Scuttlebutt

[hikoki]

Sorry don't like that sort of stuff. Not what I expect to see on the forum.

^^^
This made my stomach get my artichokey dinner in boiling mode.
Kerl! be guttingly proud. You made my day

[R-Tape]

Moved the thread to Brand New Software as it's a finished game isn't it?

Damn nice!

Smooth, 50 fps masked sprites, plenty of animation frames. Nice artwork and coding.

^This^!

[Spud]

Superb mini game! Smooth, playable and addictive. Great animation and graphics.

[MatGubbins]

Congratulations on the release of your first game.
Very nice and clear as to what to do and play. There can be a few more things added to stretch the game.
Let the poo land on the floor and the player can slip along on it - skid marks.
Overfill the bucket and then lose a life. Bonus on the waste left in the bucket at the end of each level.
Mop and bucket floor cleaning level to wipe away the mess.

[Ralf]

Great job! Funny and entertaining.

The music full of false notes suits it very well too

[RMartins]

Is that a giant squirrel butt ?

I'm asking because it craps in small nut size heart shaped form, or similar to rabbits

The setting is a bit startling.
A Giant Butt hanging from your ceiling.

You could probably change the butt to a leaking pipe (doesn't need to move), without changing the game play, while allowing it to be more realistically proportional

You could also have several "drops" hanging, that could "grow" at different speed, until they get big enough to fall.
The drops, could move around (slide through the pipe, like in real life), and eventually combine to become larger, which would then fall.
This would provide more variety, and some strategic thinking into the game play.

Nice job, for your first game.
Simple and direct, with good performance.

[Neil Parsons]

Funny one! xDDD

How about the controls to start with? Unless I could hardly notice which key was used to start the game as I pushed almost all keys altogether, I didn't get it. "1" and "2" are okay for left and right, respectively. I missed some more info about it, unless it's quite easy to understand what to do, as if on Oil Panic pocket game from Nintendo.

[R-Tape]

Funny one! xDDD

How about the controls to start with? Unless I could hardly notice which key was used to start the game as I pushed almost all keys altogether, I didn't get it. "1" and "2" are okay for left and right, respectively. I missed some more info about it, unless it's quite easy to understand what to do, as if on Oil Panic pocket game from Nintendo.

You've got it right Neil, it's top left number row as a joystick, so 5 to start and 1 & 2 for L/R, just walk to the toilet to empty the bucket.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

I missed some more info about it, unless it's quite easy to understand what to do, as if on Oil Panic pocket game from Nintendo.

Yeah. Funny game. It's a sort of 'dirty Game & Watch' game

[Nomad]

Karl - you will have to forgive me; but as I have no shame, I will ask what others probably though...

Would you think of releasing the source code? There is a lot of technical skill that went into getting such a program to work in the way that it does. It reminds me of looking at an iceberg.

(meaning for the window-lickers/peanut gallery... there is much hidden depth to this program.)

[Morkin]

...Cripes, first Davey Sludge and now another one, what's this obsession over bums and bum-based products...

Regardless of the content, just to re-iterate what a few people have said - I can't recall seeing a first attempt at a game which is this (technically) slick.

...Would be interesting to know how long it took you to learn to program to this level (assuming it was from scratch, but maybe it wasn't?)...

[Edit: also I wish I had the ability of being able to do cool graphics as well as program!]

[Nomad]

Regardless of the content, just to re-iterate what a few people have said - I can't recall seeing a first attempt at a game which is this (technically) slick.

...Would be interesting to know how long it took you to learn to program to this level (assuming it was from scratch, but maybe it wasn't?)...

[Edit: also I wish I had the ability of being able to do cool graphics as well as program!]

This ^^^ Karl's has to win a mars bar award for the slickest first program/post (so far..).

[KarlH]

Great job! Funny and entertaining.

The music full of false notes suits it very well too

Thanks! The music is mostly fixed now, I believe. There was an incorrect pitch value for the note B in the AY-3-8192 documentation, which messed up my frequency tables. 1892 should have been 1812.

http://www.sinclair.hu/hardver/otletek/ ... 3-8912.htm

I've also added redundant controls for a joystick in port 1.

New game file: scuttlebutt.tap

[KarlH]

...Would be interesting to know how long it took you to learn to program to this level (assuming it was from scratch, but maybe it wasn't?)...

Well, I started learning Spectrum programming five weeks ago, but I've been building computer games for other platforms as a hobby for almost 35 years. That definitely helped.

[KarlH]

Karl - you will have to forgive me; but as I have no shame, I will ask what others probably though...

Would you think of releasing the source code? There is a lot of technical skill that went into getting such a program to work in the way that it does. It reminds me of looking at an iceberg.

(meaning for the window-lickers/peanut gallery... there is much hidden depth to this program.)

I'd rather not do that just yet. The code is poorly structured and a good portion of the variables and subroutines have ... unpleasant names.

It took some experimenting, but none of it is rocket science. The vertical confinement of the two large sprites is what makes it possible to render the game at 50 fps without any flickering. Here is what I do after each "halt" call:

1. Erase all the poop
2. Perform the game logic
3. Draw the poop that's in the top half of the screen
4. Erase and redraw the man sprite
5. Draw the poop that's in the bottom half of the screen
6. Erase and redraw the butt
7. If necessary, update the score and bucket fill level

This way nothing is being updated while the raster beam is working on it. The butt will be one frame out of sync with the other mobile objects, but since its exact location isn't important, it doesn't matter.

[dfzx]

Smooth, 50 fps masked sprites...

How do you know it's 50fps? Can you tell just by looking, or is there some other way you'd know that?

[Ralf]

Thanks! The music is mostly fixed now, I believe.

Great! Actually I believed that it was intended

[Ast A. Moore]

Smooth, 50 fps masked sprites...

How do you know it's 50fps? Can you tell just by looking, or is there some other way you'd know that?

Both. (Trust me, I know a thing or two about writing games for the Spectrum, which run at 50 fps. )

P.S. You use Fuse, right?

[dfzx]

How do you know it's 50fps? Can you tell just by looking, or is there some other way you'd know that?

Both. (Trust me, I know a thing or two about writing games for the Spectrum, which run at 50 fps. )

OK, so for those of us without that experience, what's the other way?

[Ast A. Moore]

Both. (Trust me, I know a thing or two about writing games for the Spectrum, which run at 50 fps. )

OK, so for those of us without that experience, what's the other way?

1. The intuitive way (requires experience, though): Slow your emulator down to 2 percent of the original speed.
2. The tedious but informative way: Break into the running program using your favorite debugger/monitor and single-step for the duration of one frame (approximately). (Most emulators have debuggers that display the current T state. Fuse, does, anyway.)

[danlucio]

I loved the carton game style

[Ralf]

How do you know it's 50fps? Can you tell just by looking, or is there some other way you'd know that?

Actually there is some hidden feature in Spin emulator which enables it. I don't remember the details but you have to press some obscure shortcut and extra buttons will appear. One of them is "advance emulator by one frame". So you pause the emulator first, then press the button, game advances by one frame and you see if something moved or not

[Pegaz]

Interesting.
Maybe someone knows which shortcut activates this option.
Does SpecEmu have such a feature?

[Ralf]

Maybe someone knows which shortcut activates this option.

Found it:
https://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/ ... ent_141012

There's also the option to "frame advance" whilst paused - pause the emulation, then right click the pause button. The buttons will be replaced with a new set - debugger, full speed and frame advance. Clicking frame advance will emulate one frame and then stop.

[dfzx]

Maybe someone knows which shortcut activates this option.

Found it:
https://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/ ... ent_141012

There's also the option to "frame advance" whilst paused - pause the emulation, then right click the pause button. The buttons will be replaced with a new set - debugger, full speed and frame advance. Clicking frame advance will emulate one frame and then stop.

I'm trying to think what "frame advance" actually means. Does it mean "run as far as the next HALT instruction"? Or until the next interrupt fires? What actually would a frame advance be, in Spectrum terms?