Archbishopjeff [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

The Encirclement of the Damned

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 19:22:34 UTC

The Encirclement of the Damned 2

by Archbishopjeff

[Click to Play]

EDIT: fixed bug and added title screen
old version:

This is a shabby prototype of a combat system.
I suppose the main influences are Ocarina of Time and Golden Sun.
Maybe the over-the-shoulder perspective is heresy on a platform like this, I was thinking it's a bit like pokemon though.
I think the most interesting feature is the way your mobility is limited. your position is locked to north/south/east/west and you can move between a near/far plane, like this:

I didn't really explore this mechanic that much, but I think it could be really fun.

features:

narcoleptic skeleton with exploding legs
'mode 7' floor rendering
buggy 2D particle effects
rad glowing pentagram with authentic frame-rate drops

how to beat the guy:

keep your distance from the skeleton or he will bite you, unless he is asleep
the bat attack and the skull attack can be dodged by dashing left or right with good timing
for the earthquake attack you must counterattack, it will put him straight to sleep
Once he is asleep you can hack his legs off, after that he is helpless
there is a jump attack as well, but it's not much use in this fight

I originally planned to make it a survival/adventure thing with player progression and backtracking and all sorts of cool stuff, but I ran out of tokens just on this! Including polygons and particle effects was definitely a mistake, I might remove all of that and carry on with it in the future.
The gameplay was supposed to revolve around the idea that each monster would need a special strategy to beat it, and you'd have to look it up in the instruction book.
There's a pretty hefty 'engine' behind it as well. I'm sort-of happy with it, but I'm still looking for ways to cut it down and looking for a better way to sequence things.

tumblr.com/blog/chocolateoutline

Punch Card Computer

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 15:21:46 UTC

Punch Card Computer

by Archbishopjeff

[Click to Play]

Hello, I'm back with more punch cards ;)
This time it's a simulated punch card computer (sort of)

If you're not a programmer, you may want to read this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer#Programs

This isn't a game, it's not fun, and I don't even think it has much educational value, but it might entertain those interested in computer science for literally 5 seconds.

The point is that you can actually program the computer in machine code (a very limited instruction set with 8 instructions). I wouldn't recommend doing so yourself though, there are severe limitations that mean it can pretty much only do HELLO WORLD.

Features:

	scroll left to view the computer gubbins: press X to play/stop, use up/down to change the simulation fequency, or step the simulation with z.
	Memory - 96 bytes of memory, displayed as hex. The blue line indicates bytes that are mapped to the screen. Player 2 controls are mapped to the bytes indicated by the red line.
	Registers - 8 single byte registers, displayed in decimal
	Info - information about the next instruction to execute. (program counter, opcode, parameter 1, parameter 2)
	Screen - displays the first 48 bytes in memory, encoded in the latin-1 character set. It can also display box drawing characters starting from 160.
	scroll right to edit cards: up/down to add/delete cards (at last index), left/right to go next/previous card, x to select a card. Once you've selected a card you can use up/down/left/right to change the instruction opcode and parameters. As you can see, the whole instruction is encoded as binary onto the punch card (though this is purely cosmetic). Cards are saved once you press Z to go back out of edit mode.

So it seems like it might be useful for learning about programming, but there are a few problems:

	The card punching interface is very awkward. You can't swap, copy, or delete cards. I do actually like that there's no typing though.
	You can only have 48 cards. That's because I'm saving the cards to userdata.
	The instruction set is too limited. There's no branch instruction.
	Also, I don't think it even represents how punch cards were actually used. Apparently the 'binary format' was not the most commonly used. And besides, the visuals suggest that it's set in the personal computer era, so people would have been using FORTRAN or something by then, not machine code.

The instruction set (mnemonics are actually wrong in the cartridge, but they are correct here. sorry):

opcode	mnemonic	description	parameter 1	parameter 2
0	NOP	do nothing
1	ADD	add register a and b, and put result in register 7	register a	register b
2	SUB	subtract a and b, and put result in register 7	register a	register b
3	RL	(read literal) read a into register b	value a	register b
4	R	read into register a from memory at b	register a	address b
5	WL	(write literal) write a to memory at b	value a	address b
6	W	write value from register a to memory at address in register b	register a	register b
7	JAL	(jump and link) write PC to register b and jump to card in regster a	register a	register b

EDIT: totally forgot you won't have my userdata! The hello world program is in my userdata. now how should I share it... guess I'll just paste it here. sorry

jeff_punchcards.p8d.txt: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the hello world program:
-- initialization
3 1 1 -- set r1 as '1' (used to 'add 1' to things)
3 5 2 -- set r2 as '5' (the location of our 'function')
3 8 3 -- set r3 as 8 (the end of the 'function')
7 3 5 -- jump over the function, leave litter in r5
-- 'print' function
6 4 7 -- print r4 at r7
1 1 7 -- increment r7
7 6 5 -- jump back, leave litter in r5
-- print the characters...
3 72 4 -- 'H'
7 2 6 -- jump to function, leave link in r6
3 69 4 -- 'E'
7 2 6
3 76 4 -- 'L'
7 2 6
3 76 4 -- 'L'
7 2 6
3 79 4 -- 'O'
7 2 6
3 32 4 -- ' '
7 2 6
3 87 4 -- 'W'
7 2 6
3 79 4 -- 'O'
7 2 6
3 82 4 -- 'R'
7 2 6
3 76 4 -- 'L'
7 2 6
3 68 4 -- 'D'
7 2 6

Jacquard Loom

Thu, 26 May 2016 08:25:46 UTC

Jacquard Loom

by Archbishopjeff

[Click to Play]

A pretty stupid mechanical loom that I spent way too long making.
The pattern is programmed using the tags on the punch card sprites, so you have to download it and 'punch the cards' yourself in the sprite editor if you want to change the pattern.

There's a lot of room for improvement, but eventually the futility of making a mechanical loom simulator really set in.

Occulous

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 19:58:36 UTC

Occulous

by Archbishopjeff

[Click to Play]

The gothic adventures of Occulous the possessed eye ball.
Just a short intro to something I am unlikely to finnish.
The severed head at the beggining might be a bit graphic... I dunno. Sorry if it offends anyone!

EDIT: Thanks for the nice comments :D The main reason I don't want to finnish it is because at the moment the only gameplay you can have in voxatron is shooting stuff and to be honest i'm not interested in that. If you want to shoot stuff you could play the dozens of levels alreads on BBS. You know exactly what would happen after I set the scene, so it wouldn't be fun making it.

However I will finnish it if enough scripting options are added to let me make puzzles and animated objects. Then I can break up the atmospheric gameplay and it won't be so monotonous to make.

Night Of The Living Dead

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:24:05 UTC

Night Of The Living Dead

by Archbishopjeff

[Click to Play]

concept