Denial

English Invader wrote:I highly recommend Keyquest as a great example of this genre:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi8szf1jiac

It's a very rare cartridge that is virtually impossible to buy as an original but it's available on the Mega-Cart and eslapion's Behr-Bonz and it's also available to download as a CRT image.

Key Quest is also available on the sd2iec collection. Awesome game! And obviously an influence here as well as serpent caves(I loved the simplicity) and Adventure are my 3 primary influences in this game.

On the subject of Key Quest, I was unaware that carts exists for it. I thought the game never made it to production, I thought that the release was cancelled but the program still got leaked out.

There are three known carts I believe, I own one of them, it's my dump on Megacart, Behr Bonz etc out there for people to play

Update...
I have dropped the idea of bombs and have instead given the character a gun. While playing some Key Quest and Tutankham I remembered the one thing that bothers me about both games... Why can't you shoot north and south? Why only east and west? So I added a gun that is capable of firing in all 4 cardinal directions.

Because it added to the challenge, it made things a little easy if all four directions

Mayhem wrote:Because it added to the challenge, it made things a little easy if all four directions

It does, I agree add not only a difficulty but also provides an extra dynamic to the strategy of the gameplay. It's the idea of it. What kind of weapon can only shoot east or west?

I have had to adjust the game for difficulty. The game itself moves faster, different difficulty modes move faster and the game speeds up as you progress in levels. More walls and zombies at higher difficulty levels. The zombies also move faster with varying speed across difficulty levels.

After I buff out a few details I'll release another build, it's really starting to turn out very nice.

Feature request: why don't you consider adding some more lives?
It's a bit frustrating when you make that small mistake and it's game over right away.

LoadError wrote:Feature request: why don't you consider adding some more lives?
It's a bit frustrating when you make that small mistake and it's game over right away.

I'm going to add survivors. There will be 1 or 2 roaming each level. If you get to them before the zombies You'll earn a continue. If the zombies get them first they'll be turned into another zombie. I will at this point probably have to add more levels to each mode to increase difficulty.

Good ideas! Kind of the same thinking I did in my Pyrotech with the weapons and the extra bombs, only in a zombified fashion.

I gave your game a try, really enjoyed it. When it comes to Vic games I really appreciate making the most out of simplicity in gameplay. Awesome job!

This is my first game Drone-X it is very similar in nature.

I was planning to have the gun have unlimited fire power but it is making the game a little to easy. The player will now have a six shooter. A few bullets will be randomly placed at level generation and zombies, when shot will have a random chance if dropping bullets.

I will have to sacrifice 1 line of the screen for bullet display which will require minor edits to about 50% of my routines but it will be worth it.

Amount of levels will still increase to balance difficulty to being able to continue once survivors have been added. This will also require changes in the algorithms defining level generation so that to many walls and zombies are not being produced.

There is a fine line between to easy and impossible when dealing with creating difficulty.

I have also noticed that not all the zombies are moving in the current build. I believe that when I changed the algorithm that determines how many zombies to generate I did not change the one that determines which to move. This will have to be fixed.

Here is the newest build-epziibd5

updates
-gun is fully functional
-zombies have random chance of dropping bullet when shot
-bullets placed on screen when level loads
-get to survivors before the zombies to earn continues

I need to add a second set of variables for player stats to revert to when reloading a level in order to prevent cheating.
Aside from that all that's left now is debugging, buffing out the details and adding in the extras (story, directions etc...)

I am very excited about how this is turning out. Thank you everyone for your support and input.

Keyboard controls now use either awsd or ijkl for directional control. Left or right Ctrl key + direction to fire weapon.

Joystick- joystick for directional control. Fire button+joystick to fire weapon.

Z reloads level for both control settings.

It's turning out very nice.

TESTERS NEEDED!

I've finished the game and now all it needs is some test playing to test for bugs and hopefully get some feed back on playability, difficulty etc.

Here is the download epz2exvb

The game should work on both pal and ntsc with 16k expansion.

The game was written in basic using CBM PRG studio and compiled with Austro-Compiler

Game features
-story
-directions
-credits
-links
-5 difficulty levels
-higher difficulty levels have more levels and faster zombies
-randomly generated levels
-joystick controls
-keyboard controls with both awsd and jikl for directions and both ctrl keys for fire for both left and right handed gameplay
-music for title, menu, continue screen, game over and victory
-end game story
-gun with limited ammo
-survivors to rescue for continues
-animated zombie heads
-custom character graphics
-in game sound fx
-runs as a stand alone prg so it can easily be converted to disk, tape and other formats

I am very happy with how this game has turned. It is both fun and challenging.

I have finally played Exit Plan Z 2
I am not sure I like it better than the first one, which was full of clever ideas, but it is certainly much more accessible.

I played on the second difficulty level (cake walk) and made it on the first try: 53212 points, 6 rescued, 31 killed zombies.

I will also try on a harder setting before I get back to you with more feedback and perhaps some suggestions.