can power up really quickly.

Folk are finding it tricky to pick up coins. This is a bit of a surprise, but I'll look to make the arc bigger to give you more time.

Also remember that in the final game theres lots of different baddie types, and these will dictate how hard it is to kill. This means it'll be easier to spot those harder aliens. But for now, I'll change the animations a little to make them more obvious.

The rasters are fine on the real machine... if it wobbles, its the emulator your running on! :)

Keep the feedback coming please, if you have nothing to say about it - then say that! We need to know that too! We'll do updates to the demo until its playing better, then we can progress to the real game again.

I'm also very interested in hearing from people that are playing with the scripting language and how your finding it.

XeO3: ALPHA!!!!

Well, its time!! You can find the link on the right, go get it, play it, think about it... then let us know what you think!

I've just recieved my PCEngine FLASH card! With this I can write code and download it to a real machine! Very cool! I'll need to update my assembler once more to allow for the extra custom operands, but thats fairly simple. I love this machine, its sooo quick compared to a C64, and its stacks of characters AND sprites! coool!!

XeO3: Final - FINAL - cleanup!

Well theres always SOMETHING left to do isn't there!

I've added pause and quit keys (Shift-Lock and Escape respectivly).
I now clear the screen on quit.
I've now made the front end options work.
I added an explosion sound when the player dies.
I kill sound effects when you quit. (kind of)
I fixed a bug where when you quit with bullets flying, it wasn't being reset.

Thats about it.... A couple of folk invloved have recieved test versions and they seem to be more or less happy, and with these changes, so are we....pretty much :)

I plays reasonably well I think, but we'll see what everyone else thinks about it when they get a chance to play with it over the weekend.

XeO3: Final cleanup!

I was looking through the game and spotted a couple of things I want to try and fix tonight - pretty minor, but it would still be nice to fix them for the demo. Once I've done that, I'll get a package ready for Luca to post tomorrow night (whenever we're both home and ready).

However... I was thinking.... IF I really wanted to... I could probably speed the game up quite a bit. For example: The engine redraws the screen every frame - this is slow. It DOES mean I dont have to save+replace stuff, but it would be much quicker to slowly redraw a screen over several frames, THEN flip. I blit the screen each frame because I wanted to have large character sprites that cover large areas of the screen - but that would be too slow to replace. However, due to memory we've dropped that idea. (The source is still there so someone else can play with it!)

So... lets look at HOW you could speed it up.

If when drawing sprites I did collision of baddie sprites to bullets the same way as I do the player to the background, then I could remove the N*N loop I have which does bounding box checks. I could also draw a lot more bullets! (Dan did this in Armalyte, and I suspect its common practise with C64 shooters).

Next.. If I did a Save/Replace system for bullets and sprites I wouldn't have to redraw the screen. (this would save a large screen buffer anyway).

That way I only ever copy a couple of lines a frame rather than 21!! That would be a massive saving, possibly freeing up enough time to draw another couple of sprites! (which would make 12!) OR (more likely) allow drawing of more complex weapons!

Now... I could do this... But I think we have finally passed the point where major changes are allowed, otherwise we'd NEVER finish! If I ever do an XeO3-II, then I might alter some ideas.

Still while I'm talking about that.. After the Plus4 version, I'll finish the C64 one (possibly taking some of the above ideas on board), and then do a TG16 and PCEngine version, as I love BOTH those machines! Since they are both basically 6502, I dont expect them to take very long and I might be able to move to other platforms... like the Amiga/ST.

Still...its taken long enough to get here, so I'll worry about all this later!

XeO3: Almost there!!!!

I've ironed our the remaining issues, and Luca is reasonably pleased with the level layout. We've also tweaked a few graphical things and tweaked the BOSS's nose.

I wouldn't get too excited about killing the BOSS though... it'll just restart :)

So, all going well, and barring any major issues the demo + scripting test will be released on FRIDAY NIGHT! (Friday the 13th!)

PLEASE remember to give feed back on one of the many forums (C64, Plus4, spectrum etc..)

XeO3: An interesting side effect....

Now that its all working, it appears to be quite a bit harder.... Closer inspection shows that the changes to the bullet collision have actually made it tougher! This is because coins can now be hit! So its pretty tough to shoot a line of aliens if they all drop coins, and means you really need to shoot it close to you, and then quickly pick up the coin so you can shoot the next one in line!

This is pretty hard, particually if your being hammered from all sides by turrets! I could change it now, but I think I'll wait and see what the feed back is. Of course, the temptation of gamers it to make it reasonably easy so they can finish it, so all comments will have to be taken with a pinch of salt, but lets see what you all say.

XeO3: At LAST!!!

Well, its offical....I'm a prat. Let the word go forth.... I am a moron. Yes, I've fixed my bug, and wouldn't you know it... it was the change I made a few hours before when altering the collision flags. I was simply branching to the wrong location when I detected a NOSHOOT flag. What a prat.

Oh well... Debug code now removed and we're back on track! Now I just need to finish this level off, and build a scripting framework.... almost there!

*sigh* oh well at least its fixed, but I still feel like a twat.

XeO3: I knew it!!!

Oh well... I knew it was going to smoothly... I've discovered a bug thats gonna delay things until I manage to find and fix it. Shooting at the boss you eventually stop firing for some reason. No idea why, but it looks like your bullet counter goes negative, and then is unable to fire any more. No idea why - theres only 2 places which reduce the counters, and I cant see how this is possible - fek.

XeO3: The finishing touches!!

I'm now putting the final touches to the demo! Yep, I'm almost there... I'm adding a simple BOSS to get the end of level some meaning, although while doing so it threw up a couple of bugs and issues.

First, I've changed how the NOSHOOT and NOCOLLISION flag works. NOSHOOT now simply means that while the bullet hits, it won't cause any damage, while NOCOLLISION now means it has no collision AT ALL! So neither Bullets or players will hit it. This makes a little more sense and allows for baddies to be shot at while coming on screen, but take no damage.

I've also changed the parent system, so that a sprite marked as a CHILD now uses the path/sprite than SPAWNED it as its parent. This feels more logical when building paths.

I've also fixed a bug where by if you kill a sprite that was PAUSED, the BOOM animation was over running.

So... there you go... Almost there! Just need to finish the level off, and then make up a batch file to allow you to build your own levels, an that'll be that! (I think...)