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Cart #caped_feline_arena-3 | 2020-07-12 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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I'm still working on this (-300- nope - 5 tokens left :D ) - let me know what you think here or on my Twitter - there might be bugs and/or unexplainable weirdness!

You're a cat, you're magical, you're in a duel with the finest feline magic practitioners the realm has to offer. Grab your wand and enter the arena!

Controls

  • Arrow keys - move
  • X - strafe/sidestep (press left and right)
  • Z/C - shoot

Use the PICO-8 menu to disable AI to wander round the maps, and to toggle overhead view.

What's new?

12 July 2020

FIXED crash bug when dropping the quad

11 July 2020

  • ADD single player red+blue keys+doors!!!! Check single player test map for an example
  • FIXED showing scoreboard upon being frogged in single player.
  • No more tokens left!

09 July 2020

  • ADD light viewbob
  • ADD damage indicator
  • ADD new map Tower Of Confusion
  • ADD basic single player map support (with sample map)
  • ADD 1 second delay on scoreboard
  • ADD 1 second invulnerability on respawn
  • CHANGED cat AI tries to find a wand if possible/pick up your stuff after frogging
  • CHANGED player movement
  • CHANGED minor texture improvements
  • FIXED Particles obey zbuffer
  • FIXED Sounds cutting off
  • FIXED Cats using incorrect palette when far away

Since April (v early itch.io release) I have:

  • Added several maps
  • Rewrote chunks of the graphics for more speed and more complex geometry
    -- diagonal walls
    -- working overhang textures
    -- faster ceiling rendering
    -- tline() floors/sky
    -- tall ceiling indoor spaces
    -- doubled texture limit from 16 to 32
  • Added 3 extra wands, and items
  • Improved sounds
  • Better AI
  • Better controls

Still to do

  • More maps
  • Map editing guide
  • More sounds
  • More textures

Credits

​License​

All source and assets are licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International​ ​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

P#78599 2020-06-28 05:12 ( Edited 2022-07-16 12:19)

Impressive - the game plays well with keyboard only and cats are smart/stupid enough to make it fun!
Some levels are quite a feat with a raycasting engine fitting in a single cart - kudos!

Gameplay wise:

  • add some hit marker (right/left/back/front) to avoid being killed from an unseen enemy
  • water blocks player, texture is not clear (imho)

Tech/code remarks:

  • you've gazillion of tokens to reclaim using short variable declaration:
-- no
local a=1
local b=2
-- yes
local a,b=1,2
  • particles are showing through walls
  • ceilings should have been done with tline! this is tanking cpu
P#78602 2020-06-28 07:43

@freds72 - brilliant feedback - thank you!

The hit marker is something I'm planning on adding. I'll also take a look at improving the water texture. The particles beng visible through walls should be an easy fix, the z buffer just needs checking (wasn't doing it for performance reasons, but I'll see if I have the budget to do it).

The ceilings/tline() thing is a bit tricky. Because I do a second raycast pass for overhangs/doorways/outdoors-indoors transitions, there is always a chance I will draw over some of the ceiling with the second pass.

e.g.

Hmmm, now thinking about it, maybe a vertical tline() solution could work. That would probably save some cpu on the floor too. Going to try that.

Tokens - thank you - seems so obvious now! Off to do that now.

P#78606 2020-06-28 09:46

I understand the issue for floors/ceilings - it was the main design drivers for my doom engine (had to depart from ‘traditional’ bsp rendering to make better use of tline). note that horizontal tline will break your distance shading :/

P#78607 2020-06-28 09:55

@freds72 - changing local variable declarations saved over 100 tokens without msking things totally unreadable - thanks again :)

You're right about the vertical tlines not working withe distance shading, but I removed it for ceilings anyway, so in theory would look fine. Would need to profile whether 128 small tlines is better than <128 wide ones.

I'm looking forward to your DOOM engine and enjoying the progress so far!

P#78629 2020-06-28 20:09

Awesome graphics and fun theme / concept! Really feels like a good arena shooter with originality.

I wonder if shooting / not shooting near the enemies could affect their awareness of you, or if there could be a delay when holding the shoot button, if you'd like to discourage holding down the shoot-button at all times with the default spell. The other spells do provide a nice variety.

I was missing the score board for a while, because I'd always be shooting when I died (even when not holding). Maybe respawn could be another button or a button combo? Or e.g. have a menu option to show the scores at any point.

(I also find moving a bit tricky but that's just me being spoiled by modern control schemes I guess :D)

Cool stuff, looking forward to another or the final update :)

P#78747 2020-07-01 09:19

@noppa thank you for the feedback!

At the moment cats target the nearest opponent, and select a new target if they can't reach their current one after a few seconds. If you hit them, there is a chance that they will target you. I am continuing to tweak the weapon speed + damage, it was loosely based on the Quake 1 weapon profiles https://quake.fandom.com/wiki/Weapon_(Q1) . I might make the starting wand slower to fire, but with higher powered fireballs, so that you have to consider your aim+when to shoot.

Related, and regarding the movement, I changed it just before this release, by decreasing strafe speed+strafe speed friction so you'd start sliding once strafing allowing you to circle strafe (which the cats can do, with high effectiveness). I'm not sure it is 100% a success yet. Before I added this though, I was making the fireballs less powerful as cats were too good at targeting you, so I might have messed the balance up.

The scoreboard - you're right, I'm going to add a 0.5-1 second delay before accepting any input you see the scores.

P#78758 2020-07-01 15:57

Nice wizard/cat mash up ! the raycast engine is cool.
As a early doom player, I find the game hard :D (Yes i admit..) but I should take some more times to learn the maps and weapons.

My suggestions :
-I find there is too much momentum when turning
-You could put strafe on player 2 left/right buttons
-One or two seconds invulnerability while respawning could help some times

Did you try Tripplefox shellsort ? You could gain some CPU and tokens, but lose a bit of precision
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2477

P#78803 2020-07-02 20:28

@dhostin Thanks! I have a build nearly ready to go with updates based on all the suggestions above. Will upload tomorrow with details. I'm going to leave strafe as a toggle though, I'm keen to stick to the one set of controls for this project.

I didn't know about shellsort! I picked Morgan3D's one from that thread as it was "state of the art" at the time, and never changed it (see extremely old git log below :D ). I will probably stick with it at this point, unless I get desperate for tokens.

P#79021 2020-07-07 21:32 ( Edited 2020-07-07 21:33)

Uploaded a new version with the following changes:

  • ADD light viewbob
  • ADD damage indicator
  • ADD new map Tower Of Confusion
  • ADD basic single player map support (with sample map)
  • ADD 1 second delay on scoreboard
  • ADD 1 second invulnerability on respawn
  • CHANGED cat AI tries to find a wand if possible/pick up your stuff after frogging
  • CHANGED player movement
  • CHANGED minor texture improvements
  • FIXED Particles obey zbuffer
  • FIXED Sounds cutting off
  • FIXED Cats using incorrect palette when far away
P#79102 2020-07-09 21:21

New version, with the major addition of keys, vital for a cool single player map!

  • ADD single player red+blue keys+doors!!!! Check single player test map for an example
  • FIXED showing scoreboard upon being frogged in single player.
  • No more tokens left!

Next up, finishing off a couple of maps and level editing guide.

P#79163 2020-07-11 14:29 ( Edited 2020-07-11 14:29)
1

There aren't enough pico-8 deathmatch arena cat wizard games. So cool.

P#79179 2020-07-12 00:57

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