Reading about the progress of Mountain Panic has helped keep me motivated. Hopefully, writing down my activities will spur on the other authors with their projects as well. There's currently not much new to show on the Castle Raiding front unless you haven't read the diary for a while. The latest entry talks about my trouble with monsters.

Yes it's hard to stay motivated, the easiest part of a project is starting it

Without these forums and meet ups I certainly wouldn't have bothered, it is an enormous boost to meet people with a similar interest.

Good luck

Thanks! When it's going well, it's easy to get things done. The hardest part is getting through the epic debugging/refactoring sessions. Still, it's a long weekend here, so let's see what can be done.

Wow, loads of updates to read about in the diary!

Status bar looks very nice indeed!

Keep it up, David!!!

Yep, I can confirm that especially the meet ups are a great motivator

Greetings
Kees

The development diary is a great read! This looks to be turning out very well. I think the loader flag animation and progress bar are cool... but do you think you could also fit in a key redefinition routine, as seen in Visions' Demolator?

I was also glad to read of your "Opening Doors" revelation (2013-09-22), as I'd had thoughts along such lines! Have you considered that earlier levels could maybe commit more strongly to the single, horizontal scrollable level format than later levels? They could still have portals, but these could be back/forth to within enclosed inaccessible rooms that the character runs past as scenery in the first instance. If whooshing between areas is introduced at the later levels, that could reinforce the sense of depth within the game. (But perhaps that won't fit in well with what you're planning, which is probably better than my dreamy sugguestion anyway!) Cheers.

Very fancy, though not so practical if you're using fast loading in an emulator, perhaps.

I think I will have an options menu in the loader program which lets you define keys and choose your character.


It's a nice idea. I'm not sure what I'll do with the portals. I'm currently veering away from the arcade adventure genre and thinking of going back to a simpler action style, but secret rooms are always an interesting idea.

Thanks for the feedback!

I'd not looked at your diary for CastleRaider for ages. It's coming along nicely and the diary is a good read. I like the way you are playing around with different ideas as you go along. An arcade action scroller game would be good as there aren't many that spring to mind on Beeb (or Elk) that move at a good pace like this.

The Beeb UEF file you uploaded in May plays smoothly (very impressive load screen - I must check out the code for that). The only minor niggle would be the banner at the top wobbles slightly. I guess this is due to the screen buffering?



... I can relate to that. I've been doing some epic debugging of a completely reworked sprite plot routine for days!

Look forward to more updates. Thanks. An inspiration to keep me going. I'll kick off a dev diary for my game soon.

I'll try to find time to revisit it soon. It's been encouraging to read that people do actually read the diary.


On the loading screen or do you mean the panel at the top of the screen in the game itself?


One of the aims of the diary is to encourage others to make things, so I'm looking forward to reading more diaries from other people, just as I enjoyed reading the diaries for the games before mine.

Hi,
Sorry I wasn't clear. I mean the panel at the top of screen in game.

Actually, that's what I thought you meant.

I don't see the same effect in B-Em. Are you running it in an emulator or on a real Beeb?

I'm using B-Em v2.2 and running the uef found here :
http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Castle_Raider/DevelopmentDiary#A_New_Platform_and_a_New_Demo_.282013-05-20.29


I confess I haven't tried it on my real Beeb as it is currently packed away whilst a room is being decorated

Interesting... The version I'm using reports "B-em v2.2". The UEF file is called castle-raider-demo3-bbc.uef which should be the one in that archive. I wonder if there's a timing issue related to the hardware being emulated. My copy of B-em is emulating a "BBC B w/8271 FDC" and has "BeebSID" enabled.

I'm getting that too in B-Em v2.2. Looking very good though! Nice work