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Cart #caped_feline_arena-4 | 2023-06-06 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License
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Finally "done" :)

> You awake from your rest in the void with a voice repeating in your head.
> It says: 'meow meow meow meow mexow' and you know what must be done:
> It's time to retrieve the book of Magu F'ahn.

You're a cat, you're magical, it's you and your wand against insurmountable odds, cats, and infinite pigeons.

A retro fps with 8 singleplayer maps and 3 "botmatch" maps. Select maps from main menu, all botmatch maps unlocked from the start, singleplayer maps unlock as you complete them.

You can also play this on the PICO-8 BBS

Controls

  • Arrow keys - move (strafe if mouselook enabled)
  • Z/C - strafe/sidestep (hold, then press left and right, unused with mouselook enabled)
  • X - shoot

Note: mouselook does not work on the BBS version. Please use the pico-8 app, or the itch.io version of CFA

Credits

​License​

Source is licensed under The 2 Clause BSD License.
Assets are licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International​ ​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/​

Old bits and bobs from 2020-2021 original post


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
P#78599 2020-06-28 05:12 ( Edited 2023-06-21 23:07)

All Comments

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

Is there any way to switch weapons, besides running out of ammo?

P#130863 2023-06-12 20:40

1) i don't know where the hell am i going because all blocks are same if there's map it's easier but when i played this i just wandering over and over again and memorized map
2) no cross hair, difficult to aim
3) no way to recognize enemy behind me until i get shot
4) have to memorize all of enemies, hard to avoid bullet due to limitation

https://armorgames.com/darkraid-delilah-game/19310 i think this can be good reference, if you making doom like stuff

P#130932 2023-06-14 10:43 ( Edited 2023-06-14 15:07)

@joealarson no, running out of ammo or picking up a different weapon is the only way. I did this to try to support to pico-8s 6 button layout (not including the pause button, although I know this was an option). Tried to balance things that there wasn't a "bad" choice, but broadly in terms of damage/ease of use it goes bombwand > chainwand / double-barreled wand (tied) > starting wand.

@OWD5238 most encounters require at least some circle strafing - this should minimise getting jumped by enemies/them getting behind you. I'll patch in the keyboard controls to honour the sensitivity setting (based on the original comment). The directional damage indicator + enemy barks upon "seeing" you are alerts that an unseen enemy has engaged you.

Thank you both for playing!

P#130957 2023-06-14 22:09

This is so cool. I love the enemy sprites

P#131167 2023-06-20 15:35

i really like this, although the mouselock doesnt work? im on a web player btw if that changes anything

P#131198 2023-06-21 15:39

@PUNKWEIGHTINTRO Thanks! They started life in a much older game of mine and then served as placeholder until I just designed the theme of the game around cats.

@851523 Thanks! Had to double-check about the mouselook, but there is no mouse support in the BBS version. I checked POOM and Trial Of The Sorcerer and they behave the same. Trial Of The Sorcerer instructions note that mouse controls do not work - I will update above. They do work however on the itch version - https://powersaurus.itch.io/caped-feline-arena or in the pico-8 app itself.

P#131207 2023-06-21 23:06

Very cool, feels like a fever dream. The graphics, the trippy music, everything's dark and those scary giant cats awaiting behind every corner. Nice!

P#137848 2023-11-24 07:30

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