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sloum

Musician, Writer, Developer, Builder.
I like making things.

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Cart #41817 | 2017-06-20 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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Game Menu

x or z - select a menu choice
left or right - navigate the menu choices

Menu choices:

  1. Arcade - As the level increases so does the arena size and the number of enemies
  2. Blitz - A never ending stream of 25 enemies all at once
  3. Info - provides control info and game credit
  4. Story - Gives a brief backstory

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Main Game

x - Fire weapon
z - hold z while using left or right to get more precise (but slower) aim/turning
up - accelerate
down - decelerate/reverse
left/right - rotate/turn/aim

At your disposal are a radar and health bar int he upper right hand corner.
Collect hearts to recharge your health.
Kill as many enemy tanks as possible.

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Screen Shots

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In general the game isnt particularly difficult, but I have found it relaxing and fun to play. Hopefully some of you will as well. :)

EDIT: After some thought, I rescaled the difficulty. Health powerups drop slightly less frequently, enemies fire slightly faster, enemy seek range has been increased, and enemy count scales higher/faster than it did. I think the game is more engrossing with these changes. Though I was criticized for making a shmup with one hit player death...so maybe I just scale things too difficult? I dunno. Hard to tell. This one still feels really easy to me.

P#41809 2017-06-20 14:19 ( Edited 2017-06-22 20:24)

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Cart #41473 | 2017-06-09 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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I had posted this in the work in progress category a bit ago. I have made some improvements and feel like I am at a place with it where it should be submitted to 'carts' proper (changes include updated boss 2 death sequence and a few tweaks to general gameplay that make things run smoother and have a more polished look).

Proxima-B is a space shooter featuring:
• Two distinct shooter levels
• Two boss fights
• A fun/atmospheric soundtrack
• Two powerups: spread shot and super shot (double damage and larger bullet)
• A platforming epilogue (Which exists mostly for storyline/gag purposes (in that level you can press up for a jet-pack effect, and X to open doors).

Screenshots (I left the boses out of the screenshots, to leave a bit of surprise):

Notes on this version: The game is meant to be fairly hard and quirky. I got feedback from friends and forum members dismayed at the lack of rapid fire while moving. I gave serious thought to switching it, but found the game to be WAAAY too easy with the inclusion of true rapid fire, so it has been left as is: you can hold fire to rapid fire while not moving but there is a bit of delay for it to kick in, so doing it while moving does not work and you will have to tap it out to fire while moving. In general, I suggest going for accuracy over bullet spam. Also: let things pass you. You advance by killing, but you don't need to kill everything. I took some advice from a forum poster that suggested (thanks for the advice!) that the game over sequence be shortened: you can now hit X immediately to continue, regardless of whether or not the end game animation has completed. Finally, Proxima-B is definitely easier and more fun with a USB controller plugged in.

Have fun and enjoy the game!

P#41475 2017-06-09 12:27 ( Edited 2017-06-09 17:03)

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Cart #41516 | 2017-06-10 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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Isola is a board game (sometimes also known as Isolation or Solitude). After my last cart I decided I wanted to try a puzzle game or some kind of game that wasn't action oriented. After doing some research I found Isola, and it seemed like I could program an ai for it pretty easily. So I did. This was my first experience programming an ai that adapts to the player's moves. My previous game was a shooter with set motion and random starting points for enemies. It was an interesting experience. I think I'd like to try more complex move trees and point systems for a cart at some point.

The ai will not likely challenge anyone for long, but it will win games against casual players and should be a mild challenge for first timers with Isola.

The rules are included in the cart. Games tend to go pretty quickly. The two player mode uses only one key set and just swaps what piece that keyset controls. I can add alternate keys if people want.

This was a quick turnaround and I was well under the token and size limits, so I have not optimized the code much at all, but it should be mostly clear what is happening for anyone that is curious.

I hope y'all enjoy the game!

Update 1: I fixed a situation in which the computer opponent would cheat. The only other change I may make would be to improve the ai's play when destroying tiles...but it performs alright at present, so I may just keep it as is.

Update 2: In response to user feedback I have made it so that either X or Z can be used to move/destroy a tile. Rather than having those two things separated out (one for each button). I have also done a very mild improvement to the ai. It will now score the available destructions and when there are multiple with the same score it will pick randomly from them. The previous behavior was to always pick the first one (which made play more predictable). I still plan to improve the ai more and will potentially add an easy or hard mode (though with the present code structure for the ai, Im not sure how hard it will really be, but it will be better than the easy mode version).

Update 3: Hopefully one of the last updates for awhile. I have slightly improved ai performance. When possible it will prefer to destroy a tile that is useful to the player, but not useful to itself. It still does not see the board or game in their entirety, only move sets....but this should increase its difficulty a fraction. I would think that most decent players will win at least 60-70% of the time. I think this should be a good game for kids or people that do not play a lot of abstract strategy games though. I may return to it at some point to re-structure the ai, but for now this will do for what I was wanting to achieve/learn. Thanks in advance for playing.

P#41361 2017-06-07 16:58 ( Edited 2017-06-10 17:17)

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I know most people aren't using the "User Blogs" section of this website for random thoughts and updates style blogging. But it doesn't make much sense to me to blog about it elsewhere if I don't already have a presence somewhere doing so (which I do not). So I have decided to do the occasional blog update of my Pico-8 coding here.

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I have more or less finished my space shooter (Proxima B. I posted v0.9 a bit ago, and have finished 0.91 but have yet to update online. It is mostly just bug fixes, and a few additional features (better boss death animation/sound for the level two boss).

I have also tried out a number of different game styles in the interim, just playing around with basic skeletons. The two that I am currently pursuing are a two player board game port and a puzzle platformer.

The puzzle platformer is adventure time themed and will involve the ice king rescuing his beloved penguins, who have become lost in the fire kingdom. At the moment I have basic physics worked out. The movement will be more like turn based movement than the standard running and jumping of a platform game. It will involve creating ice blocks to be able to walk across spaces and allowing the penguins to run up the screen (similar to a lemmings style system). At least, that is the current plan, and I have not worked out all the kinks. Some initial inspiration was taken from the NES game Fire 'N Ice. I am having trouble getting some of the physics I want to work properly (such as ice sticking to other ice and either falling or staying aloft as a group based on at least one piece being on ground or not). Here is a very early GIF:

I'll improve the look and the animation at a later point.

The second game has been developed a bit further. It is currently playable in two player mode. It is an adaptation of Isola, also known as Isolation. Currently, two players can play the game to its conclusion, I will implement an actual check for win state later tonight, but at present the players need to know when the game is over. My plans include a menu for choosing between one and two player mode, as well as a scrolling, or maybe still, rule set. Once I have the two player done I may post the cart, as I think the computer player AI will take me some time to work through.

Does anyone have any advice for AI methods/implementations that function well for pico-8's resources? If I have to I can always just make the AI semi-random with just some basic guidelines. It wouldn't be a challenging player for someone that knew the game, but I could probably make it a challenge for a beginner with a pretty limited codeset.

Here is how it is looking at the moment:

P#41315 2017-06-05 18:55 ( Edited 2017-06-11 19:26)

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