The Infeasible Game - Level editor

Here is a picture of the tool I use to create the levels. I produced it quickly so the tiles on the main grid are letters rather than the actual tile images. If I can be bothered I'll fix this but at the moment the tool is fine for creating and editing the levels.

The level data is output in a format I can past into my assembler. One byte is used for each tile. This byte holds the type of tile, its vertical position and whether there are other tiles in the same column. It also holds some other details that I'll be keeping to myself :)

The tool is a winform application written using C#.

The infeasible game - new for 2015

I've almost finished another game for the ZX Spectrum. This will be two games in twelve months. A first for me. It is based on "The Impossible Game" which can be played on mobile devices and PC. I decided the Spectrum needed a version so I created "The Infeasible Game". Here is a short video taken from the first level (the easy bit). It is also running at "easy" speed. Give it a go on infeasible speed if you want a challenge.

 

 

ShapeShifter now available to buy

ShapeShifter is now available to buy from Cronosoft: http://cronosoft.orgfree.com/ I received my copy a few days ago and will be adding it to my growing collection. If you want to try before you buy there is a playable demo here: http://1drv.ms/UIuGYo

 

 

ShapeShifter Demo Available

A demo of my new puzzle game, called ShapeShifter, is now available for the ZX Spectrum. The full game will be available to buy from Cronosoft this summer. The demo release has eight puzzles to complete. The full game has one hundred. The demo is a tap file and should run on most Spectrum emulators running in 48k mode. It may work in other modes but I have not tested these. The file can be downloaded from here: http://1drv.ms/UIuGYo

Here is my new Spectrum game

Here is a screen dump of my new ZX Spectrum game. A demo will be available in a week or so and the full game will be sold through the Cronosoft website. I'll be posting a short video soon, so keep watching.

New touchscreen monitor

Just what every office needs. A new touchscreen monitor is being lifted into position. Thought at one point we were going to run out of staff to lift the beast.

Another tool to help make my new Spectrum game

My game development is progressing well, with the “TODO” list quickly getting smaller. I have one important function to write that I know will take some time. For now I have put that to one side and concentrated on getting the rest of the game finished. One feature of the game is the various text messages that need to be shown between levels etc. As I am using a cut down list of characters it was easier to create a tool to convert them. It was about an hour’s work to create the conversion tool shown below. It has a few more features than are really needed but it seemed like a good time to add them. No need to get out the calculator to work out the screen and attribute addresses. In the next few days I will pass the game to my tester. I can then start on the last big function and look to fix and bugs the appear during testing. The final chunk of work will just be the polishing and the replacement of the placeholder graphics.

Updating the tool for my games levels

I found some time to update the program that I will use to design my game levels. I fixed a few small bugs and added some new features. The status bar now shows the currently selected shape name and the total number of shapes used. I have also added a print option that will print a giant map of all the levels defined in a text file. I have expanded the raw data comment so that the grid can be resized and redrawn if I need to edit a previous design. Once all the levels have been added to a text file, it is loaded and the levels spread out in a user defined grid pattern. This is then saved as a bitmap. As far as I can tell, this application now does everything I need it to do. I’ll start designing some easy levels to start with and then some more difficult ones. Here is an image of the latest application.

Tooling for my new Spectrum game

My Spectrum game is coming along nicely but I have got to a point where I need to start adding levels. I needed a tool to help me create the standing data so I spent a few hours with Visual Studio writing an application in c#. Nothing over the top, just a couple of grid views and minimal code. It actually works rather well allowing me to build up a level and then creating the data statements ready to past straight into the TommyGun IDE. Here is a picture of the latest version of the tool. Having used it a bit I realised I need to add a couple of other features. I am also working on a separate class for the tool that will take all the level data and create one huge bitmap image of all the levels. I can now create some test levels and concentrate on writing the next chunk of Z80.