New game - Boulder Logic - work-in-progress...

[bobs]

Testing this one is in my long Sinclair-to-do list, but one thing that I've noticed in all your games is the quality of the graphics. You are really giving new life to the ZX81.

Thanks Bruno - it's one of my main drives behind this - that ZX81 games can look good and not just have everything represented by a single character, which I feel distracts from the machine. With larger graphics (3x3 in BL) comes the need for a scrolling playing field, but with the character-mapped display buffer of the Zeddy this is pretty easy to achieve in machine-code.

[bobs]

Have you considered adding secrets and extra things to collect? Like eating all the dirt turns boulders to diamonds, pushing into the edge under certain conditions takes you to a secret room. Secret rooms could have dropping diamonds to collect ala meteor storm, ditto for boulders, chasing enemies.

How about a giant jewel made up of 4 or 9 objects to give extra points or temporary protection against enemies, or walk through walls.

Just some ideas.

Thanks for the ideas, I'll bare them all in mind. Unfortunately the speed of the ZX81 dictates a lot of what can be achieved - it's already running flat-out at the moment and I have to be very careful about the contents of each level in order to keep the game feeling responsive enough to play. The extra processing required for some of your ideas might rule them out, but we'll see.

[sirmorris]

Wow - I've just got back from a long period away from keyboard - I have to say I'm stunned at your work! Amazing stuff Bobs - keep it up!

C

[bobs]

Wow - I've just got back from a long period away from keyboard - I have to say I'm stunned at your work! Amazing stuff Bobs - keep it up!

Thanks Sir M! Development is nearly up on this one - managed to reach the 32 levels I was aiming for, added the game complete screen, passcodes, save-to-tape, and promptly ran out of memory, so unfortunately none of the ideas mentioned by TheWiz will make it into the game. I do love trying to squeeze everything into 16K, but there is always a limit. Just need to re-arrange the order of some of the levels now before it's finished.

[yerzmyey]

Bobs: believe me man, I will not use emulator for this one surely.
I will fire up my ZX81 and play.

[sirmorris]

I do love trying to squeeze everything into 16K, but there is always a limit.

In-built feature-creep protection

[Shaun_B]

Is this the biggest ZX81 game ever??? It certainly feels like it is.

Great work, Bobs. Absolute quality, can't wait for the final release.

Regards,

Shaun.

[bobs]

I do love trying to squeeze everything into 16K, but there is always a limit.

In-built feature-creep protection

Nearly - but only when I've exhausted trying to optimise the code that little bit further to free up more memory. I'll most likely stick with the 32 levels, but use any extra memory I find (which I don't think will be much) to add extra bits'n'bats.

[bobs]

Managed to optimise a few things to give me some more memory, which I promptly used to re-design the front-end. Swings & roundabouts eh?

[bobs]

New build from my site / use the download link - http://www.bobs-stuff.co.uk/extras/boulderl_wip.zip.

This is hopefully the final build, although I haven't played it fully through yet from start to finish. Everything is in - 32 levels, pass-code system to access each level, practice mode, save to tape, and no memory left!