Denial

Not a problem, thanks. PM sent .

I submitted THEATER OF WAR to the 2010 minigames competition.

Good to know! Now that the release is "official", and once provided also with electronic instructions, don't forget to put the game in the VIC software releases of 2010 thread .

orion70 wrote:Good to know! Now that the release is "official", and once provided also with electronic instructions, don't forget to put the game in the VIC software releases of 2010 thread .

I started to work on a loader screen that provides instructions, and I'd like to make a hi-res splash screen as well (like the ones on my collection of games on side 2 of the Realms III disk).

But hopefully these won't take too long.

While the official minigame compo version can be downloaded here:

http://minigamecompo2010.00freehost.com/

(with a PDF manual).

I'm still working on this game. I'm not changing the main game program, but I'm creating loader screens. Here's a preview of the instruction loader program:



I'm going to put some of the text from the PDF into the instruction loader screen. This way, the game will be a user-friendly experience for the first time player.



I also intend to create a hi-res splash screen that can be viewed on the unexpanded VIC-20; 176 by 184 pixels using my "indexed compression" memory trick.

Still working on the instruction loader program. It will contain a lot of factual information about all the units:

1 Original Graphics
2 Alternate Graphics

Can't wait to try the game disk - excellent graphics for the intro!

orion70 wrote:

1 Original Graphics
2 Alternate Graphics

Can't wait to try the game disk - excellent graphics for the intro!

Thanks. I can't wait to get this done as well, but I like to put it into a nice professional-looking presentation which will eventually become part of a collection games I want to put out (working title: "Games of Strategy and Imagination"). This loader has 12 screens of instructions. I don't do a word-for-word copy of the PDF, of course, but I try to cram in as much information as possible in an efficient way:

Lately, I've been installing tools on my laptop so I can create splash screens with my indexed compression trick I used last year (for the side 2 compilation of games for the Realms III commercial release) to display 176x184 full screen hi-res graphics on an unexpanded VIC-20.

What a difference a year makes--I had to remember how I did everything and had a bit of a hard time trying to find the D64 image of those tools I used. Setting up a dev environment is actually quite time consuming, and the longer you go without writing code (in this case assembly language for cc65), your skills tend to atrophy and you have to go through another learning curve all over again.

Anyway, I found an old WW2 photograph to convert to .PGM (million thanks again to Mike for showing us all how to create these files for the purpose of transforming them into a VIC-20 format).



The above is not a VIC-20 screenshot, but I should be able to create a .prg that shows this exact image. While I have cc65 set up on my laptop, I have to install a good source code editor. Windows' notepad just doesn't cut it.

Final version is available here:

https://sites.google.com/site/gdbsite50 ... ects=0&d=1



I will be posting the link + preview screenshots above in the "New releases of 2010" thread in the General forum shortly.

Excellent!
Will download it ASAP (I'm at work now...).

orion70 wrote:Excellent!
Will download it ASAP (I'm at work now...).

I just had an idea...

Since the game now has a menu system to load 2 different versions of the game...

Why not offer a third/fourth version where the computer AI and level advancement is stripped out, and two human players go at it? They can each start with 1000 reserves and 50 supply units or so. It's just one big schmozz/battle of epic proportions.

Menu system would then look something like this:

1 ONE PLAYER VERSION
2 TWO PLAYER VERSION
3 ALT GRAPHIC(1 PLR)
4 ALT GRAPHIC(2 PLR)
5 READ INSTRUCTIONS

I should be able to whip something up with a couple hours of work.

Not bad, even if I won't use the 2P options, since I have no VIC pals to play with me .
Maybe it would be nice if you could arrange the menu just like e.g. Dig Dug, Tetris+, Frogger, and others:

ONE PLAYER [F1 to change]
CLASSIC GRAPHICS [F3 to change]
I for INSTRUCTIONS
P to PLAY

Just downloaded and gave it a play... very cool! An unexpanded game and uses the floppy drive.

Have you tried Code::Blocks for source editing?

orion70 wrote:Not bad, even if I won't use the 2P options, since I have no VIC pals to play with me .
Maybe it would be nice if you could arrange the menu just like e.g. Dig Dug, Tetris+, Frogger, and others:

ONE PLAYER [F1 to change]
CLASSIC GRAPHICS [F3 to change]
I for INSTRUCTIONS
P to PLAY

Even the instruction loader doesn't have much memory to spare. Adding an extra option does change the screen around a bit as well:



I think this will be the final "final" version (I'll upload it later). I don't want to "feature creep" this project too much. But creating a 2 player version was pretty easy to do, and is something nice for those who are able to coax a friend to play against them. The 2 players also have the option of choosing # reserves + # supplies (100-900 reserves, 10-90 supplies).