New Game: 4k Tap-N-Join
Just finished my fourth and final entry into this years mini game competition. This one is in the 4k category and is called 4k Tap-N-Join.
The game is a variation on the block joining puzzle game with the simple aim to score as many points as possible before the time runs. Full instructions are included in the zip.
Will upload to WoS but in the meantime you can grab it here 4k Tap-N-Join
Feedback, improvements and bug reports as always are appreciated, hope you enjoy.
TomD
The game is a variation on the block joining puzzle game with the simple aim to score as many points as possible before the time runs. Full instructions are included in the zip.
Will upload to WoS but in the meantime you can grab it here 4k Tap-N-Join
Feedback, improvements and bug reports as always are appreciated, hope you enjoy.
TomD
Post edited by TomD on
Comments
Lots of nice touches, sat & played for much longer than intended. If you didn't say 4k I wouldn't have thought it a minigame.
Not feedback as such but the only thing I'd do different would be qaopbottom row instead of 67890 (unless joystick option is compulsory in the comp) & save the extra tens of bytes elsewhere. Having said that I don't know how tight the memory was & have never written a minigame before!
Ended up at 4082 bytes long which is just below the limit allowed considering you also need a loader. Had to use BIN2REM to fit it all in, impressive little utility that. In terms of the keys I went with 67890 so you could use either joystick or keyboard to play. Unfortunately didn't have any space left to add different keys (personally prefer QAOPM myself) or Kempston. Probably just need another 100bytes or so to get that in but I've squeezed the hell out of the code already so don't reckon I'll fit it in.
TomD
Would you mind letting me know which memory address is the keyreading bit? I've been looking for in a,(c) and 61438 but found nowt obvious. I'd never make a hacker!
Finding this very addictive, but 67890 makes my left forearm ache.
RT
Hi
The key read routine is very simple and one of the great things about using 67890 in mini games is that they are all in the same half row making the code to read all the keys very small as:
ld a,%11101111 ; 7t - scan 67890 or sinclair
in a,($FE) ; 7t
cpl ; 4t
and %00011111 ; 7t
and thats it, a is now loaded with 67890 or bit 4 for 6, bit 3 for 7, etc... and this is used in the key read. Give me a day and I'll create new version with QAOPM just need to add a few lines to load registry a with the correct bits.
TomD
If you don't mind doing a QAOPM version that'd be great, this is the kind of thing I'll take time to play on the real hardware.
Planning to put your talents to use on a big project soon?, hope so the stuff you're doing is very exciting.
New version uploaded, can be found here
You can now use either QAOPM (or SPACE) or Sinclair as before. Added 43bytes to the code so nothing major but did push it above the allowed mini-game limit, so consider this a special edition :-)
I've been working on a big project for a while but to be honest lost motivation as I think it became a little too big and I keep getting sidetracked with mini-games :-) Flynn's Adventure in Bombland came out of the base code as I wanted to test the scripting and sprite engine on something a little smaller so you can probably guess the genre (no not another bomber-man clone). Got the map editor up and running now with pretty good compression and have designed the first part on paper just need to put it all together. Hopefully I can find some extra motivation to finish it, although Skyrim comes out next week so don't reckon it will appear before Christmas!
TomD
I'll enjoy the luxury version very much. Good luck with the new stuff.
Nice game. Sweet. 67890 is my default preferred keyboard configuration so all good there :-)
Weirdo :p.
In summary the Special Edition has:
- Can now use QAOPM/SPACE or Sinclair (67890)
- Bug fixes
- Added random drop gameplay feature
Have uploaded to WOS but in the meantime you can grab it here
TomD
Nice to see the readme, esp now the sprites have names!
This game has occupied most of my brewtimes at work this week, it's really got something. I fired it up on my real speccy too, it just doesn't seem right that it loaded so fast.
Thanks for the positive comments, much appreciated. Glad you have enjoyed playing it, let me know if you prefer the new feature or it was better off without it :-)
TomD
Wasn't sure whether to comment on that as I felt I'd already pushed it with the keys ;).
I'm not keen on the random appearance so early on, for me a lot of the enjoyment is in arranging things strategically to get the big scores. I do think it would be a good addition in the later levels where the difficulty starts increasing though (at an increasing rate?).
I dare say there's not a byte to spare now though...?
EDIT: something I think I'll insert is a pause function (don't worry not that greedy to expect it :-)) to enable me to stop for a sip of tea and/or retune my drifting CRT.
What are the differences with the previous standard edition? It seems identical to the other to me, except that every now and then pieces are automatically placed on the grid.
The random block drop was added as a new gameplay feature, plus you can now use keys QAOPM and some bugs are fixed.
TomD
I will definitely ask you to be a beta tester on my next project :-) and I do like a challenge so I went back in and was able to squeeze in a pause button... if you now press 't' the game pauses (for tea or TV tune)... I didn't remove the random block or add a level up function to it as it would take too much space but I did tweak it slightly so now it doesn't steal your next block, it creates a totally random block and places that. I found this worked better and didn't disrupt the flow as much as the previous version, allowing you to still build up your big scoring configurations.
Anyway I won't upload this to WOS as I reckon only you & me are playing the game :-) but you can find it here. You will also find the full annotated source code included so you can now add extra features if you fancy.
TomD
Eyyyy cheers Tom you're a star! (Also certainly happy to be a beta tester for future projects). I see the logic also, my new key configuration is now QAOPT rather than QAOPH ;-). Very pleased you've released the code also, reckon I can learn a few things there.
Good luck in the comp & keep up the good work.
Btw, can this game be completed (as opposed to say, Buzzsaw+ that ramps the difficulty for the last level)? how many levels if so?
EDIT: incidently how did you make the space for the recent additions? Was there a bit of leeway anyway or was there any clever optimisation/
Thanks
Game can't be completed it just keeps going on and on at the last levels settings, no room for a nice ending I'm afraid. To be honest the last level is really hard (fast timer, no go blocks on the screen etc...) and I would be very impressed if anybody could complete it even once.
Regarding the space, the last SE version was 4084 bytes long so only 1byte free! I usually have a quick tidy up of the code when I've finished a project and I noticed I had two key input routines, one for the game and one for the hiscore. You will notice in the first SE version you could still only enter your initials using the original sinclair controls. I therefore combined these into one and voila the space appeared with the added bonus that the hiscore can now be entered using either keyset. New version is only 4077bytes long.
TomD
Seeing what Einar Saukas is capable of, it's possible he already has several times!
Thanks
I find it gets challenging around level 5, probably needed to add something to make the first few levels a bit quicker but on the flip side it does give you some time to build up some hiscoring configurations.
TomD