Xerra's Blog

I’ve been thinking about starting a new game outside of the competition ones that I’ve been doing for the last couple of years finally.

The deadlines that have been imposed from writing competition games has increased my productivity massively during this time and, for the Six competitions I worked on a game, I delivered for Five of them. I even got placed Third and First in two of them which was a massive boost aside from just getting the games themselves completed.

So, now that Creepy Crawlies is finished and there’s not been the need to do any follow up work on it, I’ve been thinking on what to do next. I’ve had a couple of months lay off really, and have done very little coding apart from tweaking to my project file that I’ve tended to improve and add to after each game. It’ll probably never be complete but every game always ends up giving something back to it in a new feature or two, and the development work is much quicker to get going by using it.

Over the last week I’ve come up with three things that I’m considering doing – again with Gamemaker 2 because why not?

Firstly I wanted to do another one of my Vic 20 remasters that I’ve harped on about before. As the missus bought me some more old tapes for display purposes this Xmas, I considered doing Crazy Cavey just so I can say I’ve finally done a platform game. I did a bit of prototyping for this yesterday and, while I’m still keen to throw myself into that, I remembered I’ve not actually finished the first Vic game I was working on almost a year back which I shelved so I could do Damnation Alley. So, if I’m going to get on with a Vic remaster then it should be finishing that off so I’m not going back to my old habit of half-finished games all over the place.

And the second game I came up with is something completely different and not based on any game I’ve played before on computer, although it does have a vague link to the board game Cluedo, if anything. I’ve done a lot of writing ideas and creating a map structure for doing this and have a pretty good idea how it would all come together as a complete game despite not writing a line of code yet. However, it’s an ambitious game compared to the stuff I’ve done up until now and I really feel the urge to do something a bit more conventional first so I’ve written it all up, will be creating a proper map, and borrowing some of the heavy script and database functions I wrote for Bah, Humbug to help me get started on that at a later date.

This nicely brings me onto my third idea which has been incubating since both my nephews have told me how much they’ve been playing Rockman and giving me ideas about what works and what doesn’t. It’s now been a Eighteen months since I put that game to bed and released it and, for all its flaws, it’s still one i come back and play myself every so often. Usually just in the puzzle (easy) mode as I’ve come to realise I pretty much fucked up having bad guys in and making medium and hard levels kind of pointless because it was then almost impossible. In fact, just last night I did a play-through which I considered recording, where I was going to play through every screen and complete the game just to show my nephews that it can be done. Those two are too much into Switch and easier games to probably actually care, but the idea of doing another Rockman and making it much, much better would be quite good fun. I wouldn’t need to actually rush it this time but I also wouldn’t have to remove half of my ideas from the design doc just so I could make it in the Six weeks deadline the original game had.

So here we are and I’ve made a tentative start this evening to get this underway. I had two approaches for this. First I’d load up the original project, rip out all the stuff in the original that I didn’t want to keep and then tidy up the project, import some framework code that I had created or updated since doing this game, and then get to work redoing all the bits that I wanted to change. However, while Rockman was written with the same framework I’m using now, it’s a much older version of it, and there’s been a huge amount of changes to some of the functions and scripts that other parts of the framework relied on which caused no end of compatibility issues. I muddled along fixing stuff, disabling bits, writing little bits of middleware or just modifying function calls and importing replacement files to try and bodge it all to a working state at least but it ended up just an effort in frustration. Even simple stuff like scripts for sound routines had changed since I’d written the original game so I took the second approach instead.

There’s still a lot of functionality my basic framework needs, even after using it for so many games, but I’ve always worked with it as it is at the time I start a new game purely because it’s always straight after finishing a game that a lot of work goes back into the framework itself. Damnation Alley helped get a lot of the retro functions in place which I developed for that game and then put into the framework afterwards. The high score and configuration file i/o stuff from Creepy crawlies has also been copied out and into it now. As Bah, Humbug was a completely different game to the other stuff I’ve done, there’s also a lot of string handling and lists code in it too. Even incomplete projects like RAM have given me code that can go into the framework in case I ever do another card game. So I’ve loaded up my framework and just pulled in some of the objects, graphics and scripts from Rockman that can still be used, and will just rewrite some of this stuff to save a lot of development time. As the sequel is going to have a few new things, such as an editor for starters (I really wish I’d had the time to do that for the first game), I’ll still be doing a shit load of development from scratch.

So a rough list of what I’ll be adding to the sequel to Rockman that I’m tentatively calling “Rockman 2 – Jewel Thieves”

Firstly an Editor. I’m thinking of a bank system so you can load in up to 26 levels (A-Z) from each of the five banks but can only overwrite 2,3,4 and 5 so the original maps are always present. As I’d keep the original map structure for the first bank I’d probably need to have a system like this in place so I can make some new levels where the additional features can be used without breaking them in some way. If I work it out right then the player can also have some kind of system to put screens together and set up their own map from the editor and they can have as few or many screens (up to the limit) as they want for each map as I could have them loadable as text files, or similar.

An update to practically every object in the game, specifically the rocks and player themselves. The way Boulderdash does it works. I’ve written a clone of Boulderdash before and it played really well because I tried to make it just like the original game. With Rockman I switched to pixel movement to simulate sprites instead of character graphics and, as well as being a nightmare to code, also didn’t turn out that well in certain cave layouts where rocks could bug out. The map “Valentine” shows this very well but it’s not the only problem area. Also a lot of players had problems with not being able to move up under a rock but it seemed the right way to go when I was writing the game. So block movement comes in so there’s a speed increase, which will make it a lot more fun, and I’ll balance it to make sure it’s not too tricky. This will also solve the problem of my enemies being too dangerous because I will keep them moving in pixels so it’s a lot easier to avoid them. Or let the dog deal with the buggers – more on that later.

I’ll go back to the artist for some of the graphic stuff that Rockman used and probably get a bit more done. Some of the sprites can stay as they are but I’m sure some new intro screens showing the dog and anything else on the go would be a good idea. Animation and stuff was very lacking in the original game. Hopefully it won’t be too expensive.

Some of the basics can go into the game this time around. High scores, saving configuration data, maybe even a save game system so you haven’t got to crack up to 26 screens in one go. Certainly a map improvement so you can see where you are in the layout. The first game just superimposed an image of the map layout with no clue as to what screen you were on. Rush job that was too. Think the map was the last bit to go in an hour before deadline.

I’m thinking a new char needed to go into the game to add to Roxy and Rocky. So a pet dog is what my nephew suggested. How to implement it is another matter, let alone thinking of a good name, but i’m thinking he could be in a cage on the map and you have to release him. Once free he can run around and deal with the aliens if he runs into them. I’ll need to be working with the same map size that the original game had if I want to retain the original levels so this may need some thought.

Two new objects that have come to mind that can go into the newer levels are the compressor, which turns rocks into diamonds if they fall into it, and the muncher, which just eats anything that hits it full stop. Maybe some more if I come up with them while I’m working on it.

So far I’m at the point where i have all the old elements into the new framework and have patched it up enough so it at least runs. So the next session is going to be developing the editor before anything else as the levels will need to be made using it. I can’t go back to using them from the original game as each map was a seperate game room, which is a hell of a waste of resources doing it that way. I want an editor that will save a map as a text file that can be read both in and out before I start creating anything more than just test designs.

Share your thoughts

I’ve posted the following write up about the development of Rockman on both Syntax Bomb and the ItchIO page for the game so I thought I’d also put it up here as well.

Rockman is my entry in the aMAZEing code a game competion

As a kid I loved playing the original Vic 20 game so this is my re-imagining of the game for modern computers.

The game features 20 caves each containing 8 gems and lots of nasty rocks that are going to give you more than a bump on the head if you let one fall on you. Rather than the conventional idea of clearing a cave to then be shoved into the next one, like Boulderdash, Rockman was novel in that it had it’s own mini-maze of caves in a map where each cave had exits leading to specific other caves. You would have to backtrack through areas you had already cleared to get to the new caves which meant you had to have a good memory for the layout of the area or draw your own map.

The original game never supplied you with this, so you had to stumble around back and forth until you eventually managed to clear them all. Fortunately I’m not so cruel and you can get a map in this version just by pausing the game. It won’t show you which caves you’ve cleared and which ones are still left, but you do get a rough idea of the layout on each map so you can work out where you are.

A few hopefully interesting bits of trivia about the development of this game:

I started working on Rockman around 3 days after the competition theme had been announced as I wanted to give myself time to really make sure that I knew what I was going to aim for rather than run blindly into something too ambitious like I did with the previous competition. Nobody wants to fail again and I was nowhere near finishing the last competitions game – and that had two extra weeks.

Among the games I was looking at for some inspiration were the following:
Nonterraqueous, Boulderdash, Gauntlet, Pacman, Doodlebug, Rhino and Radar Rat Race.

I’ve already written Boulderdash once with GMS2 – just never released it as it’s not quite finished, so that one was ruled out.

Rhino was a very early Basic game I played again on the Vic 20, which involved trying to reach an exit in a maze while avoiding the Rhino’s that were hunting you. The only snag was the Rhino’s were not visible to you until they had you in a line of sight. A very clever game for the time but I wasn’t sure it would make for a good game now.

Doodlebug was a Pacman clone I enjoyed as a kid but didn’t feel it would bring anything interesting to the maze theme.

I felt Nonterraqueous wouldn’t really work because, even though it was a good game at the time, complete with hundreds of screens, they were all very similar and shooting stuff while moving around them isn’t that engaging these days. Besides, who wants to type Nonterraqueous all the time afterwards when you’re writing about it?

Radar Rat Race almost got decided as a safer idea to match the maze theme and I would have gone with that if Rockman wasn’t considered suitable for entry when I asked at the start of the competition if there would be an issue doing it. Maybe one day I’ll have a crack at that one as well.

As I’d written a Boulderdash remake before, which is very close to the original, gameplay-wise, I thought at first that this would give me a good leg-up in doing Rockman because the idea of collecting diamonds in caves while avoiding rocks is the core dynamic for both. Rockman also doesn’t scroll the screen and relies on exits opening when the level is clear. In the end it actually worked out to be quite a bit more challenging as I had to work out how to do the map layout and the rocks worked differently as well.

I wanted to use the original map designs from the Vic 20 game in mine so the first challenge was working out a good all-round window size and then setting it up so the layouts would be the same with much more detailed graphics. In the end I went with 64*64 pixel for all the gameplay elements apart from the exit doors which are double height or width, depending on which part of the screen they are on. My idea of re-imagining a game does mean that I don’t want to clone it exactly but keep the elements that work really well, and the map layouts actually do because you have to be very careful and think about what you are going to do to move certain rocks, or you end up being forced to restart the level. That will cost you one of your lives for that.

One of the things I realised very early on when I had a basic character moving around clearing earth on the screen was that I wanted to try and improve on the original game and pixel move the character rather than just move in each direction as a character block jump. The Vic 20 never had sprites so, unless you were very clever with with rotational assembly instructions to roll the bits in a byte thus shifting pixels in a character to simulate pixel point movement, you just moved the character one space forward in the screen memory map – which was 8 pixels a block. As the Vic 20 had a very low screen resolution this was glaringly obvious that you did that but 99% of the other games did as well, so it was acceptable. With my Boulderdash remake I did the same thing to emulate the original game but I did it the hard way with this game and it actually changed how you played the game in a big way. Not to mention making it a nightmare to get the rocks movement right at the end of development. More on this later.

Now the original game was hard. Too hard, a lot of people, myself included, thought at the time. The reward on that, however, is it’s brilliant if you can actually nail it. I managed to complete the original game once, probably a couple of years after owning it, and the elation I got from actually doing that was amazing. And that, to me, was because it was so bloody hard. I wanted Rockman to be a tough game for people who wanted it that way but also have a way of playing for people who don’t like things so tough because modern games go that way now. So I gave this a serious amount of thought in development and, after tossing ideas like turning some features on and off, and going for a three skill levels system, I think I achieved that.

Rockman on level one does not have any static skulls on the screen, nor the moving butterflies (who are nasty as hell, even though I slowed them down to a crawl and dumbed down the AI). So what you end up with is basically a puzzle game where you shunt rocks around without distraction (unless you still kept the timer on) to get to all the gems and finish the game. That mode is how I mostly play it and will probably be the most popular. Level 2 has one Skull and one Butterfly to deal with and level 3 is two of each – for the really hardcore players. Another change almost forced upon me by going with the pixel movement was that you could no longer move through earth and support a rock directly above you because it breaks all the rules of common sense now. If I deleted the earth as I moved through it in pixels then it’s going to drop on me now whereas in the original game I’d deleted the earth and was already holding the rock in place with one movement. One of my two testers complained very negatively about me making that change but I resisted the urge to revert it back because it was both too late in the day and because I liked it. Especially when playing without the other gameplay elements as it’s still now a challenge.

Playing Rockman on level One is now a good experience, I think. Even if it does mean all the work I did on the other elements isn’t appreciated. One of the bad things about it, however, is that with no Skulls on screen then you don’t get no cake when the cave is actually cleared. Sacrifices, and all that.

Another thing I didn’t consider much back in the Vic 20 days about the original game was that there was no allowance for unfair map layouts. You could spawn in and literally have a bad guy right next to you on the map so you lost a life unfairly. Also you sometimes had levels where a skull could be positioned in such a crap position that it was impossible to actually finish that level, causing you to throw yet another life. That’s not fair and no game should ever be allowed to get away with that. I realised early on that I couldn’t get away with letting that happen as well but that coding around these situations would be nigh on impossible for me. So I remember another Rockman type game from around ten years ago had a feature where you were given a bit of time on entering a new level to quickly look at the map and decide if you wanted to play it that way or not. If you didn’t like it then you could press the restart key before the countdown finished and it would be redrawn. That seemed an acceptable solution to me so I did the same. Remember that this only changes the position of the Skulls and Butterflies, though, and you still have to contend with the rocks placement where they are.

I didn’t keep any logs of the hours I spent working on this game or blog about it, unlike my previous competition game, Envahi, where I kept detailed records. I was working with a six weeks deadline this time rather than the generous ten weeks I got to work on that one, so I kept focus. I probably worked around 80 hours or so doing this one. I probably worked a couple of hours every couple of nights and had three or four sessions where I spent a morning or afternoon on the weekends. My process was keeping a list of stuff that needed to be done, current bugs and stuff that I could implement if I had time. When it got near to the end of the competition deadline I had only one feature that I ended up not doing which was the cave editor. I was hoping to maybe have a seperate set of maps that the player could play with from a template build so they could put their own exits, gems and rocks down and lay them out in a map format like the built in ones. It’s a shame I couldn’t have kept that because it wouldn’t have been that hard to do.

Towards the end of the work on this game I kept a clear bug list and just considered every item that was on the stuff that needed to be done as a milestone and just whittled them down one by one. When I got to two days to deadline I was down to three milestones left and thought I was on easy street and could finish with a day to spare like Envahi. Then I would have time to set up a decent game page on ItchIO, update my website, blog some stuff, create a PC and Mac build, and still have plenty of time to post my entry on Syntax Bomb for the last day. As always this was not what ended up happening.

Anyone who’s ever written a game will tell you that the last 10% of any game may as well be the last 90% because that’s how much more you actually really have to put in. Something always breaks, other stuff needs to changed to work with the things you’re adding, bugs seem to come up that you’ve never seen before but should have logically been seen and fixed early on, and you always get too ambitious with that “oh, wait. Let me just add this…”

3:30pm on Sunday afternoon I’ve got the last of the graphics for my game and finally have both the playable characters in and working correctly. One of my testers reminds me that the rocks in my game still look like Oreo’s and they are still moving into each others spots and seem to be merging when there’s a few moving around. No problem, I think, because I’ve now just put in the new graphics for these rocks and I’m now down to the last bit of the game to fix, which was sorting out the object code for the rocks to stop this happening. I made a massive mistake in putting this part of the game off until the end because the original code was practically the first bit of work I did for the game and I knew it didn’t work right back then. I knew it was going to be tricky to get it working properly with the pixel movement of objects so I went off and did the rest of the game, meaning to come back to it when I was in a better frame of mind to get it done.

This almost cost me the deadline because I ended up having to recode the entire character movement for the player object and also the Butterflies so that collisions between them all would work better. It doesn’t sound much of a problem at first unless you know a bit about how gamemaker works because I wasn’t using the built in collision system but actual object searches because the whole playfield is built out of objects rather than tiles. So after frantic coding all evening trying to sort out the mess, I actually had the final Mac build not ready until about 11:20 pm. Then I had to copy all the code onto the slowest USB stick ever and fire up the old PC to create a Windows build – as per the competition rules. Of course GameMaker needed to update itself – which on Windows requires a reinstall, and not being able to find my login details because it hadn’t been used for ages.

Rockman finally got uploaded onto Itch and the forum competition post at 11:54pm – Six minutes before the deadline. I honestly thought I was going to miss it when things started going pear-shaped. I hope I never write another game that goes that close to a deadline again.

So, in retrospect, I think this is now the best game I’ve ever written. It’s probably not saying a lot but I am my worst critic so I’m secretly hoping people like it a lot more than what the realist in me is saying. However, I am hugely proud of it, because it was hard work. And I realised fairly early on that it was worth engaging a graphic artist to make it look worth it as well. It’s a competition and, as much as I’d like to win it, I’m not going to but that’s not a bad thing. The competition deadline is what I needed to actually get the game finished and at a level where I thought it was worth entering.

So now I’m looking forward to playing some of the other entries and maybe not coding anything for the next few days 🙂

I hope you all enjoy playing my game as much as I enjoyed creating it. Apart from those last two days. Oh, god, no. Apart from those…

Share your thoughts