Released: pulse

[tokra]

I'd rather expect people to buy it to support me and to get their hands on original artwork. But when it comes to real life business issues in Germany all hopes simply go down the drain. I'm not playing in the right league with the financial background and spare time to dare such experiments.

You might want to try Pystronik to publish your game. Ghislain's Realms of Quest series as well as Carling the Spider were released there "commercially" for the VIC-20. Another possible publisher is Cronosoft that has seen Kweepa's excellent Blue Star for example.

I don't think both will earn you any kinds of serious money, but it is nice to see those commercial releases with cover art.

Topic drift: I noticed you mentioned you are from Germany. Mike and me are as well. We will both again be at the Revision-party this easter. I suppose Exin (who did the Doom-picture touch up) is probably gonna be there as well, I think. The more the merrier!

[groepaz]

if someone could bring a real VIC20 setup and a copy of skramble and/or oil! .... i'll line up with some beers

[tokra]

if someone could bring a real VIC20 setup and a copy of skramble and/or oil! .... i'll line up with some beers

Challenge accepted!
(if I find space for the 1084 in the car that is... depends on the number of people we arrive with...)

[pixel]

You might want to try Pystronik to publish your game. Ghislain's Realms of Quest series as well as Carling the Spider were released there "commercially" for the VIC-20. Another possible publisher is Cronosoft that has seen Kweepa's excellent Blue Star for example.

I don't think both will earn you any kinds of serious money, but it is nice to see those commercial releases with cover art.

Topic drift: I noticed you mentioned you are from Germany. Mike and me are as well. We will both again be at the Revision-party this easter. I suppose Exin (who did the Doom-picture touch up) is probably gonna be there as well, I think. The more the merrier!

Hmpfh... I'll be in Scotland in April. Quite close to those impressive software houses. :p No chance to get to Saarbrücken.

[pixel]

The collision detection is now pixel-accurate and has variable bounding boxes. Quite a game changer, I'm afraid.

If the precision of your fingers can make an electron microscope jealous, you can show it off now.

Available at the initial location http://hugbox.org/pixel/blog/2014/2/23/pulse.prg

The problem was that the xa assembler took "stc" for a label – it should've been "sec", so I messed it up. So sorry.

[beamrider]

Just played this on real hardware...

It looks and plays even better than the emulator - the scrolling doesn't suffer the same tearing and seems more solid.

I did notice a slight bug once - the firing sound effect changed into a continuous tone, but this corrected itself after I died and didn't reoccur so nothing to worry about.

I think this is the first proper smooth scrolling game I've seen on the Vic - well done!

[Boray]

I did notice a slight bug once - the firing sound effect changed into a continuous tone

I noticed this if taking all power-ups while not dieing, a bit unbearable fire sound. Not a bug, but maybe you should do something about that anyway, pixel?

[pixel]

I noticed this if taking all power-ups while not dieing, a bit unbearable fire sound. Not a bug, but maybe you should do something about that anyway, pixel?

Right. It's not a bug. It's the laser getting too fast. I'm not too fond of it either. I'll try to keep the firing speed down and to provide another bonus instead. It's just... 3583 bytes now... you know...

[pixel]

Done! No uberspeed anymore. Instead you get the laser shooting upwards.

[beamrider]

Wow so quick!

I've waited longer for a burger at McDonalds

[pixel]

Wow so quick!

I've waited longer for a burger at McDonalds

Being told that one's just written the smoothest scrolling of the past 33 years can certainly dope the wetware. Thanks!

p.s.: A bug got in as quickly. The upside laser disappeared after a while.

[Kweepa]

This is pretty cool!
I don't know if you're using any kind of compression, but you could get some extra space by putting code on the screen, at startup copying code down into some free low memory locations, and then compressing the prg using exomizer or pucrunch.
This way you can free up any startup code, and some short code and data segments. I think I got another couple of pages (512 bytes or so) for Blue Star and The Keep with this system.

Ah, I just read the thread properly... never mind!

[rhurst]

It's just... 3583 bytes now... you know...

That's wonderful!

I took the liberty to post the game and a short clip on my web-site.

[pixel]

This is pretty cool!
I don't know if you're using any kind of compression, but you could get some extra space by putting code on the screen, at startup copying code down into some free low memory locations, and then compressing the prg using exomizer or pucrunch.
This way you can free up any startup code, and some short code and data segments. I think I got another couple of pages (512 bytes or so) for Blue Star and The Keep with this system.

Ah, I just read the thread properly... never mind!

Teeheehee! My jaw had to snap back into my scull after loading "The Keep". Absolutely awesome. I guess I'll have to spend a day or two trying out all the stuff you guys and gals created, to get some reality realignment.

[pixel]

I took the liberty to post the game and a short clip on my web-site.

Thanks! I can't even make emulator videos because of some odd Linux desktop bottleneck. I'll take the liberty to link back to sites that mention pulse.

You're right. I could knock off some more bytes but I'm sitting on my hands now or this will never be finished.