Hi all

I've been experimenting with Swift lately - having previously only written Beeb games in Basic back in the day, I thought it would be fun (in a kind of masochistic way) to try writing a game in Assembler.

Dave said I should post a work-in-progress on the forum, so here it is

It's a rip-off / port / homage of the WiiWare "Muscle March". You're the second guy and have to match the pose of the first guy bashing his way through walls which have inexplicably been built in your way.

Controls are A and Z to change your left hand, and * and ? for your right hand.

It's not a fantastic game, to be honest - getting myself used to coding in Beeb Assembler was the object of the exercise really. I've learned a few things that might be useful later in making a game that's actually fun

TODO list:
- Make the levels get harder after you get past the first one
- Randomize backgrounds (anyone got a good random number routine? currently I'm generating pseudorandom numbers by reading bytes from the ROM )
- Some kind of sound effect when you die
- Some kind of indication that you've completed a level (rather than just an extra flag)
- Game Over screen
- High Score table (or at least some record of high score)

Nice one, great first effort

I got 211!

OMG! Just wait until Greg (regregex) see this!

What a truly INSPIRED choice of game to convert! Top marks Jools! If you can bring a copy along to R3PLAY we'll show it off (ditto for Martin's Clowns game!).

I have done quite a bit more work on the game, albeit multiplexing between it and my transfer hardware project, but I'm afraid I don't want to preview it just yet. As you know, I always said I didn't want to do a running WIP and I only broke cover coz I needed a bit of advice from Rich and Tom etc. Sorry then Dave, you'll have to wait a bit longer...

Awesome!

It's like being back at RetroVision!

I love it - it's really playable.

I appreciate it's not finished, but am I right in saying that the positions that the runner makes to go through the wall is currently not randomised? I think it'd be more important to try and randomise that, before the background. Though both would be good.

Other than that, I'm just wondering whether Dave J could port some of the polar bears, muscle guys or aliens from the original into 8-bit graphics! It'd be cool if when you got on to the next level, if the guy you were following changed into a different person/alien.

Oooh, and finally, how about the bit from Muscle March where you catch the guy and perhaps have to hammer the keys Micro Olympics style to catch him and end the level?

But this is amazing ... ! It reminds me quite a bit of Dare Devil Denis, though I'm not entirely sure why.

Love it! If you want to make it a Retro Software project with an entry on the Work In Progress page, I'd be happy to help you get started.

Sam.

P.S. You might also want to check the recent What's good for RANDOM? topic for ideas for generating random numbers.

Thanks for all the kind words, guys, it's appreciated


Cool, that's an incentive to do a little work on it over the weekend


Ah, yes, that uses my not-very-random random routine, not helped by the fact that you currently have to re-run the whole thing between games. I'll investigate that random thread...


Yeah, it might be a good idea to open it up to you guys for some more graphics - it would look better if the guy you're following doesn't look exactly the same as you. Palette restrictions could be a bit of a problem there though (due to my little technique that avoids ugly XOR artifacts when you walk in front of the wall, bonus points to anyone who can tell me how I did that ) - although I could always do the old "switch palette between levels" trick, that might make the background look weird. Maybe the polar bear could be on a snow level or something


I like that idea - I could even keep the front runner still and do a small amount of background scrolling, with the sun and clouds staying still, and the foreground moving faster than the background. That would be neat


Cool - might do a bit more work on it first though.

Oh, and it'd be great to see at least one obligatory penguin in the background.

Sam.

Hi all,

Just a little note to say I haven't given up on this game - since the work-in-progress I posted a few months ago, the game now has the following:

- Mode 7 title and instructions screen
- High score table
- Four levels, that gradually get harder as you go along (I haven't even completed it myself yet, although I've got very close...)
- Road for you to run on
- Bit where you hammer the keys to catch the runner (with smooth single-pixel-horizontal-scrolled road and houses )
- Random function that is more random
- Music now has arpeggios in to give it some variety
- Death sound
- Game over and completion screens (with game completion bonus based on lives remaining)
- Now tells you what level you are on before the level starts
- Used relocation code, giving me more space

It's currently running at 56k of assembly source (!! - How on earth did people cope coding on a real beeb?), which assembles into about 3.3k of machine code (and 1.7k of gfx on top of that) - so I've still got a bit of space for more graphics, etc.

Working title is "Mixed grill march" for now, a bit of a RetroVision in-joke

New TODO list:

- Better character graphics
- Bonus for how fast you complete the bash-the-keys sections
- Add some more scrolling stuff on the bash-the-keys sections (think I have a little bit of CPU time per frame remaining)
- Add nifty loader

Awesome. I am really looking forward to trying a new version out!

Are you ready for an RS wiki page / forum yet?

Sounds like you've done a ton of work on it. I hope you have enough room leftover to fit in some random graphics to match the original.

Btw, after re-reading your initial post, is this game intended as one we can add to the freeware downloadable section?

Sam.

Sure, let's set one up


Yeah, now I'm using the relocation code, I've got 3,573 bytes remaining to use up. There's not much extra code to do, so most of that can go on graphics. (See attached file for info if anyone fancies doing some player graphics, Cybershark said he may have a go)


Yep

I had a go at running it in an Electron emulator - I was expecting it to run really slowly, but strangely it crashed just after trying to start the game. Odd, I didn't think I was doing anything BBC-specific... I might investigate further (although it would probably need a few changes to run at a good speed on the Electron anyway).

OK, forum and template wiki page is now done. If you want to replace the Mixed Grill March forum logo, just drop me a line with your own preferred version. Hopefully, with a bit of a perusal of the FAQ and Help pages you should be able to pick up how to edit the wiki page quite quickly - if you need some specific advice, just drop me a PM or ask any questions in the RS feedback forum. Feel free to modify it however you want - drop the diary section for instance, if you don't think you'll keep it up to date ... You also have moderator privileges in this forum, and can start polls etc.

Sam.

Cool, thanks! I've made a couple of additions to the developer diary just to try it out...

*crying with laughter* That's great, Jools!

( @ DaveM)

I should log in more often!