ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

People are still making stuff for the Sinclair related machines. Tell us about new games and other software that runs on the Spectrum, ZX80/ZX81, Pentagon and Next.
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moroz1999
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by moroz1999 »

I'm wondering how would it look like on 14mhz Z80: will the game become faster itself or jsut the frame rate would be higher (as in Castlevania)?
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by Wall_Axe »

would the crystal thingie in the spectrum still oscillate at 50hz (or is it 60)
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by Wall_Axe »

oh does the ac current in the uk running at 50hz trigger the telly update and the spectrum crystal? that would make sense.

back on topic, you must've broken the spectrum bullet record
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by Ivanzx »

Can we already purchase or download the Spectrum version? :)
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by ANDREWRYALS »

Simply WOW! Hats off.
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by Ralf »

Great! It seems to be a game that Zx Spectrum has never seen before. I'm pretty sure it will be presented at many retro parties to show what's possible on our old trusty machine.
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by Andre Leao »

Review will be available the next few days...

https://planetasinclair.blogspot.com/20 ... ncado.html
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by Ralf »

So here it is. Thanks Keith!

I'm curious about your opinions, folks.
I may say mine later. As it's actually mixed feelings I wouldn't like to start with it ;)
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by dfzx »

Well, let's see, on a cold and frosty Saturday morning...

Start 128K Speccy with Fuse. Drag and drop tape file - game starts. "Press Fire to Continue" it says. Er, which is fire? Press all keys one after the other to find the right one. Z does the trick.

"Hit 0 to set controls". OK. Q,A,O,P,Sp,Z,S,X. I don't have a player 2 so for player 2 I just hit space repeatedly until it stops asking.

"Start game as Chibiko" - yay! Go...! Huh? A screen of text flashes by. Hey! What was that? Never mind! Stuff is happening!

I press right, player moves right a bit, I press left, player moves left a bit. I press space, player flips to face the other way, then the game apparently crashes?

Start again, paying more attention. At the point I pressed fire, the character, which was facing left, zipped off the left side of the screen. Everything stopped except the music and the occasional "weeeeee" noise.

Do it a third time, this time using something other than space as fire. There's an awful lot happening on screen but I've no idea what I'm supposed to do. What's good, to pick up? What's bad, to avoid? Avoiding all those balls is impossible! I instinctively press space even though it shouldn't do anything and it locks up again.

Something occurs to me - maybe this is a 2 player game! I don't have a friend, but maybe I should redefine player 2 keys to something sensible. OK, reload, redefine keys, only this time use a different set for player 2. Aha! This time it doesn't lock when I press space, instead the player switches to face left and the game keeps playing. But now, even though Q,A,O and P all keep moving the player around, nothing else happens. I can't switch back to face right! I flying backwards against the scroll with no firing happening. I'm dead in 5 seconds!

I stare at the countdown wondering if I want to continue. During my deliberations, I let it expire, then the Speccy goes into a tape loading sequence of some sort. What's it doing? I've no idea. Eventually a blood dripping GAME OVER graphic appears. I press random keys to make it go away. It does so by resetting the Speccy.

I think a bit more play testing might be in order!
Derek Fountain, author of the ZX Spectrum C Programmer's Getting Started Guide and various open source games, hardware and other projects, including an IF1 and ZX Microdrive emulator.
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Ast A. Moore
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by Ast A. Moore »

I will just point out that this is an ambitious project that, perhaps, would have been better suited for 16-bit platforms. I commend your effort at developing for several Z80 platforms simultaneously and it looks like you reached your goal in that area. However, it feels more like a proof of concept, rather than a finished and polished game, at least on the Spectrum. But then, maybe it was never your goal to begin with.
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by Alessandro »

As it is now, I find the game could be much more playable with some polish, precisely if:
  • there were much less enemy bullets flying around; it is hard to understand what's going on, and it's not pleasant to lose all of your lives after about 10-20 seconds of play;
  • the player character sprite was moving 1 character block at a time, like the enemies, to avoid attribute misalignment;
  • backgrounds were less cluttered (notice in particular the "black aura" around the player character sprite when it reaches the upper part of the screen).
These are some quick notes after a few goes. I reckon there much care has been taken in designing the characters and levels, but gameplay wise, it could be improved a lot.
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by Ralf »

Okay, so here go some thoughts of mine.

Technically the game is very impressive, it's true so called "bullet hell", never seen on Spectrum before. And on other 8-bit platforms like CPC or MSX2 probably too. If it was the main goal then it's achieved for sure.

But Spectrum version unfortunately suffers from some issues. My general impression is that it became worse when converted from CPC to Spectrum. It was all originally designed for CPC 4 colour mode. Here on Spectrum we don't have such mode. We have more colours but also colour clash. So prepare for barely visible bullets in the colour of background and sprites making jerky moves by 8 pixels.

And there is simply too many of these bullets. You cannot avoid them, you die very soon. Yes, there are 60 (!) continues so you can actually continue on playing quite long. But it's just not fun when you lose all your lives every 20-30 seconds and use a continue. Good, balanced game should allow an average player to surivive with his skills.

The graphics are stylishly ugly :) It reminds me of games like Go To Hell:
Image

The music is at moments all right and at moments unfortunately not, consisting of annoying buzzes and farts.

My advice to other players - just accept that you will die often. Use the continues and you'll be able to actually complete some levels and see some action.

And Keith56, don't feel upset by my words. You are a great programmer, just give some more care to game difficulty and playability. I hope to see more games of yours in the future ;)
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by hikoki »

It's nice to have a Bullet Hell on the Spectrum. One that I like with good music is the arcade Dangun Feveron.
To have so many bullets at the same time without causing slowdown I would suggest making the player's fire destroy bullets and to provide the player some kind of vectorial shield to freeze bullets for a while on certain directions, maybe a rotary shield which can be triggered with a key, so bullets on the aimed region get frozen, it could be interesting to build your own ways to avoid contacting any bullet.

Edit

Freezing bullets example:
Spoiler
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by hikoki »

I'll try my best with the .TRD version and play with different setting on the difficulty menu.
I just provided a few ideas because I liked so much that you brought a bullet hell game to the Speccy and saw this is just episode one. Hope there will be more episodes. Thanks for the game, now I'm going to play this marvel properly.
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by Ast A. Moore »

keith56 wrote: Mon Oct 29, 2018 12:06 pm I'm pretty disappointed by the response to the spectrum version game... I don't mind people not liking what I like... but butchering my own graphics for the speccys limitations, fuses awful windows debugger, and the lousy memory mapping of the speccy were not fun to work with . . . the spectrum version took 131 hours to make by the way...
I’m sorry you took it so personally, Keith. Moreover, as a fellow developer, I hear you, and understand where your frustration is coming from.

Here’s the harsh truth, though: gamers don’t give a rat’s furry behind about how many hours we put into making a game or what difficulties we had to overcome. All they care is the result. If they don’t like it, they don’t like it. Some may take time and even offer constructive criticism, but that’s all you’re going to get.

Now, allow me to give you a few pointers that are (mostly) Spectrum-specific, which, had they been addressed from the beginning, could have made the overall experience a little smoother for the average Speccy aficionados.
keith56 wrote: Mon Oct 29, 2018 12:06 pm I never tested it properly . . . and it was only provided for people who couldn't use the disk version . . . I probably should have made that clear
Probably.
keith56 wrote: Mon Oct 29, 2018 12:06 pmalso you'd know Z started the game if you'd actually bothered to read the readme file, but I guess that was too much work
While it might seem like Spectrum games use a gazillion variations of controls, the reality is that when people see “Press fire,” they assume the following:

1. Kempston joystick fire button
2. Sinclair/Protek/cursor joystick fire button (“0”; rarely “5”)
3. Space bar or “M”

Many games can even autodetect a joystick during gameplay. For example, if the “9” key is detected, it’s Sinclair joystick; if the “5” key is pressed, it’s cursor; etc.

That’s what people expect.
keith56 wrote: Mon Oct 29, 2018 12:06 pmthere's a Difficulty setting in the settings menu, you can set the difficulty to 'Gringo Pu--y' and there will be about 1/4 of the onscreen bullets... I KEEP telling people about it over and over
The old adage in the moviemaking industry goes, “Show, but don’t tell.” The menu navigation is confusing. It’s not terribly easy to discover these options. There are six (!) menu options on the first screen alone and none explicitly tells you it’s about setting the difficulty level. Moreover, before you can change it (after you’ve started playing the game), you need to reload the menu. A bit easier for the disk versions, but a nightmare for tape users.

Redefinable keys are clumsy, too. For starters, each keypress takes forever to register. Secondly, you don’t display all available controls at once; each keypress simply shows you the next control. How many are there altogether? This affects which configuration the player will choose. There’s plenty of screen estate to show them all at once; you could use it.

Thirdly, the same key can be assigned to numerous controls. I’m not sure it’s essential for the game, but I doubt there’s any benefit in having the same key assigned to, say, both left and right. There’s no feedback for which keys have been selected, so this can quickly become even more confusing. The “Press Key for:” legend appearing below the control name is not helping things, either (to say nothing of the arbitrarily placed dashes instead of spaces used for control names).

Finally, it’s a no-no to use the newly redefined controls for navigating the menu itself. If the player accidentally sets the wrong controls (and with your system it’s almost a given), he’s effectively locked himself out of the game and will need to reload it. Yes, you can get a little inventive with menu-specific controls, but under no circumstance should they lock the player out.

Note, I haven’t said a word about the gameplay itself, only about the UI, because there is plenty wrong with the UI alone. I realize it’s not easy to design a good one. But sometimes simple conventions can help you make good decisions more than adhering to strict logic can. And the Spectrum (as any other platform) has its own long history of conventional controls and menu systems. A good, intuitive UI relies heavily on conventions and expectations, rather on players reading instructions.

A good understanding of, and intimate familiarity with, each platform is as much of a challenge as overcoming the technical difficulties for multiplatform development. And I don’t mean just for retrogaming. Plenty of modern multiplatform projects failed miserably solely because when porting them from one platform to the next, developers didn’t bother learning each platform’s long-standing traditional approaches to doing things, and altered their software accordingly.

I hope my little writeup clears a few things for you. Cheers!
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.

Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by dfzx »

Ast A. Moore wrote: Mon Oct 29, 2018 2:05 pm Here’s the harsh truth, though: gamers don’t give a rat’s furry behind about how many hours we put into making a game or what difficulties we had to overcome.
While I'd agree with that assertion in respect of commercial games on modern consoles and PCs, I don't think it applies to newly developed Spectrum games. Most of us, surely pretty much all of us, understand that the retro scene is kept alive by developers putting in huge amounts of work for no real reward other than the love of it, and maybe the idea that a handful of people might appreciate the effort and outcome.
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by Ast A. Moore »

dfzx wrote: Mon Oct 29, 2018 2:49 pm
Ast A. Moore wrote: Mon Oct 29, 2018 2:05 pm Here’s the harsh truth, though: gamers don’t give a rat’s furry behind about how many hours we put into making a game or what difficulties we had to overcome.
While I'd agree with that assertion in respect of commercial games on modern consoles and PCs, I don't think it applies to newly developed Spectrum games. Most of us, surely pretty much all of us, understand that the retro scene is kept alive by developers putting in huge amounts of work for no real reward other than the love of it, and maybe the idea that a handful of people might appreciate the effort and outcome.
Well, what you say doesn’t really contradict what I said. One can simultaneously appreciate the effort and speak his mind about the fruits of that effort. Countering critique with “but I put so much time and effort into it” is, in my book, counterproductive, because that is either implicitly understood (as you mention), or is not even taken into consideration to begin with (people simply judge the game on its own merit).
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.

Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by Ralf »

I'm sorry Keith that our opinions hurt you.
I really took it into account and tried to choose my words carefully but it happened anyway...

It's almost philosophical and moral issue. Let's suppose I didn't enjoy someone's game. Or had mixed feelings like in your case. What should I do:
- say the truth
- say a lie
- say nothing ?
Personally I believe any feedback is better then lack of feedback. It shows that at least some people care about your work.

As for this game - leaving the gameplay aside, I agree with Ast about the menu. It's confusing. You bang some random keys hoping that they will
work as up, down or fire. Difficulty selection is very well hidden ;) I missed it totally during my first gameplays, will have to check it now.
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by R-Tape »

Awww c'mon Keith, this looking a bit foot stompy to me. There's been a lot of encouragement here during the dev stages. It's only been a waste of time if your main goal was to have lots of people say "Thanks! Downloading now. Will play later".

I was one of the two that paid for it when it was first released. I played the TAP. I'm afraid I fell into the same traps that everyone else did. I'm used to things being clearer than that, and I was busy, so I moved on to the next thing. Apologies for that, I should have given it more time to suss out.

I had more of a go on it last night, using DSK, QAOP keys and Gringo mode. The levels are okay, but the bosses are fantastic - both the graphics and attack modes.

So, thanks for the game, and I'll be playing it more.
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by hikoki »

What about other debuggers? Spin, Specemu, Zesarux, Emuzwin..
Which is the best one that you can recommend to Keith?
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by PeterJ »

At Keith's request we have deleted his account and all posts.
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by hikoki »

:| did I say something wrong? i just mentioned other emulators with good debuggers
I was about to play the game on Gringo mode and comment my impressions later
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by Ast A. Moore »

hikoki wrote: Tue Oct 30, 2018 12:31 pm :| did I say something wrong? i just mentioned other emulators with good debuggers
I was about to play the game on Gringo mode and comment my impressions later
Don’t worry, it wasn’t anything either of us did.
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.

Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by Ralf »

:(

Shame that it turned out this way. Good luck Keith with your future projects.
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Re: ChibiAkumas for Spectrum 128K

Post by Rorthron »

PeterJ wrote: Tue Oct 30, 2018 12:00 pm At Keith's request we have deleted his account and all posts.
I am sorry to hear that.

However, can I request that his posts all be restored? The deletion of his posts changes the context of all the posts in this and other threads. In the case of this thread it renders other users' comments nonsensical. I think it is unreasonable effectively to change the meaning of other users' posts without their consent, or, it seems, without good reason.

For exactly these reasons the forum's policy has been not to allow edits after two hours unless a good reason has been provided to a moderator. As far as I can see, no good reason has been supplied. The deletion of the posts appears to be contrary to forum rules (guideline L) and undermines the forum's integrity.

As I understand the law and regulations, the user has no legal right to require deletion of posts.
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