More News on Formula Racing and other Gameboy Development stuff

Right, a few more changes have been going on under the hood of Formula Racing, including an overhaul of the A.I. which was a lot more predictable than in the current version, the A.I. can now branch into different paths depending on the track layout and is a lot less likely to crash into things as a result. So you really need to plan your overtakes now!

This has called for a redesign of some of the older tracks to handle this variant of the A.I. which has turned out to be a great blessing, with a lot of optimisation in the code now present to reduce CPU usage I’ve also weeded out some unneccessary lines of code and removed the speed overflow bugs that were present.

These bugs caused boost pads to stop the car and crashes to occsionally accelerate the car instantly to it’s top speed!

While this is all good, it’s resulted in the game becoming much tougher than before, unpredictable A.I. really puts things into a twist.

There have been some graphical changes to each course group also, billboards, trees and other elements being locked to each group help to give each track a slightly different feel, which is pretty nice!

The password system is almost there for Grand Prix mode and I’m working on a custom sound editor in the background just for the hell of it.

GBDK and sound can be a pain in the arse, there’s lots of ASM based solutions but GBDK could do with something, however basic it comes out initially. Unobfuscating the process could result in more games with soundtracks in, which would be nice!

There’s a couple of little A.I. bugs to sort out still but they should fit in nicely with the ~500byes remaining. I’m hoping to add a car explosion effect also in the remaining space!

Oh my gosh. it’s 1am, time to sleep, will post again soon!

Coding A Gameboy Game – In An Hour?!

UnSeen Gamescreen Just another Saturday night and I noticed the one hour game jam was on in a minute or two. So, time to roll up those coding sleeves and bosh out a game based on the theme “Stealth”

One hour really isn’t much time to make a game in so I had to use some fairly ugly hacks to get the game working, it’s a simple affair, guide the shadowy character to the “WIN!” text and you win. that’s it. Whilst security beams are switched on and off, with animation, audio cues and walking sound effects. The only collision routine used is that with the background layer. There’s so little time to get anything working that my collision routine is a little iffy, resulting in sliding along walls.

onehouroneNevertheless, I’m glad I managed to make something “slightly” more substantial than my previous one hour game jam attempt under the theme “Everything is dangerous” again, simple enough, avoid the spikes, walls, etc. Just under an hour.

Even though these games aren’t much, it’s nice to try an intense burst of game coding every now ‘n’ then!

Download Links for the ROMs below:

Formula Racing Gameboy Homebrew Developments.

Well, it’s been around a month since I’ve posted on here about the updates to Formula Racing and there’s a lot more going on with the game now! Read on to find out about what’s done and what’s still to go.

What’s done?

More tracks! 

There’s now 10 tracks designed for Formula racing, including my new personal favourite USSR – 1! I’m going to be re-visiting the track designs for previous levels shortly, in order to spruce them up a tad.

More Track Details!

I foolishly forgot that I had a spare 128 tiles to use for either sprites of background tiles.. So, I’ve been making use of the new tiles to add more definition to the track layouts. Mainly USSR-1!

Track obstacles.

Just racing the opponents wasn’t enough for me after a while. So I’ve added more obstacle tiles that will blow your car off track should you run onto them. You will run onto them!

Boost Tiles.

Because, every racing game needs boost tiles of course! So far, only on USSR-1 but that’s fine. Revisiting older tracks, yeah!

Track Intros, last lap warnings, Variable Lap counts Per Track , an actual finish AAAND that vital feature. Pausing.

So, yeah, that’s a fair amount of stuff added to the game which has had a couple of important effects.

The games plays better and is getting closer to being an actual game now.

I’m seriously running out of spare ROM space for my main game loop – 270 bytes at last count tonight. I have sfx to add and music!

Whoa…MUSIC?

Yes, that’s right, MUSIC! I’ve been chatting to the fantastic gameboy chiptune composer NordLoef about in-game tracks and he’s agreed to help make some music, which is really great news, I can’t music for toffee, cake, biscuits, even the promise of coffee and a peanut butter wrap.

So, yeah, he’s going to be in the game credits and, hopefully getting a physical cartridge at some point! I’m really looking forward to importing the tracks into the game, that’ll really make it a more complete gameboy game and hopefully some people out there will enjoy it also?