HardHatHarryBBCMicroElectronDiary

Hard Hat Harry BBC Micro / Electron Development Diary
by Tom Walker

23 December 2010
Unlike my other games, this is a 'quickie' - the planned finishing date is the 26th January 2011. Made a start! Got a title screen... and that's about it.

27 December 2010
After a break due to the primary gifting season, some sprites are done! Harry looks okay, but some of the animals are really pathetic. Also got a start on the level drawing code.

28 December 2010
Now draws the level correctly. Harry is now drawn on screen, but he doesn't do anything yet.

30 December 2010
Harry now runs and bounces round the screen correctly.

31 December 2010
Ladders and conveyor belts now work correctly.

3 January 2011
Game now keeps track of lives, time, and is linked into the title screen properly now.

10 January 2011
Lunches are now implemented - though as my attempts at drawing lunchboxes looked more like handbags (and it's not that kind of building site!), they're mugs instead. Score now works.

12 January 2011
First enemy implemented - Big Kong. He's sort of recurring throughout the game and he lobs barrels at you. The speed at which he does this means this is probably a later level...



13 January 2011
More enemies added, plus you can die now. Kong's level is definitely being put back, it's _lethal_! Only have 294 bytes left at the moment, so some crunching will have to happen tomorrow.



14 January 2011
Levels now compressed, plus code size reduced a little - 655 bytes left now, with 4 levels in. 16 more to go!

15 January 2011
4 more levels, 206 bytes left.

16 January 2011
Playtesting has shown that the controls are quite frustrating, so I've done some work to improve that. Also added another 2 levels, though now there's under 70 bytes left so more crunching is needed!

17 January 2011
Two more levels, plus working hi-score table and sound effects. Unfortunately some stripping back has been necessary in the light of memory limits, hence there's now 16 levels instead of 20, and the lion is gone (though the Peter The Panda has finally been implemented).

18 January 2011
Added final two levels, fixed some sprite flickering. Added joystick support. HHH is now feature complete, and just awaits some possible fine tuning.

22 January 2011
Tweaked sound, and released!

23 January 2011
Electron version completed in a matter of hours - also released.