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Space-based game
http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=59		 Page 1 of 2
Author:  AndrewW [ Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Space-based game
The title of the game is up in the air and the story is still quite
vague although it will take place on a deserted or mostly deserted
human colony outside the solar system in the future where the pilot
crashlands and has to solve a mystery.

It was developed out of Dominion and has a faster and neater text
plotter (no more slow text). Hopefully there will be various puzzles
to complete but I'd like to make it into something more like
"scapeghost" from Level 9 in the sense that you have to pick up clues
to find out just what has happened. This might involve a lot of
dialogue but the challenge will be the trade-off between expanding the
parser slightly and the detail of the dialogue and descriptions.
are things I to discuss on the forums.

Whether it will use disc access or not I'm not sure although if most
people are using emulators then it wouldn't be much of a problem.
Level 9's earlier games managed to do huge games without although
arguably the detail was kept down. Graphics is something that would be
great but would require much more work to do the necessary compression
and of course drawing. Any ideas or help here would be great.

The main thing is the story and hopefully it'll have plenty of
intrigue and some twists.

At the moment there is a map which is meant to be a three stage
multiload (although depending on memory requirements might be just
regular disc-only access). A couple of basic puzzles have been added
but I'd like to few more features to the parser before implementing
the rest of the game. The main issue programming-wise is probably
compressing the code and making it as space-efficient as possible.
Some ideas from the BBC Micro mailing list in the past were excellent
in this department.

The game will be developed on RISC OS emulators which rules out any
Windows tools personally although it does open up the interesting
possibility of infinite disc access.

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Author:  SteveO [ Fri Mar 28, 2008 8:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
Wow, so many good looking adventure games. I like that sound of your involved story revealing clues and plot along the way.
Author:  Samwise [ Sat Mar 29, 2008 12:15 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
Aye, if you guys come up with any cool routines e.g. text compression and the like, feel free to share on the sample code wiki page. :)

Andrew, would you like a forum setup for your game? You're also welcome to have a wiki page off the Retro WIP page to update ppl on your progress and store screenshots, beta releases etc., if you want - I can create a template for you, or you can just start editing if you're comfortable with MediaWiki (just copy the code from some of the other games to capture a similar look 'n' feel).

Sam.
Author:  AndrewW [ Sat Mar 29, 2008 12:34 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
Thanks for the comments and thanks for the offer Sam. Do you mind if I keep it to this thread for the moment ? Development might be slow initially but I can post a regular update.


The text compression is 6bit characters and tokens (if that's the word) for words. It was done in BASIC then converted piece by piece into assembler.
Author:  Samwise [ Sat Mar 29, 2008 12:46 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
Sure, Andrew.

You're welcome to take up the offer whenever you want.

Sam.
Author:  DaveJ [ Thu Apr 03, 2008 2:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
Perhaps you could consider the vector graphics route, used so successfully by Twin Kingdom Valley?

Anyway, best of luck with this - it sounds really interesting.
Author:  AndrewW [ Thu Apr 03, 2008 9:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
It did cross my mind. Presumably though vector graphics would be quite hard to implement as well as TKV not to mention the programming of the various shapes in 6502. The first thing I hope to work on is implementing the rest of the map - there's about 1/2 done spread across three "grids" so far and straight after that implementing a few more parser functions.

Initially I had hidden objects as just that, they remained hidden until a door etc was opened. Now there are kind of cryptic objects e.g. the readout in the screenshot where it doesn't appear as magenta until you "examine". As well as that it'd be good to be able to have a "put object in" flag for certain objects which isn't in there yet.

Another thing is documentation - the hardest part is coming back after a time to work on a program which in BASIC can't be commented because of the limiting memory. Things are documented but only in outline. This time I think as much as possible should be documented in full detail. Not sure what others here do?
Author:  FrancisL [ Thu Apr 03, 2008 11:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
AndrewW wrote:
Another thing is documentation - the hardest part is coming back after a time to work on a program which in BASIC can't be commented because of the limiting memory. Things are documented but only in outline. This time I think as much as possible should be documented in full detail. Not sure what others here do?

You can either keep written notes about your program or, as I do, use REM statements and explanatory variable names and then *CRUNCH (using the Beebug Toolkit+ ROM that Samwise mentions elsewhere in the forum) the program to reduce the memory consumption.

Kind regards,

Francis.
Author:  Samwise [ Fri Apr 04, 2008 1:12 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
As Francis says, I'd use REM statements to comment your code. If memory size becomes a problem, you could probably use a PC text editor to write the whole program. Save it to a file, copy it on to a disk image using BBC Explorer. Load the image into BeebEm Master 128K mode and use *CRUNCH to get it compressed. SAVE it back to the disk image and re-load in BBC B mode (if required).

Sam.
Author:  AndrewW [ Fri Apr 04, 2008 9:12 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
I do tend to use a text editor in RISC OS then. double click on the application icon to run the game. How does *crunch work? Does it exist in a ROM? It might be possible to set up a script file to enter the emulator as normal, crunch out the comments, save then CH."Loader" again as normal.
Author:  FrancisL [ Fri Apr 04, 2008 9:30 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
AndrewW wrote:
I do tend to use a text editor in RISC OS then. double click on the application icon to run the game. How does *crunch work? Does it exist in a ROM? It might be possible to set up a script file to enter the emulator as normal, crunch out the comments, save then CH."Loader" again as normal.

Refer to this topic regarding the Toolkit ROM: http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=42

Kind regards,

Francis.
Author:  Samwise [ Fri Apr 04, 2008 9:45 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
Or the classic tools page on the wiki:

http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/wiki/ind ... ment_Tools

Which is looking a bit sparse atm. Does noone use any Beeb tools at all?

Sam.
Author:  FrancisL [ Fri Apr 04, 2008 1:19 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
Samwise wrote:
Does noone use any Beeb tools at all?

Other than the Toolkit Plus I use Disc Doctor, but I don't think that really counts as a development tool.

Kind regards,

Francis.
Author:  Samwise [ Fri Apr 04, 2008 1:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
I think it does!

The page is basically meant to be a record of what tools are still of use. Many of the classic tools have been superseded by easier to use PC tools, so this is a page to describe what BBC Micro tools you still find of use. If you use it, it's worth recording because others might also find it of use ...

Sam.
Author:  FrancisL [ Fri Apr 04, 2008 2:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
Samwise wrote:
I think it does!

The page is basically meant to be a record of what tools are still of use. Many of the classic tools have been superseded by easier to use PC tools, so this is a page to describe what BBC Micro tools you still find of use. If you use it, it's worth recording because others might also find it of use ...

Sam.

Added. :)

Kind regards,

Francis.
Author:  Samwise [ Fri Apr 04, 2008 2:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
Great. I found a manual link for it, so I've added that too.

Sam.
Author:  Streaks [ Sun Apr 06, 2008 1:32 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
now thats how adventures should be :P looks very immersive. "two crew members dead in hypersleep.... locate distress beacon... escape". to-the-point but intriguing.
Author:  AndrewW [ Sun Apr 06, 2008 11:17 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
Thanks! :)
Author:  DaveE [ Thu May 01, 2008 1:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
Perhaps after you've completed the adventure itself, you could release the source code as an alternative to THE QUILL? There are not so many great adventure writing packages on the BBC.
Author:  AndrewW [ Wed May 07, 2008 9:05 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Space-based game
I think it'd be almost impossible to understand if you hadn't wrote it and I'm having problems with getting Crunch to remove just REM statements.
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