Custom Invaders - Yet another Space Invaders clone

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 16:08:12 UTC

Custom Invaders 1.0

by Retropone

[Click to Play]

And here is another little game I did on my spare time.
Yes, I know, it's yet another Space Invaders clone, but I wanted to make one that behave closer to the original Arcade version, and also add a little twist to it.

Indeed, you can customize your game, with a lot of parameters like:

the number of players (up to 4!)
the type of display
the number of monsters coming up, how much of each type and their starting position
shot speed from the monsters and from the players
the number and size of protective shields
number of lives and how much points for extra

Controls:

Customization menu:

Up/Down - Select parameter
Left/Right - Change parameter
X - Show a preview of the upcoming game

Player select menu:

Left/Right - Add/Remove a player (Classic mode only)
O - Join a game
X - Quit the game
Hold O when all players are ready to start the game

In-Game:

Left/Right - Move
O/X/Up - Shoot

Pitfall 2: Lost Caverns

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 00:19:55 UTC

Pitfall 2: Lost Caverns

pitfall2

by

[Click to Play]

Controls
In-game
Directions: Move Harry
O/X buttons: Jump

Menus
Directions: Move cursor
O button: Confirm
X button: Back

Hello everybody!
I am pretty new on the forum, but I'm not new to programming on Lua game engine.
I got the Pico8 to spare some of my time into game programming, even if it's not my main activity.
So far, I only did a couple of little incomplete games that are not worth sharing here, but as a challenge last year, after doing my own conversion of the classic game Pitfall (that is not worth sharing here neither), I decided to do a conversion of Pitfall 2, as the original game was more ambitious, with more gameplay variety and an iconic music track.

Quickly, I was faced with a lot of challenge, as the original game is pretty big for the original Atari 2600, with the huge map of 8 screens by 28 floors and its complex soundtrack generated thanks to a soundchip in the cartridge.
This is the first time I'm creating compression systems for fitting most data as possible as my not-so-optimized code is taking a lot of tokens, but thanks to that, I managed to fit the whole original game in a single Pico cartridge, including some surprises.

After hesitating a lot, I finally decided to share it here, to get some feedbacks on the quality of conversion and to find some bugs if some remains.
About the graphics, I know they are not so great (it's the part I'm the most bad at).

Some controls have been altered compared to the original game, as some of them are pretty frustrating nowadays, like the controls on ladders and the jumps.
I also added a save feature, so you don't have to play it in one session.

Anyway, I hope you'll have some fun with it, like I did when testing it and playing it.
I'm proud of what I accomplished and learned during the 3 months I worked on it.
And also a quick thanks to the community (aka you!) that motivated me to do this challenge!

Retropone [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Custom Invaders - Yet another Space Invaders clone

Controls:

Customization menu:

Player select menu:

In-Game:

Pitfall 2: Lost Caverns

Pitfall 2: Lost Caverns