New game: VIC-Splatform, now with MUSIC!

MacbthPSW · Post by **MacbthPSW** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 7:19 pm

I spent a good part of the long weekend porting my C64 game "Splatform" to the VIC-20.

It's a more or less exact port, with smooth scrolling and soft sprites (well, really just one sprite).

It currently requires an 8K or greater expansion. I've got ideas about how to get it down to running within the 3k expansion, or maybe even without, but I'm not sure the effort would be worthwhile.

Use left and right on the joystick to bounce the head off the right-hand side of the level to advance. 9 levels in total. I beat it my first try on the real hardware, though I was unable to finish it on the emulator (difficult with keyboard).

Download it here: http://psw.ca/prg/vicsplat-beta.prg

Let me know if you find any bugs. I'm especially interested to know how it looks on real PAL hardware. It's quite smooth on NTSC. I'll do a proper release of it in a week or so if there's no problems.

Oh yeah, if anyone wants to write a tune for it, that'd be great! You can play and listen to the original C64 game here if you wanted inspiration.

Happy New Year!

Post by **Jeff-20** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 7:25 pm

That is SMOOOOTH scrolling!

d0c · Post by **d0c** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 8:51 pm

i maybe could try to make a loading screen for you... any good gfx program for the vic20?

GreyGhost · Post by **GreyGhost** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 8:59 pm

Addictive, fun to play, and very smooth.

nippur72 · Post by **nippur72** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 3:01 am

Very well done, I like games with smooth scrolling! This one remembers me of "jump-bug", a game for the Emerson-Arcadia where a car-shaped sprite jumped over skyscrapers. In that game it was also possible to change the height amplitude of the jump with up and down controls.

Please share with us the implementation details. Is the playfield random? Do you use floating point?

Will look for the final release.

Jaicen · Post by **Jaicen** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 7:36 am

That's a pretty cool game, though as you say it's infuriatingly difficult on an emulator+keyboard combo!
I still don't have a working VIC, but I could knock you up some music in VICTracker if you'd like?

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 10:08 am

Isn't Wyndex' music player quite straight forward (simple) so someone could convert the original music right away? Or maybe on occassions several channels cover the same octave?

On FFD2.com, it says "Splatform tune source coming soon" since a few years ago.

Jaicen · Post by **Jaicen** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 1:23 pm

How about supporting the SID-Card and porting the tunes over completely?!

d0c · Post by **d0c** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 1:59 pm

how about making a few thing better in the game like...

the platform you jump on should have diffrent colors(after you jumped on them they go white) and when you jump on them you score points, diffrents points for diffrent color.... blue = 10 and red = 20 and so on... and while your at it ad a timer so you have to hurry to get to the finish....

this improvment would make it a bit more fun and challanging i think...

when it comes to the loading screen i was like thinking of a part that load the picture first then when finish you hit space and start loading the game... or something... i have a few simple ideas for a the loading screen but i need some help in how to get them to the vic20...

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 3:58 pm

Perhaps MacbethPSW wants to avoid colour clashes when the Splatform guy (didn't Thomas Jentzch give him a name in the Atari 2600 port?) bounces onto the platform. It looks to me that he sinks a few pixels into the platform, or is that an illusion?

MacbthPSW · Post by **MacbthPSW** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 5:21 pm

Thanks for the feedback guys!

nippur72 wrote:Please share with us the implementation details. Is the playfield random? Do you use floating point?

The playfield is made from a simple algorithm, based on a single byte seed which is used in a LFSR I'm quite fond of. I also used this same LFSR in my C64 mini-RPG called "Minima" and it's sequel.

I tweaked the algorithm and the seeds until I came up with 9 solvable levels, and then arranged them in what I thought was a roughly easiest to hardest order.

The original C64 binary was under 1024 bytes, including Wyndex's music, and it took first place in the 2002 Minigame Competition.

The physics are done in more-or-less fixed point.

Did you try on real PAL hardware? I need to get myself a PAL VIC sometime.

Jaicen wrote:I still don't have a working VIC, but I could knock you up some music in VICTracker if you'd like?

If you're willing, sure! Something "bouncy" would be appropriate

Forgive my ignorance, have you done any VIC music before?

carlsson wrote:Isn't Wyndex' music player quite straight forward (simple) so someone could convert the original music right away? Or maybe on occassions several channels cover the same octave?

Maybe, yeah. I could talk to Steve (Wyndex) if someone wants to port it.

Jaicen wrote:How about supporting the SID-Card and porting the tunes over completely?!

Hmm, I'd rather have a native VIC-20 tune if someone is willing. I'm already kind of unhappy that an 8k ram expander is necessary, even more hardware would make it even worse imo

d0c wrote:how about making a few thing better in the game like...

I've got a bunch of ideas including something similar to what you've suggested which are going into Splatform 2 for the C64 (and maybe later for the VIC). For this release I really want to keep things the same as the C64 and Atari 2600 versions (well, the 2600 author made a few changes, but nothing as big as Splatform 2 ideas).

doc wrote:when it comes to the loading screen i was like thinking of a part that load the picture first then when finish you hit space and start loading the game... or something... i have a few simple ideas for a the loading screen but i need some help in how to get them to the vic20...

I really don't have a clue about the gfx tools around for the VIC-20. This is my first non-BASIC project for the machine.

A loading screen would be fine, but since the game is only ~1500 bytes, I think any loading screen would be nearly as big?

carlsson wrote:Perhaps MacbethPSW wants to avoid colour clashes when the Splatform guy (didn't Thomas Jentzch give him a name in the Atari 2600 port?) bounces onto the platform.

Yes, it's monochrome mostly because I wanted to avoid colour clashes (I can't stand them!

) and also because I'm lazy.

Thomas named the little guy "Toto" in his SWOOPS! collection of minigames.

It looks to me that he sinks a few pixels into the platform, or is that an illusion?

Yes, he does sink in a little bit. I was going to fix that, but then thought maybe it gives the "splat" (him flattening out) look for free? If not, I'll have to add some code to allow him to have different frames.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 3:30 pm

I disassembled the original C64 Splatform, but the music player is tightly embedded in the code so hard to do something from. I noticed Steve submitted an improved (?) version of the driver with original music to the TinySID compo last year, 256 bytes. I disassembled that as well, but haven't yet gotten much wiser.

Schema · Post by **Schema** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 8:55 pm

Just tried it. Very nice! Amazing scrolling, as others have mentioned.

I had my 64DTV handy as well, and was able to do a side-by-side comparison. So I noticed that the levels were the same too.

It was strange playing a VIC game with no color and no music though - adding either would definitely be an improvement. Or at least some "boingy noises", as my wife says.

MacbthPSW · Post by **MacbthPSW** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 9:30 pm

carlsson wrote:I disassembled the original C64 Splatform, but the music player is tightly embedded in the code so hard to do something from. I noticed Steve submitted an improved (?) version of the driver with original music to the TinySID compo last year, 256 bytes. I disassembled that as well, but haven't yet gotten much wiser.

Hmm, I don't think I have the source code for it. I'm almost certain Steve just supplied the object code.

I'm not sure the driver was improved for the TinySID compo, it may have just been further optimized for size so it would qualify.

MacbthPSW · Post by **MacbthPSW** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 9:44 pm

Schema wrote:Just tried it. Very nice! Amazing scrolling, as others have mentioned.

Thanks. Between the lack of smooth scrolling and sprites, it's made me appreciate the VIC-II an awful lot more than ever before

Still, it was fun to do, and my kids have been playing it a lot. They seem to find the VIC-20 more appealing than the C-64 in general.

I had my 64DTV handy as well, and was able to do a side-by-side comparison. So I noticed that the levels were the same too.

Yes, that was important to me to make them as identical as possible.

It was strange playing a VIC game with no color and no music though - adding either would definitely be an improvement. Or at least some "boingy noises", as my wife says.

Yeah, I definitely want music. I ruled out sound effects as being too annoying. I think my wife suggested "boingy sounds" or something.

re: more colour, I think since the ball dude jumps up through platforms the colour clash would be just too unacceptable. Even worse, the clash would stay in place while the platform along it. Ewwww. Better monochrome than that mess

PS. I sent the RR+RR-Net today.