magic_chopstick [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

WIP Toy: Endless Ships!

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 03:07:57 UTC

Toy: Endless Ships! (update 1)

by magic_chopstick

[Click to Play]

Update 1!

This is still very much a toy, but it's very close to "done" for purposes of the larger game. Ships are stronger, but so are your weapons–and you can do more than just deal direct damage now!

Of note in this update:

Added module modifiers!
- heal
- hack (disable enemy die)
- ion (extra damage to shields and set enemy die to one)
- burn (stackable damage over time)
- trap (sets a trap on an enemy die that does damage when used)
Improved crew (dice)!
- Crew now have names
- Crew may have non-standard roll possibilities (including a wildcard roll!)
- Crew can have modifiers, much like modules
Improved modules!
- Added small modules that take up less space
- adjusted balance somewhat
Improved ships!
- Changed health/shield readout to support more damage points
And a bunch of other stuff!

Previously:

Following cold on the heels of my earlier Quick 'n' Dirty Galaxy Generator, here's another little toy cart that'll ultimately be part of a larger effort. Right now it's a pretty basic dice-based endless space battler. You control the ship on the left, the computer controls the ship on the right. Blow each other up using the power of six-sided die!

There's a laundry list of to-dos here, including making the weapons modules a bit more balanced–right now it's kinda all-or-nothing for how useful a module is in a fight. As with the QnD Galaxy Generator, the intent here is to deterministically generate a vast array of different ships from a single seed, allowing for ultra-compact save files.

Controls:
arrows: move cursor
X: action
Z/O: swap out your ship for a new one (on your turn)

Quick 'n' Dirty Galaxy Generator

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 03:35:44 UTC

Quick 'N' Dirty Galaxy Generator 0.2

by magic_chopstick

[Click to Play]

The Quick 'N' Dirty Galaxy Generator builds off of my my Quick 'N' Dirty Planet Generator by adding procedurally generated planets, routes, names, and governments to create a nice, compact little galaxy to explore. Right now, it's just a toy, but you can probably see where I'm planning to go with this!

Version 0.2 update: Saving Things!

Added auto-saving and auto-loading of the galaxy and the current state of your exploration. Reload your browser and pick right back up where you left off!
Fixed a bug where the same governments and government colors were chosen over and over
Fixed a bug where governments could take over the capitals of other governments during generation
Added "new galaxy" button

The save functionality is both simple and nifty: basically, just poke all the values I want to save in sequence to general memory with poke, write this memory in chunks to the cart data using peek and dset, then reverse the process to load. You can store a surprising amount of data this way!

Quick 'N' Dirty Planet Generator

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 04:11:05 UTC

Quick 'N' Dirty Planet Generator 0.1

by magic_chopstick

[Click to Play]

Hello, everyone! I'm back with another Quick 'N' Dirty cart!

This time, I've put together a little planet generation and rendering system I'm looking to use in a bigger project. From the cart's intro comments:

This is a very very work-in progress planet generator. I'm not (yet) going for huge 
amounts of complexity or variation in my texture generator. Rather, right now, I'm
working to make as *performant* a planet generator and renderer as I reasonably can.

To generate terrain, I'm using the diamond-square algorithm to rende a 64x128 pixel
heightmap on the bottom half of the sprite sheet, which is mapped to the bottom half
of the PICO-8 map. To help ensure that we're not impacting performance, I've added some
break logic to the rendering routine that lets us stop processing once we hit a
certain CPU threshold, spreading the work across a few frames. This is fast enough that
planets render in well under a second, even with the added overhead of the break
logic.

Of note here is that planet generation is entirely deterministic and stems from a
single seed value. If you want to build a galaxy of planets, all you need to do is
store a number per planet and re-render them on the fly.

To render, I'm relying on tline to draw a linearly-banded UV map that reads from the
bottom half of PICO-8's map and draws a series of horizontal tlines across the unit
circle. At higher rotation rates, this is very obviously not an accurate way to draw
a sphere, but it *is* a blazingly *fast* way to do it, and at slow enough rotation
rates, it's good enough to fool the casual observer. Rendering times increase as the
planet grows, but even when the planet takes up most of the screen it only eats about
30% of the standard update cycle's CPU time.

Future improvements will be focused on adding some good variety to the planets being 
generated, along with features like polar regions and wind/precipitation-based biome
coloring.

Arrow keys to zoom and control the speed of rotation; O/Z to generate a new planet.

Have fun!

Agent Seeker

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 02:06:42 UTC

Agent Seeker 1.02

by magic_chopstick

[Click to Play]

Agent Seeker

A PICO-8 Spy Hunter demake/remake/homage

Overview

Agent Seeker is a fast-paced, reflex-taxing game built in the style of the original Spy Hunter, one of the greatest video games ever created. [no citation needed]

Drive your heavily-customized luxury sports car down an endless roadway, protecting innocent motorists from a rogue's gallery of menacing enemy agents. Use machine guns, oil slicks, smoke screens, flamethrowers, and armor-piercing cannons to stop as many enemy agents as you can!

Controls

Arrow keys/D-Pad: Drive (l/r to steer, up for gas, down for brake)
Z key / O button: fire machine guns (front-facing, infinite ammunition)
X key / X button: activate secondary weapon (Catch drones to gain limited-use secondary weapons)

You

	[8x8]

You are the Agent Seeker, one of our top undercover operatives. Your skill behind the wheel is peerless, and your car, the Z-1983 Interdictor, sports the most advanced active anti-vehicle countermeasures the agency has at our disposal. Your mission: eliminate any and all enemy agents on our nation's roadways!

Civilians

	[8x8]

	[8x8]

Ordinary, everyday motorists, enjoying a pleasant daily commute. Don't shoot civilians or run them off the road, or you'll lose your combo and not gain points for a few seconds! (If a civilian crashes through no fault of your own, you won't get penalized.)

Enemies

Destroy enemies to earn points and increase your combo multiplier. If you take too long between destroying enemies, you'll lose your combo!

Tire Slasher

	[8x8]

Weak against weapons, but equipped with deadly tire spikes. Don't hit them from the sides!

Bulletproof Bruiser

	[8x8]

Heavy and well-armored, these brutes will shrug off machine-gun fire and try to run you off the road. Return the favor!

Spikelayer

	[8x8]

Souped-up box trucks that get ahead of you and drop tire spike strips. They're tough but not bulletproof!

Secondary Weapons / Drones

Throughout the game, you'll have the opportunity to gain drone-delivered secondary weapon systems. These powerful weapons vastly increase your car's firepower, but have limited ammunition. Catching drones can be a challenge!

Oil Slick

	[8x8]

Catch the drone with green highlights to gain an oil slick. Oil slicks are applied directly to the road behind you. Any car that touches an oil slick will skid out of control and crash!

Smokescreen

	[8x8]

Catch the drone with blue highlights to gain a smokescreen. Smokescreens will temporarily blind drivers in a wide cone behind your car, which will often cause them to veer off the road and crash!

Flamethrower

	[8x8]

Catch the drone with pink highlights to gain a flamethrower. Flamethrowers will blast a gout of flame out both sides of your car, incinerating anything too close. The flamethrower works against everything, but is highly effective when dealing with Tire Slashers!

Armor-Piercing Cannon

	[8x8]

Catch the drone with orange highlights to gain armor-piercing cannons. The AP Cannon replaces your car's machine guns with high-caliber anti-vehicle cannons. While their rate of fire is lower than your standard machine guns, a single round can take out anything it hits!

Development

Hi, everyone! Say hello to Agent Seeker!

I'm finally to a version one of this started-as-a-personal-jam project, a fun demake of the old Spy Hunter arcade game. I built the original version on a self-inflicted SFO-DCA plane jam, but I had so much fun making what I could on the plane ride that I decided I had to flesh it out some more, and here we are.

I can't even begin to imagine how many quarters I poured into the original Spy Hunter (thank you, George Gomez!) Hopefully, I've captured the fun and challenge of the original without losing too much of that PICO-8 charm.

Have fun, Agent Seeker!

Updates

Version 1.02: Balance and shine!

Graphics: Added more trees, rocks, and color depth to background
Balance: increased the chances of having an enemy appear when no other cars are on the road (help to keep those combos alive!)
Bug: fixed a very minor issue where trees were drawing out-of-order
Bug: fixed the byline on the published PNG cart

Version 1.01: A Little Change In Scene

Added cool transition screens!
Also updated the license so you can play around with it and see my horrible, sloppy code!
That's it!

Version 1.0: Agent Seeker, you are go!

Updated music: now 27% better than before
Improved adaptive music algorithm: more responsive, fewer weird hiccoughs
Improved ambiance: added trees and overpasses
Added flair: your car goes psychedelic once you hit 15 combo
Updated title graphic: now 36% better than before
Gameplay balance: Tire Slashers will no longer deploy their slashers when they're under the effect of a smokescreen
Minor annoyance fixed: Once the player crashes, the score penalty is removed promptly to show end-of-game score
Performance bug fixed: new tire skids were continuing to be created ad infinitum on the game over screen. Fixed that madness.
Added polish: improved skid algorithm
Added polish: fixed drone approach algorithm
Fancy gadgetry: your car's glovebox now contains a powerful spring-loaded boxing glove, designed to quickly and effectively incapacitate a hostile passenger. Should you ever need to use it, simply press the leftmost button hidden under the cap of your gearshift. It's a real knockout, agent!

WIP.5: Adding polish!

Rad new title screen added
Improved "burning" effect
Extended top-tier music
Some small copy edits
Added highly advanced system capable of pinpointing your exact position, to within a few meters, anywhere on the globe. Research calls it their "Worldwide Telemetry Feature". It's available in your car's secret dashboard (which, sorry again, is inside the car, very small, and hard to see)

WIP.4: Balance and flow!

Added speedometer (choose metric or standard units in the pause menu!)
Reduced minimum score for first enemy from 50 to 30
Fixed bug where spike strips could have negative speed (weird)
Added to top speed of car to better reflect it's extreme spy nature (causes some tearing in the scenery, but what can ya do)
Fixed bug where resupply drones would keep coming after player crash
Fixed bug where alt fire would rapidly drain cannon ammo without firing cannon
Added champagne bottle chiller to center console of player car. Again, hard to see

WIP.3: challenge and cleanup!

Major update: Added HARD MODE (score 100k points to unlock!) Tougher AI, tougher course, more points, higher combo chain max, and more!
Improved AI
Improved music tracking/looping algorithms
Improved crash tracking, made running enemies off the road more forgiving
Adjusted color on spike strips dropped by Spiker enemies to make them look less like flames
Added a martini glass holder to the player's car. It's very, very small and a little tough to see ;)
Lotsa little bugs and adjustments