Trace It!

[PROSM]

I decided to write a little game over my holiday after being inspired by R-Tape's comment on the crap games compo thread. It's fairly short, with only fifteen screens, but it gets devilishly difficult in the final few levels. It will run on a 16K Spectrum.

Instructions are in the game's inlay file.

Download from Dropbox

[Ersh]

Fun little game! Only managed to get off the first level on my last life and promptly ran into the nearest wall as soon as the second one started. Will put this on my ZXDS flashcart, seems to be a good pick up and play game.

[Ast A. Moore]

This is absolutely brilliant! Love the addition of inertia.

[R-Tape]

Great fun, especially when you get used to the inertia and can whizz around. That doesn't make the ice, pacers, crawlers and floaters any easier though.

It's fiendish! I've reached 'Subway' and am a little bit scared by the thought of 15 levels.

[PROSM]

Fun little game! Only managed to get off the first level on my last life and promptly ran into the nearest wall as soon as the second one started. Will put this on my ZXDS flashcart, seems to be a good pick up and play game.

This is absolutely brilliant! Love the addition of inertia.

Great fun, especially when you get used to the inertia and can whizz around. That doesn't make the ice, pacers, crawlers and floaters any easier though.

It's fiendish! I've reached 'Subway' and am a little bit scared by the thought of 15 levels.

Glad to hear you enjoy it! Trust me though, by the time you reach the final level, 'Subway' will feel like a walk in the park. After that, you'll be able to play the levels again in extreme mode...

[druellan]

Love it, and it has small details, like the spiders chasing you when you are close!

[PROSM]

The ZIP file has been mirrored at ConnoSoft to allow for convenient direct downloads: https://connosoft.com/prosm/downloads/TraceIt.zip

[mzx]

It is very refreshing. I just can't stop. It's like we've stepped back in time to 1983. Simple, funny look with a great idea. For me, one of the best of recent years.

[R-Tape]

It is very refreshing. I just can't stop. It's like we've stepped back in time to 1983. Simple, funny look with a great idea. For me, one of the best of recent years.

Agreed! I love the oldschool (and then some) levels of difficulty, but these days I think it needs more than the oldschool allocation of lives. Though to be fair, we'd probably only have got 3 lives BITD.

We need a good hacker! I've had a go and haven't found the lives counter yet.

Even though it's a different genre, this game reminds me of Loony Zoo. I think it's because of the mix of difficulty, addictiveness, early 80's feel and simplicity.

[JasonUK]

Great little game... sometimes it's the 'simple' games which provide the most fun!

[mzx]

We need a good hacker! I've had a go and haven't found the lives counter yet.

I found it, 29822 is lives counter (lives+1).

[uglifruit]

This is great @PROSM , really hard entertaining, and with an excellent 'one more go' factor. Really nice to see a game not on a black background for a change!

The wiping of the colour after completing a level is very satisfying too.


Can I ask how you did the collision detection? I'd be interested in seeing the source if you ever make it available.

[Morkin]

Just been playing this - it goes to show that you just need a simple concept executed well to make a really fun game.

Have been using snapshots but have fallen at the "Tightrope" level (4 I think?). Then again, I'm a bit crap at games... Will probably need to start resorting to some 'mid-level' snapshots soon..

[PROSM]

[...]
Can I ask how you did the collision detection? I'd be interested in seeing the source if you ever make it available.

I'll be releasing the source fairly soon, after I've cleaned it up a little with some more comments, but for now, I can briefly describe how the detection works.

The ground check (to see if the tracer has fallen from the path) is a bit of a cheat, as it relies on the BRIGHT bit of the attribute that the centre of the smile currently occupies. If the bit's set, then we're on the path. If not, then we've fallen.

The collision check for the enemies is fairly simple - the program calculates the bounding box for the player (using the smile's X and Y positions), and then iterates through the list of enemies, calculating bounding boxes for each and checking for the four conditions that make collision impossible (assume P means player and E means enemy for this):

• Is E's left edge right of P's right edge?
• Is E's right edge left of P's left edge?
• Is E's top edge below P's bottom edge?
• Is E's bottom edge above P's top edge

If any of the four conditions are true, there is no collision between the player and that enemy, and the game continues. If all conditions are false, then the boxes must be intersecting, and the program jumps into the death routine.

[uglifruit]

That makes perfect sense. And I certainly don't see attribute check as a cheat, that's eminently sensible.

[catmeows]

In case you want to harm yourself for prolonged period, here is infy lives poke -- 26148,183
PROSM - really nice game, but for a 16K affair, it smells by some advanced code tricks. unrolled sprite routine with reading from stack ? that's not 1982 spirit

[PROSM]

In case you want to harm yourself for prolonged period, here is infy lives poke -- 26148,183
PROSM - really nice game, but for a 16K affair, it smells by some advanced code tricks. unrolled sprite routine with reading from stack ? that's not 1982 spirit

I'm sorry, I'll roll my loops up tight next time!

On a related note, if anyone wants to fiddle around with the code, I've uploaded the source archive to Github: https://github.com/PROSMSoft/TraceIt

[miguetelo]

Great game!!! Congratulations.
I love this kind of games with basic ideas but with a lot of fun.

[R-Tape]

I'm sorry, I'll roll my loops up tight next time!

If it was done in the true spiwit of 1982 16K, you'd be using RST 16.

[PROSM]

I'm sorry, I'll roll my loops up tight next time!

If it was done in the true spiwit of 1982 16K, you'd be using RST 16.

I imagine such a game would have an inlay boasting about how "fast" it was