Work in Progress - Captain on the Bridge

[Andid]

Hi everyone,

I am quite new to the entire retrocomputing thing (got inspired recently by game development games such as Game Dev Tycoon, GamersGoMakers and GameBiz 3, as well as tons of YouTube videos) and figured I try my hand at some game development.

Here is a first proof of concept of my idea of a space adventure game, playable until partway through Act I. Needs a Vic-20 with 16k of ram minimum (edit: 24k recommended), no joystick, just load and run the basic program on the d64 file. (Use the <-- key to return to the main command menu level, F8 to quit.) Please let me know what you think.

And you can use this at the end

COTB-Sectormap.gif (6.92 KiB) Viewed 6441 times

ToDo:

• Write disk and file management engine to load text on-demand from disk
• Write corresponding story file editor
• Implement continue function ("Command Code" does not do anything at the moment.)
• Create and integrate graphics (planets, ships etc.)
• More/better sounds
• Write and finish the whole story
• Maybe replace some parts with machine language implementations

The development took place entirely in VICE with the internal BASIC. The basic game concept document as well as the table above were written with HESWriter within VICE (yes, full immersion on my end), stored on (virtual) tape and printed from there. I am going to switch to (virtual) disks now, however, as I'll probably use random access files for the disk / text management engine, and to Wordcraft since I now have the manual for it thanks to a helpful chap on this site.

Some background:
I personally started my computing journey in 1990 with an 80286 and DOS / Windows 3.0, I've only used a C64 once briefly, and have never seen a VIC-20 in the flesh. In the 90s I had started to develop a similar game like COTB in GWBasic and QuickBasic for DOS but never really got anywhere beyond having a main screen with functioning alert lights & sounds and warp stars. I then branched out into writing Star Trek fan-fiction based on the setting I developed for the initial game (all of which has disappeared from the 'net in the meantime). So this is sort of a back to the roots & far beyond the roots thing for me.

Again, please let me know what you think, and whether the game runs on an actual VIC-20 machine.

I'll probably continue the development of the bigger chunks mentioned above over the next weeks, which will involve a lot of learning since I have no idea yet about disk/file management, graphics or machine language on the VIC-20.

[Kweepa]

I had a quick play - very interesting!
It's a little slow to respond and it wasn't always obvious when to interact but I was impressed by how engrossing it was with just a little bit of text and a simple interface.
Hide: I got as far as Deneb and then didn't remember the other possible location...
I look forward to this being completed.
Good luck!

[EDIT] Bug: I let it sit overnight at "Yes Mr Wilco, I am back in business" and got an OUT OF MEMORY ERROR IN 310

[Andid]

Thank you - and I edited the initial post above indicate 24k recommended. Might also implement a proper PAUSE function in the future...

(When band under the screen advances, the stardate counter actually increases very slightly, and there is also a stardate-based trigger for story advancement - which does not do anything at the moment - so I guess that became too much for the garbage collection at some point.)

[malcontent]

Yes! I missed this post but this is very cool. I too got an out of memory error. It was when I pressed manoveur when not fighting anything.

I listed 300 to 320 and was swamped with mid$ and left$ functions. This is going to cause garbage collection very often. I'm assuming this is some sort of line wrapping routine. You might have to reconsider how you present text.

A few suggestions: the chart in the game should have the coordinates. It should maybe the first thing the database displays. If your game is out in the wild, players may not find the chart. The screen clear between database entries should be quicker.

I quite like the atmosphere of the story. I select a menu command expecting a generic response and instead it advances the story!