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xianc78 boosted
xianc78 boosted

Made some progress on the shoot ’em up game I’m working on. We got bats, explosions, and somewhat of a level... what else do we need in there? 🤔 #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #pico8

gamedev 

I've added a checkpoint system. Checkpoints have to be added manually in the text file because I haven't put them in the level editor yet.

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xianc78 boosted

Happy Mother's Day to all the real women that are mother's.

gamedev 

Oh, I've also replaced one large if-else statement with a switch statement. I think that might help with performance. Contrary to popular belief, a switch statement and an if-else statement do not compile the same way. if-else uses branching instructions (constantly checking for and calculating conditions) while a switch statement uses a lookup table.

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gamedev 

Added name (initials) entry to the high score table, as in you can change the characters around, but can't save the highscores, yet.

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xianc78 boosted
The Blood Moon in Zelda is a perfect example of harmony between engineering and design. It's essentially a cache busting mechanism that NEEDS to happen to conserve system resources. Instead of trying to make it something "the user doesn't notice" by trying to hide it from them, they interwove it into the story, the experience, and the lore. It actually has consequence for the player, which is SO much more interesting. They took a technical limitation and flipped it upside down. This is how you can tell their engineers were designers, and their designers were engineers. It's a cohesive unified vision for the product that perfectly balances design with technical excellence. Even if the hardware was 10x more powerful we'd still want the Blood Moon.
xianc78 boosted
okay normally i don't ask for feedback because this project i'm working on is really for myself and only tangentially for others but I want an honest opinion here:

do you think underwater having no blue tint is a problem?

coupled with this: does the footage you see here look like there's anything wrong with it in terms of the "blur" effects? (look at the trees and how the pixelation gets thicc when you go underwater)
xianc78 boosted
xianc78 boosted

gamedev 

Maybe it did fix the lag, but only slightly. I've also rearranged some if-statements, which also seemed to help.

Regardless, if you drive slowly enough, eventually all the cars in the level will appear on-screen at once because the only start moving once they are fully onscreen and will only disappear once they are on the bottom of the screen. So you will eventually get lag. But nobody is going to play the game that way so who cares?

Unlike my previous game, enemies do have some sort of AI, as opposed to just having patterns. Naturally, there are a few state machines and lot of if-statements even for this basic AI, but that's also because of poor planning. Some could be turned into switch statements.

Also, having a mine car does increase difficulty, a little bit. So, I probably won't need that much more cars on screen.

Anyway, the game is coming along nicely and quickly regardless. Like the last game, don't expect anything ground-breaking, just something that would be fun for a couple of minutes.

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