It has been a very long while since I last posted on here. Not that I havent been using CTF, but I have been using it to make little projects with my kids. However, during the Covid thing I have played a hell of a lot of retro games. Especially from the C64. One game I remember from my youth was called Nonterraqueous. Yes the is a mouthfull of a name. So I figured I might use CTF to make a quick game.
Essentially it was a flickscreen game where you player a robot seeker tasked with finding and destroying the evil ZX81 that is terrorising a world (I am dumbing it down a little but honestly it's not far off). What made this game interesting is that it contained 1000 rooms. Which I am sure that 90% are pure decoys :o I am gonna include a walkthrough video showing it been completed in 5 minutes. Which is a feat because the game is hard as nails and the guy uses a glitch. But it shows the basic gameplay elements.
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Recently playing it I found that actually, at its core, the game is still interesting. You have that neat flickscreen approach to room transitions. The enemies are well animated and the overall look is still alright to say it was a budget title from the day. There are some really iffy design choices though, like the constant gravity pull meaning you have to constantly adjust your seeker and the amount of rooms. Yes 1000 was impressive for the day but actually if you look there are probably only a few room types.
I figured I might try and recreate this game but use my gaming experience to try and correct some of these issues.
So today I have followed almightyzentaco's amazing ARPG tutorial to make the flickscreen effect. I have then created a frame with a subapplication object to act as the main screen and this subapplication links to the game frame which has a size 440x440. This is then snuggled into a hud to emulate the look of the C64 game. If you click the thumbnail you will get a csreenshot of what I mean. At some point I want to create a "border" effect like you see on the C64.
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Bellow is a thumbnail which if you click you will see the flickscreen working. The camera object is visible for debugging the camera.
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This is still very early days and there is a lot that needs to be done. Around enemy stuff and then to do with traps and other things.
Anyay I would post this to show what I am working on and maybe get some ideas/feedback from the community.