Treasure-Seeker (available now!)

[grondinm]

...
The dreaded "Out of memory error" was something that happened several times during my programming of this game.

Understood. I did not read the Readme...

Yes, I'd love to see you make a gameplay video of it. It would be a bonus to me to see how someone else is enjoying playing my game and for any commentary / thoughts they might want to share of it.

Cool. I'll record one. Tho don't expect much in terms of "commentary" as I'm no pro "youtuber" LOL

PS: If I need to update the game again, maybe I'll ask you to also make a new .d64 file of it for me too, if that's ok. Though perhaps I'll find a method or utility / software I can do that on my end.

I would not at all mind making a new/updating the .d64 for you. But I'll also share the software I used to make it...teach a man to fish and all

https://csdb.dk/release/?id=187433

It works fairly well. I've used it to create multiple .d64 images. All of which have worked fine on my vic.

Thanks again for the game

[MysticSword]

Yes, I'd love to see you make a gameplay video of it. It would be a bonus to me to see how someone else is enjoying playing my game and for any commentary / thoughts they might want to share of it.

Cool. I'll record one. Tho don't expect much in terms of "commentary" as I'm no pro "youtuber" LOL

PS: If I need to update the game again, maybe I'll ask you to also make a new .d64 file of it for me too, if that's ok. Though perhaps I'll find a method or utility / software I can do that on my end.

I would not at all mind making a new/updating the .d64 for you. But I'll also share the software I used to make it...teach a man to fish and all

https://csdb.dk/release/?id=187433

It works fairly well. I've used it to create multiple .d64 images. All of which have worked fine on my vic.

Thanks again for the game

Hi again. If you do make a gameplay vid of this game, let me know and share a link to the video here so I can go see it.
No worries if you don't do much or any commentary. I'd still enjoy to see my game in-action being played by someone other than myself.

And thanks for the mention and link of the CSDB / V1541Commander program. I'll download it and soon give it a try for myself and see if I can figure out how to make my own .d64 files with it. Cheers!

[MysticSword]

Updated to v1.1 of my game;

Made parts of the code more efficient to free up more memory (allowing for a bit more of buffer of available RAM for variables and in hopes to prevent 'Out of memory' errors or other too-low-on-memory issues) and things hopefully run a little bit better overall.

Also changed the opening prompt (hopefully making it more clearer)
to: "How many maps to play (1-99)?"

Can download from the Treasure Seeker page at:
https://mysticsword.itch.io/vic-20-treasure-seeker

[MysticSword]

But I'll also share the software I used to make it...teach a man to fish and all

https://csdb.dk/release/?id=187433

By the way, I wasn't able to have that utility work with PRG files (even after changing a setting to read unknown files as PRG). It would just give me an error. Seems (for me at least) I could only have it accept .d64 files.

But no worries, I found an alternative:
https://style64.org/dirmaster
Quick and simple to convert a PRG file into .d64 format; I just simply drag-and-drop the PRG file, then choose a 'Save as...' option and it will convert and save it into .d64 format. I then tried the converted-into .d64 file with VICE and all works good (works the same as if using the PRG format version).

[MysticSword]

Grondinm has kindly made a game-play video of my Treasure Seeker (v1.0) game:
https://spectra.video/w/kvQcw1vVRVjpXgQYJEee4x
Many thanks for that G! It's much appreciated.
I really enjoyed watching it and it was great to see someone playing and enjoying my game. And hey, he's even playing it on a real Vic-20 too, so that's awesome.

Watching that video gave me insights of some things I could fix or improve upon. So, after a bit of work to improve a few things, I've now released version 1.3 of this game. Change-log as follows;

Fence / border now added to the left and right sides of the map. This can help to avoid confusion or accidentally going to where one might not have been wanting to go. I think it also helps to add to the overall challenge of the game, so requiring the Player to more fully navigate the map (without the use of 'short-cuts / teleporting from one side to the other) to the camp, exit door, and in dealing with or avoiding the wandering skeletons.

After a new map is generated, there's now a bit more open ground space around the Player-character and camp. This (I think) will give the Player a bit more evading room and less likely to get trapped if wanting to access camp but a skeleton followed close.

I also fixed an issue where sometimes gold-coins that might have randomly appeared after blasting an area , and if also catching the 1st skeleton (and key holder) of a map, that it may have covered / hidden the key. So now the key should always appear properly after defeating the first skeleton on a map.

I put a fence / border part on one side of the camp and exit door. This can help to prevent accidently enter those spots and it also eliminates doing an extra location check (so I was able to trim the code a bit more that way and hopefully to reclaim a bit of extra RAM memory for the game).
~

As before, the most up-to-date version of my Treasure Seeker game can be found on the game's page at:
https://mysticsword.itch.io/vic-20-treasure-seeker

PS: I'd be happy for comments from anyone that has had a chance to play my game. Cheers!

[grondinm]

Many thanks for that G! It's much appreciated.
I really enjoyed watching it and it was great to see someone playing and enjoying my game. And hey, he's even playing it on a real Vic-20 too, so that's awesome.

Watching that video gave me insights of some things I could fix or improve upon. So, after a bit of work to improve a few things, I've now released version 1.3 of this game. Change-log as follows;

-snip-

Great. I'm glad my little video was able to help make improvements to this game. Great job again. Looking forward to anything else you make.

[Mike]

Made parts of the code more efficient to free up more memory (allowing for a bit more of buffer of available RAM for variables and in hopes to prevent 'Out of memory' errors or other too-low-on-memory issues) [...]

If there are any mismatched/open GOSUBs or FOR loops, no amount of memory saving techniques in the program itself is going to help you.

CBM BASIC V2 does not store the information of open FOR loops or GOSUB instantiations in the BASIC memory but on the CPU stack, the latter which will fill up in case of such a programming error within short time. Unfortunately, the ?OUT OF MEMORY error message is used on at least four different occasions: in BASIC memory, collision of string heap (from above) with the numeric variable space and arrays (from below) where even the Garbage Collection didn't help, or - on the CPU stack - too many mismatched FORs, GOSUBs or expressions with too many nested parentheses.

This quadruple use of said error message makes it somewhat difficult to find the actual culprit, as the line number gives no good hint to the point of the actual error: there could be a non-matched GOSUB that gradually fills up the stack, but the error happens when a somewhat more complicated numeric expression that otherwise works fine (given enough stack space) has no breathing room anymore. The error message then indicates the line of that expression, but it's not the expression at fault, it is the non-matching program structure!

String expressions that are too complex actually have their own error message, ?FORMULA TOO COMPLEX.

If the program adheres to the principles of structured programming, there is no mismatch of FOR loops or GOSUBs. Then, this kind of error can only occur in the case of recursive algorithms, which are somewhat unlikely to appear in game code.

Greetings,

Michael

[MysticSword]

- snip -

Good stuff! Thanks again for all the tips and advice, I've learned a lot from it.

[AndyH]

The game looks pretty neat. I like the buy more health and dynamite feature.

[MysticSword]

The game looks pretty neat. I like the buy more health and dynamite feature.

Thanks! I figured that using the coins to buy either more health or dynamite could make the game more interesting.
I hope you'll enjoy playing the game.

[MysticSword]

Treasure Seeker game has been updated to v1.5:
Changes as follows:

* Trimmed parts of the code a bit more .
​* I've made a few changes to the game (which I feel improves some things).
* Randomization (for certain effects in the game and for when generating new maps) is fixed / improved.
* The amount of rocks appearing on new maps will tend to be more now (compared to earlier versions).
* More gold now appears on new maps.
* The Skeletons, though still with a mix of some random movements, they sometimes will be more likely to move towards the Player when/if they can.

I feel some of these changes will help to add to the overall challenge and fun of game-play.
The most up-to-date version of this game can be found on the game's page at: https://mysticsword.itch.io/vic-20-treasure-seeker

[MysticSword]

Game updated to v1.6:

​Certain parts of game-play a bit quicker now and when accessing camp / buying items or when placing TNT.
I've tweaked the map generation a bit too (when placing the rocks, so things should hopefully be more 'consistent' with about how 'thick' the rock-field in general is per a map).
Also made a few parts of the code a little more trimmed / efficient.

*Updated to v1.7 now: Vic-20 sometimes seems to have really wonky randomization / RND. Re-did the bit for randomly generated rock-field on new maps. Hopefully now it will be more consistent with more 'thickness' to the overall rock-field (I thought I had it working good with v1.6, but then after some more play-testing, it seemed sometimes past Map 1 it was often generating way too few rocks). We'll see how this goes.

* Update to v1.8: I think I've fixed issues with map generation (randomized rock-field) and have tweaked to have what I think should be a good balance of gold and rock-field thickness per new map. Also have a bit more gold on a newly generated map. Trimmed-out a part of the code that looked to be a left-over line (from an early version) that I didn't need anymore.
~

The most up-to-date version of this game can be downloaded from the game's page at:
https://mysticsword.itch.io/vic-20-treasure-seeker

PS: Thanks to Grondinm for the great feedback, which has helped in my making fixes and improvements to this game.

[chysn]

It's pretty well done, I like it. If you want to increase the re-playability factor, I think you could introduce some progression of difficulty. My view of game design is that a level-based game should start out easy, and progress toward very difficult, to reward a determined player with a greater challenge. Maybe the dynamite gets more and more expensive. Maybe the skeletons get faster, or resistant to explosions. Maybe the fuse on the dynamite gets shorter.

If there's no progression, the player starts asking, "When do I want to stop?" The game must beat the player, but offer hope of improvement.

[MysticSword]

<snip>

Thanks for the good feedback and I'm happy that you like it.

I do agree with the suggestion you mention of adding to the challenge / re-playability. I did want to try to add to the challenge in some way as the Player progresses onto new maps. Though a main roadblock in my trying to add in such things is the very limited memory (trying to have it fit within specs of a Vic-20 with 3K expansion).

As it is with this current game, things are very tight on memory. Still, I'll look over things and see if there's still some way I can add to the challenge as the Player progresses to a new map. One such idea I had (and maybe still be possible to fit within the tight memory) is I was thinking maybe to have the skeleton-key-holder be the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th skeleton, as the Player enters a new map (1st skeleton for map 1, 2nd for map 2, etc... though maybe beyond a certain number of maps, probably won't make higher than the 5th perhaps). It's something I'll consider and I'll see if may I can manage to include and within the tight memory.

I'm not sure if there's any way to really make things faster for this game with it being in BASIC.

I might be able to make it so the skeletons get tougher (taking multiple explosions to defeat) as the Player progresses to new maps.

Anyways, I'll see what / if I might be able to add to this game. Thanks again.

[MysticSword]

Treasure Seeker game now updated to version 2.0.

Fixes, improvements and Challenge Levels added:
Fixed; skeleton-gold and random-gold appearing after an explosion was not working before key was picked-up. This should be fixed now.
Spawned gold could cover / hide a dropped skeleton-key. This should be fixed now so the key should properly show after any gold spawns.
~

Still occasionally had issues with the randomly generated rock-field for when entering a new map. Hopefully things are working better now for this and that there's a good balance .
~
A little bit more 'escape time' added after a skeleton hits the player-character.
~
On the start screen, the Player will now be prompted to enter a number, 1, 2 or 3, for the Challenge Level.

1 = exit 3 maps.
2 = exit 5 maps.
3 = exit 10 maps.

The skeleton-key-holder will be increased per map #, so for example; On map # 1, the 1st skeleton appearing will be the key-holder, on map #2 the 2nd skeleton will be the key holder, on map #3 the 3rd skeleton, etc... Up to as high as map #10 would be the 10th skeleton being the key-holder. The according skeleton-key-holder of a map needs to be defeated and then it will drop the key.

The most up-to-date version of this game can be downloaded from the game's page at:
https://mysticsword.itch.io/vic-20-treasure-seeker