Trionoids - Columns Clone for the Falcon - RELEASED!

[LaceySnr]

Update - May 18th, 2016: Version 1.0 is released at last!

Glad to finally get a build out there. There's a known issue with the SFX not always working on real hardware but frankly I think the music is way better anyway. Let me know if this works, and if it does, what you think!

Trionoids Version 1.0 :

trionoid.zip

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I've been working on a column code for some time now (read: frigging ages) but over the last week or two I've managed to really get stuck in properly. Not ready for others to play just yet, but thought I'd share this GIF of it in motion. It's running in true colour mode, though right now it's using a whopping 6 colours.



There's plenty still to do and I'll keep posting updates here.

Current To Do List:

• * Allow gem rotation in both directions
  * Inplement difficulty curve so it starts at a playable speed
  * Create artwork for the gems & background etc.
  * Add music/SFX
  * Add high score system
  * Text system so I can display scores & messages\
  * Jagpad support?
  * Bonus features?

[Marakatti]

There's always space for one more Columns-clone Looking forward to see it progressing.

[CiH]

Indeed, motivational thumb from me too.

[LaceySnr]

Cheers guys, appreciate that... especially since I didn't realise there we a couple of clones flying about already before I started. I was just aimlessly getting sprites and things going and then fired up columns on my Megadrive and thought that'd give me a good, achievable goal. Once this is done and released I'm going to switch to coding in C (where I'm a lot more comfortable) and see if I can't put a platformer together.

[LaceySnr]

Well it's progressing.... Core gameplay mechanics are all but done It actually looks way better IRL than in the GIF since it has more colours than GIFs support!

[CiH]

Well that's come on a fair bit.

Graphics own work, helpful artist or other point of origin?

[LaceySnr]

Well, I 'borrowed' the Earth/Mars pic from online... I'd normally shy away from such shenanigans but it looked cool and it's not like this is a major commercial project. The rest is all DIY though I do plan to improve the gems—I smashed those out in 10 mins in GIMP just as a test. Always open to working with others too.

Definitely making progress, might upload a build this weekend to make sure it runs ok for other people

[LaceySnr]

Added a font (drawn by me) on the weekend and text support. Also added the score display though that's not visible in this screenshot. Figured I'd post a static image so you can all see it in true colour and not the 256 colours GIF provides.



If I can get a basic frontend in over the next week or two (along with actually checking for the gameover condition) I should be able to get a first release out in the very near future.

[Marakatti]

Looks great Keep going!

[CiH]

Seconded!

[LaceySnr]

Don't worry, I am! Gameover condition and basic frontend->backend loop is in place and a score display is in and working (high score not yet remembered).

Started reworking the gems artwork last night to includes some nice animations for when they get matched

[LaceySnr]

I've done some more work, there's a new gem colour (need to add one more), animations for when they're matched, and the player's gems now move down the screen smoothly rather than a cell at a time.

I was hoping to be done by now but I wasn't planning on the smooth scrolling to start with... I took a crack at putting it in and found I was only running at 30FPS so then spent a while getting things to work at 60 (at least in Hatari, need to test hardware). It looks a lot smoother in Hatari than it does in this GIF!

[Eero Tamminen]

Hatari's ST & STE emulation should be accurate speed-wise. Main speed differences from real HW are with TT & Falcon; for 030 caches, TT-RAM access and FPU.

[LaceySnr]

Thanks for the info Eero! I was just hedging my bets because for some reason it felt slower on my Falcon before but then I wasn't running at full whack so it was hard to tell (i.e. the game was rendering at 30FPS but running somewhere between 30 and 60).

[Ragstaff]

That's looking awesome, Matt. The smooth scrolling really adds some polish to it

[LaceySnr]

Thanks bud! Was hoping to show you guys at the next meet but I'm going to be in Sydney this time around

[dma]

Really cool movement indeed, it feels as arcadey as it should.

[LaceySnr]

It's been a while so I thought I'd loop back to show some progress! Really was hoping to have this done by now, but software projects... what can you do?

Anyway, some things done since the last post:

* SFX added - can be toggled between SFX and Music
* New graphcis - buddy of mine played with the artwork a little
* Font system - I drew an 8x8 font that seems to fit well
* High scores - don't save to disk but they work
* Game difficulty ramp - gets hard too fast right now, needs some more tweaking
* Main menu - simple menu system in place just for the basics

Also fixed a few bugs and have it running at a solid 60Hz on hardware after making a few more optimisations. I still want to play with the graphics some more and add a few 'nice' features such as score-saving, but I hope to have a first release available in the next week or so

[EstTeeEfEm]

High scores - don't save to disk but they work

I REALLY hope you're going to add this as a feature...
but please, add a reset scores too so many games from 10 years ago with other peoples scores listed. Plus it can be spread even if its been played

Other than that, this is AWESOME...

keep it up, I know myself how game projects need enthusiasm injections every now and again !!

[EvilFranky]

Looking really polished! Hope it's not an April fools...

[LaurentS]

Well, I'm sure this is not (we've already seen previous versions).
It's a great work, big applause to you.

I'm impatient to play it in it's final release version.
Regards

Laurent

[dml]

Yeah nice work - looks great!

[CiH]

Great to see this one still in work. Quite a difference from that first proof of concept animation.

[Ragstaff]

Looking great, can't wait to see it in action!

[LaceySnr]

Well another month came and went, so I thought I should mention progress.

Basically the game is actually finished, but I was using a single buffer for drawing and that was resulting in some artefacts on hardware. I'm now trying to get the game working well with double buffering to avoid those issues, but that in itself complicates a lot of the rendering and I'm struggling to keep it running at full speed... the tricky part is that it works well in Hatari but not on hardware!

As soon as I've got solid performance it'll be released to the world