To be fair I do like the way it looks already, so you probably dont *need* to do the sprite stuff.

Maybe if you're on full health you get a chance to pickup different powerups instead of a healthpack?

Speed, temp invincibility, enemies die when they touch you instead for example.

Or maybe just other kinds of powerups in general since it would still be cool to get a powerup when you're on 1 bar of health .

I like how this looks like so far. This seems pretty fun to play too

I agree with tr1p1ea; I'd like to see more powerups added to the game; I believe three or four additional powerups would be enough; it's all up to you .

I saw this early in the day, so I chose to put my energy elsewhere for now. It's still a possibility for the future, but I'm cool with what I have too.



These are definitely ideas I'll consider!



Thanks! I hope people will continue to enjoy it as I make improvements!



Yeah, so I was thinking of maybe having purchasable upgrades that are persistent (kind of like mutations in Dead Cells if you've ever played that). Let me know what you guys think of that idea.

Today, I've been working mostly under the hood in preparation for more features, so I don't have any new screenshots. A question I had was if you guys know of any easy way to handle single key presses without it registering a bunch all at once. For example, the menu in Catylizm behaves like this:



I would like the shop/main menu to act properly when I implement them, so if you guys could give me some advice on that, I'd appreciate it!

Edit: I posted the wrong image.

When you say single keypress do you mean on a single keypress event instead of just keydown?

Yes! I'm considering having it add to a variable and when the variable hits the value 1 it does the action and then resets the variable when it is pressed again. Or something like that. I don't know if that would even work honestly.

Ahh ok, I see the screenshot now. I believe the toolchain only has 'keyDown' or similar and a little more logic is required for keyUp or a true keyPress type event.

I'm sure someone would have some example C code they can assist with?

How I used to accomplish this for my programs was to have a boolean variable (can_press or similar), that is set to true when no keys are pressed, and is set to false after a key is pressed. Then, you can just check if the key is down and this boolean is true, and you'll have a rising edge detection system. I think that's the simplest way to do it, and the one that I've most commonly seen. It would also fix a potential bug in your system where if you held a key for a long time, the integer could overflow and result in another keypress. Here's roughly how that would work (loosely copied from HailStorm CE, which was the last program I made that didn't use some version of OPTIX):

Code:


And regarding your integer printing question from earlier, I also discovered a fontlibc function that can print an integer as well, fontlib_DrawInt that performs the same function if you'd rather use that. There's an unsigned variant of it as well.

Keep up the great work!

Thank you so much! I had to do a little tinkering (really just issues with my Boolean statements) to get this method to work with opening the menu without immediately closing it, but it works now!

Here is just me messing around with a store menu:



Obviously, it is very basic and will need an overhaul, but the fact that it's working makes me happy!

Ooh, maybe also add zombies in various states of... erm, decay? So after it spends about thirty seconds on-screen, some given zombie will just simply... disappear? You'll have to add a slowly increasing spawn rate, though. Maybe use some adaptation of the sigmoid function so that it "levels off"? The point being, zombies will continually spawn -- and die. I don't know, just something to maybe do.

I'm not opposed to the idea of an increasing spawn rate. Perhaps more than one zombie could spawn at a time after a while. I'm planning on weapons to get rid of zombies at some point, so I'm not sure having them die off "naturally" would fit for this game. But visually different "decayed" zombies could be good just to give some variety on screen. Thanks for the suggestions!

I just uploaded a new version to the archives that just has the updated graphics! I figured I should at least upload that before I really dive deep into new functionality, especially if I end up on another frustration hiatus for this project. It's still waiting to be approved, so you'll have to be patient. There shouldn't be any bugs in this version, but please post here if you find any!

Sorry for the double-post, but I've made a little progress. I'm slowly working on the icons for the items in the shop; the ones you see in the screenshot are the only ones I've done so far. I've also began working on bombs/lures.



As you can see, the grenade shows how much time is left, and it kills the zombies that are lured to it. The lures pretty much work the same way, but they only distract the zombies. It's all a bit buggy, and it's probably not the most efficient or optimized, but it works okay for now. And I would eventually like to make it animate the explosion and maybe have the zombies drop money.

If you're wondering about how the machete and katana work, the plan is that the player will just do a swing all around and do damage to zombies close enough to get hit. And if you're wondering about "The Big One," it's just a bomb that kills all the zombies currently on the screen, but I'm debating if I should even include it since it's kinda OP. Maybe I'll just make it very expensive.

Wow, I completely missed this!

That store menu and the actual functionality of the powerups look very nice, it seems that you've been mostly able to get things working. They'll definitely introduce a further element of strategy into the game as well, which is great. With that said, I might suggest keeping the classic game mode, without powerups, in the game somewhere, for people who want to play without them. I did this in several of my own programs, and I think there's something to be said for playing the game without any of the additional content--just the core concept, which is probably much more challenging.

I'd just make "The Big One" very expensive, it might be fun to play with.

And for some general feedback: I really like where you're going with this. The overall style of the program and the aesthetic of it are very nice, which seems to be one of your strengths (as it's present in Catylizm as well). Keep up the great work!

I missed it as well, and I was curious as to how the shop would operate. Will there be a way to purchase items from the store with some form of currency? I'm also curious as to what key is utilized to access the store menu.

Anyways, you're doing a fantastic job with the development! Keep it up!

I like the idea of having a "classic" mode. I'll have to put together a main menu, and I'm thinking the options will be something along the lines of "Start" and "Classic Mode"; that way, I don't need to come up with a name for the mode that includes powerups.

And I can definitely make "The Big One" uber expensive (though not impossible to get).



I was thinking the current "points" system would serve as the currency, and when you kill zombies, they would drop money. Thinking about it now, I wonder if that would detract from trying to get a high score since you'd be spending your points. Maybe I could do a new points system that's based on how long you've survived? Like have it count how long you've survived. Let me know what you guys think of that.

And right now, the "mode" key is how you open the store! But I'm still juggling ideas about how exactly the store will work, so it could change.

Anyways, thanks for responding, you guys! The continued support really helps with my motivation. I haven't made much more progress since my last post, but I at least looked over the coding guidelines and spruced up my code accordingly. I also did a little bit with the blast radius stuff, but I don't have any new screenshots to share yet. I've been keeping my GitHub updated as I go, so if anyone has any desire to look at my code, it's there!

*bump*

A little progress has been made. I believe since my last update post, the changes are that I changed the way the objects are placed on the screen, fixed some bugs with killing zombies, and I implemented this:


I've also added a sprite for "The Big One" and the "small lure," but now it's not called a small lure, it's a T-bone steak! My next question is, how "gory" should I make the other lures? Obviously, I can only do so much with a 15x15 item sprite, but would something like "horse carcass" be too much (for the big lure)? And what are some ideas for the medium/big lures?

Here's the latest screenshot of everything working:


Note: the prices in the store are basically just placeholders right now.

Because of my item sprites, the size of the program is already 18510 bytes. I was hoping maybe using compression on them would make a difference, but it ended up making the program bigger.

I think the next thing I will work on is polishing up the shop, and then I will try to make progress on the inventory/shopping functionality.

I would suggest optimizing the code and looking at the coding guideline here: https://github.com/CE-Programming/toolchain/blob/master/docs/static/coding-guidelines.rst.

Forgot to post earlier so doing it now that Alvajoy reminded me that this thread is active...

Looking great, I think that the lure ideas are good, and I particularly like that sprite for "The Big One." I think that some gore is fine, given the subject matter of the game, so a horse carcass would be fine in my opinion. For a medium lure, maybe you could use some cooked meat that's larger than a steak, like a cooked turkey or chicken.

I also wouldn't worry about the size quite yet, 18510 bytes seems pretty reasonable given all of the sprites and (I assume) the large amount of AI logic that the program probably has. If you really care about that, compression would be a good way to get it down, but I doubt size is much of a consideration for most people. And this is nothing compared to something like Jetpack Joyride CE or any of my own games...

Looking forward to that shop update!

For the shop: perhaps have a system similar to Roguelight: points translate to money, which can be spent in a shop hat opens once you die, but money doesn't roll over every round; unspent money is lost. High scores are still saved. How does this sound?

One question, since you receive a 'FAIL' when you die ... is it actually possible to win and receive a different message, or is failure the only possible outcome?