Journey of the Prairie King Demade

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Journey of the Prairie King Demade

by Kryptoid98

Cart #jotpkdemade-3 | 2023-11-15 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

14

Play through three unique levels with a variety of enemies and power-ups, and two unique bosses.

UPDATE: Prairie King Demade is now fully playable in @taxicomics demake of Stardew Valley 'Pico Valley'! Click here to check it out!

Controls:
Automatically Shoot
Move / Aim - ⬆️⬇️⬅️➡️
Lock Movement - ❎
Reverse Aim - ⓩ
Use Power-Up - ❎+ⓩ

Available for download at itch.io.

Version 1.1:
-Added a info screen with descriptions of all the power-ups and upgrades
-Selecting 'Retry' on the game over screen now starts the game back at the beginning of the current level instead of starting a new game
-Buffed coin drop rate by 25%
-Buffed fire rate upgrade by 25%
-Enemy hit boxes are now more forgiving
-8 way shot now shoots out in a circle instead of a square
-Fixed various minor bugs

Special Thanks to @Ahai64 and @phil for feedback / code suggestions

Too hard for me, so I add this to shoot()

for i=-1,1,0.05 do
    make_bullet(x,y,sin(i),cos(i),true)
end

Haha, just for fun.

And I thought

for i=1,2 do
    make_bullet(x,y,dx1,dy1,true)
    dx1,dy1=dx2,dy2
end

is confusing.
This might be better:

make_bullet(x,y,dx1,dy1,true)
make_bullet(x,y,dx2,dy2,true)

Our games should definitely be fused (Stardew Valley Demake)- but I have no idea how to squeeze it in there :D
Nice job re-/demaking the prairie king! But i agree, especially on a mobile, it is bloody hard to beat :D and strafing didn't really work for me

@taxicomics @Kryptoid98 If you are both into it, you can use load() to jump into Prairie King from Stardew. I have a working arcade loader inside my tmnt game if you want to see it in action. :)

Let`s wait for consent, but yes, that would be great. I would need to squeeze in the saloon interior, but well make it work. and saving/loading right before and after might let us keep the progress. But my cart would need to understand when it got booted from another cart.

For sure we'll wait and see what OP thinks. But also jsyk, you don't actually need to do much to configure your game to load back from Prairie King. The command has a breadcrumb feature that allows the loaded game to return to the loader from the start menu, and if you are already using dget() and have a couple free slots you can reload the player right in front of the machine.

Sorry for the late replay all, not used to using forums lol. Not sure how to reply to a specific post so i'ma do it all here :P

@Ahai64 This shoot change is amazing, definetly a positive change. I did try to go for something like that but my math skills are a bit lacking so I ended up doing what I have now. Only thing I hate is that all my promo videos have the old system and I really don't want to re record lol.
As far as the confusing code, I may have gone a little to crazy on one of my token saving adventures. What I have is def more confusing.

@taxicomics Thanks! I would def be down to somehow merge the carts but currently not sure thats possible. AFAIK I compressed things quite a bit (im sure theres more advanced things I could do).
I'll be honest I did all my play testing on my pc or on my steam deck which im seeing is easier to play then on a touch screen. The strafing per say isnt really strafing, its a bit awkward to use until you get use to it. Its not a perfect system but in testing this felt the easiest for compressing twin stick into single stick and two buttons. I'm always open to suggestions though.

@Wolfe3D I did not realize this was a possibility, if were able to load back and forth between carts that would really add alot to my demake to have all of Stardew Valley in it instead of just the arcade game lol.

Does seem like a match made in heaven @taxicomics @Wolfe3D

In general I tried to stay with the difficulty of the original game in Stardew Valley even though it meant very few people will probably beat the game, which may be a mistake im not 100%. I did reduce the amount of enemies that spawn compared to the original just to try to help compensate for not having twin stick controls.

@Kryptoid98 The way I see it, you don't have to add anything to Prairie King unless you and @taxicomics want to work out some kind of unlockable. Otherwise, taxi needs to code an interface in Pico Valley which saves the player's position and status using dset(), and then loads your game using load() with a breadcrumb called "back to saloon" or whatever (see this post for breadcrumb details). Pico Valley will also need to check those dget() settings at launch to put them back in the saloon.

It's not nothing, gonna cost a few tokens. Highly suggest you check out this post for some tips, @taxicomics.

Good luck!

@Kryptoid98 - I've never played the original before, but I did enjoy playng this gane. Its frantic and fun and once you get into the rythm of it and the feel of the controls, it is pretty rewarding. It does feel difficult at first, but with a bit of perseverance

I do have some criticisms that you can ignore if you wish:

• The enemies seem to appear at the edge of the screen. It feels like they should spawn just off screen and walk on.
• The hit-boxes seem unduly harsh. I think I am just skimming past an enemy and I suddenly die. Maybe they could be adjusted slightly.
• There's no score or progress indicator in the game. It seems to be a bit odd that I am playing it to see how long I can play for. Does it have an ending?
• At game over, there is the option to retry or quit - do the different options do anything?
• I don't understand some of the power-ups and the icons don't give much of a clue as to the effects. Maybe adding this as an instruction page within the game or add it to the description of the cart
• The shop power-ups are also very difficult to obtain and don't seem to do much. I got the gun and didn't see a noticeable change. Either the prices should be lower or coins should be more freely available.

Sorry if the criticism seems harsh, but I did enjoy playing this and wonder if a few tweaks could make the game more accessible. Maybe the game as it currently is now, is entirely in the spirit of the original. Regardless I had fun and will be back for more.

@phil No worries, I appreciate the constructive criticism. So for the most part alot of what you mentioned I did to stay true to the source material.

• Difficulty - I debated on this, the original game is incredibly difficult and only a small amount of people have been able to beat it because of this. I debated whether I wanted to make it easier so more people could beat it or try to keep its original extreme difficulty. I ended up doing a bit of a in between to compensate for not having twin stick controls, but I also solo tested my game which is always a mistake as the dev tends to be good at there own game and think its easier then it is :P
• Enemies appearing at the edge instead of moving into screen is how the original game spawned in enemies so I emulated that.
• This is good to know, I do do pixel tight collision testing on enemies because I dont like sprites overlapping, but in hind sight I can see how this could be annoying.
• No score or progress indicator. So there is a progress indicator in the timer in the upper right corner for the length of each screen before you get to move on to the next screen. I stuck pretty close to the source on this, but also because there is a ending.
• Retry/Quit - So ya I kinda put these in because thats what the end game screen looks like in the original game. But due to it being a mini game in Stardew Valley, Quit brought you back to the main game and retry starts you from the beginning. So for the demake they do essentially do the same thing, retry just starts the game right away instead of bring you to the title screen. However i'm now thinking I may change a bit from the original and make retry start you at the beginning of the current level your on instead of restarting the whole game.
• Powerups - The shop powerups also didnt feel to noticable in the original, but probably even less so in my demake since the 128x128 pixel screen limited me alot in terms of the speed increases. The prices are copied over from the OP except for boots, which was a 3 step incremental buy but since I can really only offer normal speed, or super fast I kinda combined them all into one and upped the price. The ammo box is the most noticable as its a direct increase to damage. The gun confusingly enough is actually fire rate increase, which I would agree isnt the most noticable until you upgrade multiple times, I will prolly increase the upgrade to be more effective.
  I was originally going to put in a powerup description screen but had scrapped the idea when I didnt think I would have enough tokens. I will take a double check at this now.

I can see a good amount of the problems are coming from me trying to stay to true to the original, which i'm realizing it may be ok for me to stray a little bit from the path for a more enjoyable experience.

Well I must say I played the original quite a bit and I appreciate how true to that you tried to stay. Even with the tough difficulty! Well done!

Thanks. it can always be hard to know where to draw the line between being true to the source material and making sure its still going to be a fun experience as a demake.

Little update:

Looking back at old code is always very painful. I cleaned it up a little and saved a few tokens-going back and forth works and there might be enough room to squeeze in a proper return to the saloon. I'll keep you updated.

Oh wow, this is so cool! How do you exit from Prairie King back to Pico Valley? Is there anything I have to add?

Soooooooooo it is done.

You can try it for yourself here.

How does this work, you ask?

This included a lot more things than i initially thought. The player can do a lot of stuff in a day. They can romance the townspeople, plant crops, raise their livestock and collect milk&eggs, add stuff to the sales bin, buy more livestock, buy upgrades for their farm AND play Journey of the Prairie King. Somehow the game needs to keep track of all that progress so you can't trick the system by going back and forth between the games. And all of it only used 2 DGET slots(the only two remaining). Oi!

What is happening under the hood?

The game uses one of those slots to save the time of day-a lot of ingame mechanics use that information to adjust themselves and the game will spawn the player straight into the game, skipping the menu. The player can use the "stop playing" menu item to go back, and they will seamlessly respawn at the arcade in the new saloon.
The other slot is used to store the value of wares added to the sales bin before starting the arcade. Otherwise a big sale might get deleted, which would be very unpleasant for the player.

Restrictions of the implementation

• The chicken and cows check the time of day value to see whether they should produce their products or not. That does mean that you have to collect their goods before you start the arcade.
• You have to give any gift you want to give that day before you start the arcade, the NPCs will not accept gifts after you came back from the arcade.
• You will need to rewater any plants you might have planted because there was absolutely no room to store that. (well there would be a big workaround, but the necessary changes outweigh the minor inconvenience of having to water again)
• Your energy gets reset! (after all video games can be a nice weigh to recharge after a long day of work, so this is absolutely a gamedesign choice and not a question of saving space)

Final thoughts

This was so much fun and I am very happy that you agreed to this collaboration. Also a thanks to the community for the helpful tips(especially the breadcrumb-hint).
I do hope that a lot of people get to try this now, and I really really wish that ConcernedApe sees this, so feel free to share this everywhere you go. I will also, if @Kryptoid98 allows, add this new version to the itch.io page of this game.
Have a great weekend and fun playing our demakes!

Oh heck ya! This goes way past my wildest imagination of what I thought possible when I started making the Prairie King demake. It's so cool to be able to go to the arcade machine in @taxicomics Pico Valley and see my game start!
Please to post about this anywhere and everywhere, Thanks so much for making this happen! Sounded like it was quite the undertaking to get the room for it lol