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Trog
Ladybug Demake
by Trog
Dinky Kong
by Heracleum
The Carpathian
by Trog
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Cart #trogfontfamily1-1 | 2023-07-29 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License
12

Five free fonts!

Need a small, legible, variable width typeface?

Trog Font is a base 5x5 font which features upper and lowercase (Puny Mode) glyphs as well as all of the default Pico-8 Japanese characters with adjusted widths. From a 1-pixel wide “i” to a 7-pixel wide “M” the viariable width property allows the glyphs to exist in their most natural forms (for a 5 px high font, that is).

Need something chunkier?

Trog Bold has heavier versions of all western characters and symbols (and also contains the same default Japanese characters as Trog Font).

Need to shout?

Trog Caps uses all of the base Trog Font characters but replaces the lowercase Puny Mode characters with all caps Trog Bold characters - perfect for emphasizing important words.

New - 6-pixel high Trog Tall and Trog Tall Bold

Slightly taller versions of the primary fonts with less compressed lower case letters.

Easy to use

Just un-comment out the font of your choice and use \14 in front of your text. That’s it.

Special thanks to @zep for Pico-8 in general and for enabling variable width fonts, to @SmellyFishstiks for his most excellent variable-width font editor used to create these fonts, and to the lovely and talented people of the LazyDevs Discord for their encouragement. ^_^

Credit me if you’d like, or use the name “Trog Font” in your code comments, or tag me in your cart post - I’d love to see the fonts in use! Enjoy!

NEW - TROG TALL & TALL BOLD FONTS:

Notes:

Arcade games back in the 80s, for a while, had a 7x7 font that quickly became ubiquitous. While different companies had slight variations in certain letters, the bulk of the glyphs were very similar to one another. I longed for a font for Pico-8 that was different from the default one but which had (in my opinion) the potential to fill a similar role as that old, easy-to-read, arcade font.

However, a 7x7 sized font seemed too large to use with Pico’s 128x128 resolution. A 5x5 font seemed to be the smallest size which offered the fewest overall compromises in letter form. I developed a fixed width version of Trog Font aiming for larger open forms wherever possible. The intent was never to recreate arcade fonts themselves at this scale, but to create a new font that worked best within the 5x5 space restrictions - legibility was more important than replication. It should be easy to read and as style-neutral as possible.

I expanded on the idea by making lowercase versions as well. These ran into a little more difficulty as the 4-pixel “x-height” of the letter required more compromises in form. I settled on a 1-pixel ascender, 4-pixel x-height, and a 1-pixel descender to keep the leading to a minimum. Overall it worked out to my liking.

After finishing all of the western glyphs I had the idea of making a bold version as the large open center areas would allow for a wider stroke. The bold version came together rather quickly and I was pleased with the result.

With the creation of a tool which allowed one to adjust pixel widths I readjusted glyphs which had been either stretched or squished earlier to work within a fixed width. Finally, I added in the default Japanese glyphs and adjusted their widths as well.

In short, I stewed over these generic fonts in order that they remain as consistent as possible and convey little, if, anything, to a game’s feel or tone. I feel that, for the constraints of the size, they are the best that they can be in this regard. And, like those early arcade game fonts, these utilitarian fonts needn’t be confined to just a few select games or genres - they were solely meant for the clear conveyance of speech. And speech, after all, was meant to be free.

P#132295 2023-07-23 20:43 ( Edited 2023-07-29 20:50)

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Cart #ladybug-2 | 2022-11-13 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License
25

How to Play

Use the directional keys to move the “Lady Bug” 🐞 and eat all the white seeds (dots) on the course.

Don’t let the 🐞 be eaten by the predatory “Enemy Bugs” 🪲 that chase the 🐞 around the screen. Use the turnstiles to allow the 🐞 to dodge the 🪲.

The 🪲 cannot turn the turnstiles. If the 🪲 hits a 💀, it disappears and is sent back to the bug box in the center of the coarse.

When the 🐞 hits the skull 💀 or is eaten up by a 🪲 , it disappears.

When players lose all the 🐞, the game is over.

Scoring

The scores awarded when various things are eaten up by the players’ 🐞 are as follows :

Seeds
10 points

Feature
🔵 100 points when blue
🟡 300 points when yellow
🔴 800 points when red

Vegetable
🥕 1000 - 9500 points

🥒1000 … 🍆1500 … 🥕2000 … ?

Features

SPECIAL
When all S-P-E-C-I-A-L letters (red) have been eaten up, players are awarded a Vegetable Harvest bonus stage.

EXTRA
When all E-X-T-R-A letters (yellow) have been eaten up, another 🐞 is awarded.

BONUS
Each time the blue 💙 is eaten on a level, the point values multiplies by X2, X3, X5. The bonus resets at the beginning of each level.

Did you know?...

Lady Bug was first released by Universal Co., Ltd in 1981. It came in both standup cabinet and sit-down cocktail table forms. The “E-X-T-R-A” collectible mechanic from the game was inspired by pinball machine functions and was later used in Universal’s Mr. Do! and it’s many sequels.

Home ports of the game were made for the Intellivision, ColecoVision, as “Fighting Bug” on the Casio PV-1000. Clones came out under the title “Doodle Bug” for the TRS-80 Color Computer, under Bumble Bee (replaced character with a bumblebee) for the BBC Micro, Acorn Electron, and Commodore 64. A number of homebrew versions for the Atari 2600 (an official release for that console was announced but never came out) have been made. A couple of different Amiga versions also exist. And, of course, this Pico-8 version joins the unofficial ranks as well.

Lady Bug was the first video game with a female protagonist. The arcade cabinets in the U.S. featured various illustrations of women dressed up in fairy-like insect costumes. Presumably, that may imply an all-female cast of villains as well. Cabinets elsewhere may have only shown cartoon ladybugs.

The Lady Bug depicted in the game appears to have been styled after an herbivore ladybug of the Epilachninae subfamily. They are known to feed on the leaves, grain, and seeds of various crops, including most of the vegetables featured in the game - it appears their types weren’t just picked at random!

Completing SPECIAL on the original arcade version won you a free game and featured the Lady Bug character attending a human wedding - likely a reference to the song used in the game (see below). The Vegetable Harvest bonus stage was first included in the Colecovision home port in 1982 to replace the free game reward.

The tune which plays at the beginning of a level is a snippet of a folk song called Tentoumushi no Samba, or The Ladybug Samba, originally by Cherish, released in as a single in 1973 in Japan. The song features a dream wedding at a little church in a forest that was attended by a bunch of ladybugs in red, blue, and yellow costumes dancing the samba. The song was popular in Japan and was even played at some weddings in the years after the song’s release.

Universal Co., Ltd., the original Japanese company that made the Ladybug arcade game, as well as 80’s arcade hits like Mr. Do!, and many others, is still around today and continues to make cabinets and games for casinos and for entertainment.

This Pico-8 de-make was made by an amateur enthusiast (and his son!) just for fun and out of a fondness for the original arcade game and because doing so posed a challenge for the programmer’s coding skills (or lack thereof). It is the programmer’s second completed video game. The original arcade game has all but faded into obscurity and it was the programmers intention to shine a light on the original creation both for its excellent gameplay, innovation, and its historical significance in the realm of video games. Please buy the original game or any of it’s official ports!

The programmer of this de-make does not claim copyright over the game’s original material or ported material in any way and does not wish to take credit for another’s original ideas and hard work. I have not uploaded this cart as a Creative Commons license in order to help prevent its use/reuse elsewhere. If this de-make upsets the current copyright holder of the original game in any way (the programmer has attempted to track this information down but even Univeral themselves replied that it was unclear in this instance), please contact me and I will promptly delete this post. I do not wish to harm anyone’s business or career nor make any profit from this hobby de-make. I will not be posting this on any other site or platform nor do I give permission for the cart to be posted elsewhere (save for what permissions were necessary to post this cart on this site - I hold the site owners blameless in this matter). I am unclear on what portions of this game would and would not count towards making such a claim (no line of the original code nor the code of any port was used, nor even seen) and so I’m just trying to be as clear of my intentions (and lack of clarity on these matters) as possible. Thank you for understanding and my sincere apologies ahead of time should there be a problem with how I have handled this - I’m very, very new at this.

Compromises/Changes to the Original: The resolution and colors were changed to Pico-8’s resolution and available colors. The pixel art is not from the original game and the sprite graphics were created entirely from scratch by the programmer. The music of the original was recreated by ear and may not be an exact match to the original. The “flowers” (dots) in the original were replaced with smaller “seeds” in order to have them still appear centered properly in the course’s passages and intersections. The wrap-around timer bar surrounding the course was reduced to a bar across the top due to the limited space available for other UI. Turnstiles change instantly from one position to the other as animating them to show a diagonal transition frame proved too difficult. The Vegetable Harvest board originally had no dots on the board, only vegetables, but it proved easier to leave them in. Pathfinding to try and mimic the seeking behaviors of the enemy bugs in the original game ran into problems and so far has not been implemented. Behaviors of the enemy bugs were made up from scratch and likely do not match the original at all. For a more challenging and authentic gameplay experience, I, again, highly encourage you to purchase the original game or one of its many official ports.

EDIT: I should also give credit to both LazyDevs and Nerdy Teachers as, again, I found versions of their tutorial functions helpful in building this game. If you haven't checked out their respective YouTube channels, please do so!

P#120592 2022-11-13 05:23 ( Edited 2022-11-13 19:21)

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Good eeeevening!

Delve deep into the Carpathian Count's castle and destroy its evil once and for all! But beware! Bats, zombies, witches, skeletons and more plague his castle's many chambers. Clear out these ghouls and douse all the torches to advance. Then it's time say lights out to the Undead Count himself!

Hi all. I'm a graphic designer in my 50s and this is my first complete game (be gentle, heh). I was inspired by the LazyDevs Shmup tutorial and wanted to make something that felt a little arcade-y but which was a platformer as well. Most of the code came from following the Shmup tutorial code and solutions, coupled with some tips on creating a platformer from Nerdy Teachers. Honestly, I don't know how to categorize this game. Clearly it draws inspiration from Castlevania, but is a single screen wave/level/chamber at a time rather than side-scrolling.

I had a lot of fun creating this. The palette changes required a LOT of planning but it all worked out, and creating the sprites for it all was very satisfying. There are countless things I probably can do better on, code-wise, but I'm happy just to have completed it under the token limit, heh.

Have fun playing and see if you can defeat the Count!

Cart #the_carpathian-6 | 2022-11-17 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License
37

Version 1.6
Fixed Issues:

  • Collision improved (but some diagonal movement sacrificed)
  • Added a pause at the start of a level and negated prior movement
  • Corrected a boundary break issue at the top of screen
  • Dagger throw animation improvements
  • No floating skeletons (minor enemy placement/movement fixes)
  • Map soft lock pit area fixed
  • 9-minutes-in total-game-lock problem fixed
  • Added a very brief wait timer so enemies don't fire immediately upon waking at the start of a chamber
  • The Count health boosted and phase three slightly nerfed.
  • Improved title screen, exteriors, logo, label - thanks to Heracleum's one_off_gfx tool.
P#115916 2022-08-17 03:32 ( Edited 2022-11-17 06:01)

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