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Description
Revamping my old C.P.C. retro game project. Old screenshots from 2008 can be seen [link] for comparison.

Feeling more confident with the resolution and palette as can probably tell from the shading on the character Jack and the more colourful status bar. Screen size has been cut down as on a real CPC it would struggle to scroll at a decent speed. Got rid of the TIME box in the status bar to shrink that area down. Have been revamping the tileset considerably. The ground/wall tiles are now redone using a chunky rock look I had been doing in my other project Hero:CF which I think looks better than the old grainy look this game used to have. Scrolling and movement is now more 8-bit in feel too. No acceleration/deceleration. It's now much easier to code things now most of it is in 8x8 areas. Smooth slopes movements are now 8 pixel high steps. The messy parallax mountain range of the old demo has been taken out completely and replaced by a static mountain range made of tiles. The clouds too. Overall I'm much happier with the feel and look of it all.

Jack has been reshaped and reshaded. Had to remove idle animation and his hair bouncing when he runs due to memory restraints on a real CPC. That means the amount of sprites needed for his top half have reduced drastically which is good. His leg sprites are also used by the zombie troopers (who are former human prisoners) and the main villain (before his transformation into the megaboss) as they are all from the prison ship Jack was on so they all share the same uniform. Because of their similarities there are extra game modes where the sprites and names can be swapped so you can play as the villain character and even the zombie troopers without much impact on memory at all. Some of the dialogue will change for each and in the case of the zombie troopers the first aid kits are replaced with brains.

Other enemies have all been redesigned. The walking droid in this screenshot is an example of that. The legs of those are seperate from the top so that the 4 frame leg walk animation is shared between the different colour top halfs. Can still jump on them to kill them. Green is now the common default type for that enemy with red being the next one up (slight reference to Koopa Troopas there).

The smaller floating droids are now somewhat 'spiked' and silverish in appearance as I felt the old 'pink bubblegum' look they used to have was all wrong. They look much better now and more 'serious'.

Jack now has a small robot buddy who can access small areas and tunnels for various reasons (collect items, hit switches Jack can't reach, and other things). Since the robot is reprogrammed from the planet's security robot force there are enemy versions of it too (or rather the enemy version is the default and the buddy is taken from them to be come a 'good guy').

16 colours - Amstrad CPC Mode 0 'widepixel' resolution

Scanlines added in PC version of game and can be switched off or made partially transparent.

Regular progress posts can be viewed at [link]

Description
Revamping my old C.P.C. retro game project. Old screenshots from 2008 can be seen [link] for comparison.

Feeling more confident with the resolution and palette as can probably tell from the shading on the character Jack and the more colourful status bar. Screen size has been cut down as on a real CPC it would struggle to scroll at a decent speed. Got rid of the TIME box in the status bar to shrink that area down. Have been revamping the tileset considerably. The ground/wall tiles are now redone using a chunky rock look I had been doing in my other project Hero:CF which I think looks better than the old grainy look this game used to have. Scrolling and movement is now more 8-bit in feel too. No acceleration/deceleration. It's now much easier to code things now most of it is in 8x8 areas. Smooth slopes movements are now 8 pixel high steps. The messy parallax mountain range of the old demo has been taken out completely and replaced by a static mountain range made of tiles. The clouds too. Overall I'm much happier with the feel and look of it all.

Jack has been reshaped and reshaded. Had to remove idle animation and his hair bouncing when he runs due to memory restraints on a real CPC. That means the amount of sprites needed for his top half have reduced drastically which is good. His leg sprites are also used by the zombie troopers (who are former human prisoners) and the main villain (before his transformation into the megaboss) as they are all from the prison ship Jack was on so they all share the same uniform. Because of their similarities there are extra game modes where the sprites and names can be swapped so you can play as the villain character and even the zombie troopers without much impact on memory at all. Some of the dialogue will change for each and in the case of the zombie troopers the first aid kits are replaced with brains.

Other enemies have all been redesigned. The walking droid in this screenshot is an example of that. The legs of those are seperate from the top so that the 4 frame leg walk animation is shared between the different colour top halfs. Can still jump on them to kill them. Green is now the common default type for that enemy with red being the next one up (slight reference to Koopa Troopas there).

The smaller floating droids are now somewhat 'spiked' and silverish in appearance as I felt the old 'pink bubblegum' look they used to have was all wrong. They look much better now and more 'serious'.

Jack now has a small robot buddy who can access small areas and tunnels for various reasons (collect items, hit switches Jack can't reach, and other things). Since the robot is reprogrammed from the planet's security robot force there are enemy versions of it too (or rather the enemy version is the default and the buddy is taken from them to be come a 'good guy').

16 colours - Amstrad CPC Mode 0 'widepixel' resolution

Scanlines added in PC version of game and can be switched off or made partially transparent.

Regular progress posts can be viewed at [link]