Nosnibor28 [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Star Wars (Applecart)

Sun, 19 Jan 2020 14:18:48 UTC

Star Wars 0.2

by Nosnibor28

[Click to Play]

UPDATE 2020/01/22

v0.2 adds cockpit graphics, laser sprites (as opposed to continuous lines) with that nice orange-red look, and you can hit the enemies now! No energy limits, enemy fire, or increasing difficulty yet, and the camera is still a little bit janky, but it's coming along.

ORIGINAL POST

I'm mostly posting this so my pals in the Applecart Challenge don't think I'm a total slacker lol. Two things got me this week: a busy schedule and scope creep.

When I first saw the video of Apple II Star Wars, I thought it looked like a distant ancestor of Rebel Assault. So naturally I decided to make my version a little closer to that. I wanted the TIE Fighters to shoot back, too! Instead of just being limited by weapon power, you'll also have a shield meter. Weapon power will regenerate when you aren't firing, but more fighters will appear the longer you fly.

So, grand intentions but not enough time to implement. (sigh) I might skip the next challenge and keep working on this one, though, since it brought up a lot of great memories. I actually started thinking back fondly on Star Wars for the first time in a good while, reminiscing way back to the '90s when all we had was the original trilogy and a bunch of great games like Rebel Assault and Dark Forces...

Anyway! For now you can fly around with the directional buttons (y-inverted, of course). The crosshair kind of "pulls" your ship in that Rebel Assault way, so you can move around just a little. Let go of the controls and your ship will drift back to center. TIEs will come at you, and you can shoot with Z, but you can't hit anything yet. ;-)

Bomber (WIP)

Sat, 11 Jan 2020 22:45:21 UTC

bomber_nosnibor28

by Nosnibor28

[Click to Play]

Submission for this week's Applecart. Thanks again, @dw817, for posting these challenges and including me in the fun! :-)

I didn't have as much time to work on this one as I did on Saucer Invasion, which is why this is still posted as WIP. Graphics are, well... let's just say they could use some work! Also, there's no sound yet.

BUT! You can press X or O (C or Z by default) to drop a bomb, and if it hits the tank you get a nice pretty particle explosion. I don't even have scorekeeping in there lol. The plane goes at a constant speed for the whole game. Each time a tank is spawned it gets a random speed and direction.

Will keep polishing this one as I have time, but it might be mothballed for a bit.

Saucer Invasion (Release)

Sun, 05 Jan 2020 02:56:45 UTC

saucerinv_nosnibor28

by Nosnibor28

[Click to Play]

Submitted for Applecart. Thanks again, @dw817 for the fun challenge! Also thanks to @chizel9000 for the helpful feedback on the WIP.

Saucer Invasion is a game in which you shoot missiles at flying saucers. You can move the silo horizontally across the bottom of the screen and fire vertically at your foes. Your score for hitting a target is based on its height and speed, and there's a penalty for missing. The game ends when you run out of either time or ammunition. This is explained in a big ol' wall-o-text intro at the beginning, in keeping with the spirit of the original 1977 Apple II game that served as inspiration.

Updates from the WIP version:

Flying saucer Y movement is smoother. Instead of jittering randomly, the saucer picks a target Y value and moves toward it. When it reaches the target Y, a new target is randomly selected. This actually makes the game harder, in my opinion!
Smaller missile. Original missile was 8x32 in its first stage and 8x16 in the second stage. This looked awkward, so I shrunk it to 8x24 and 8x12.
Two graphics modes! Select DEFAULT or CLASSIC graphics from the title screen. DEFAULT uses my new sprites, while CLASSIC draws the elements each frame using LINE and RECTFILL (just like the good old days).

Have fun! :-)

Saucer Invasion

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 19:33:12 UTC

saucerinv_nosnibor28_20200101

by Nosnibor28

[Click to Play]

Hello and Happy New Year!

I'm new to PICO-8 but I've been dabbling with coding and game development for most of my life. So far, I'm really impressed with this platform and the community around it. I'm looking forward to creating and sharing with all of you!

Without further ado, I present my first PICO-8 cart. Thanks to @dw817 for the Applecart prompt/challenge! Little projects like this are a great way to learn and engage with the community.

I put a lot of comments in the code but there could be more. The code is a bit sloppy, I'm sure, but I tried to keep it as simple as possible. I'm happy with how the sprites came out, but my sound composition could definitely stand improvement. (BTW, I love the PICO-8's retro sound! I could play around in the SFX editor for hours.)

Constructive criticism always welcome. Enjoy!