Jeff & The Blue Notes

[deanysoft]

Hi all, I present my latest effort 'Jeff & The Blue Notes'. A (hopefully) tricky platformer with lots of levels and a few jolly AY tunes to get on your nerves too

It's best played on real hardware (128K or 48K) as it's much smoother than emulation - well it is for me!

The game will be uploaded to the SC archive shortly and until then, here's a cheap video I made...



Hope you like the game.

[R-Tape]

Haha I love it. Ta Dean.

It's in the queue for the DB, but here's a temporary link for now.

✓ PROCESSED

DH 23/04/23

[deanysoft]

Nice one, cheers!

[Jbizzel]

Are blue notes used in the games music?

[deanysoft]

absolutely. I tried a Rhapsody in Blue at one point but it wasn't working quite right so I ditched it.

[Jbizzel]

Well I have to get it now then!

It looks really interesting and different. Good job

[deanysoft]

Thanks. I had to rein in the blue colouring (and the notes aren't ALL blue) or it would've been a little dull to look at. It's for a Spectrum after all

[Arcachnar]

At least there are not any Brown notes, ah? (I know. I know)

Oh. That IS a interesting game. Cool. Also have nice little tunes. Will play it.

PS: It also works on an actual Spectrum plus?

[deanysoft]

It should do. It works on an original 128K, and I think I tried it in 48K mode on that and I also ran it on a +3 (even shoved it on a real 3" disc for good measure). My old 48K+ isn't so well so couldn't test on that - but I'm confident it should play. On a true 48K there's no music but I added a few extra helpful beeper bips and bops where I felt they were needed.

[R-Tape]

A (hopefully) tricky platformer...

It's certainly that! I'm about seven levels in now, and am finding that inertia brutal. There's lots to like here, and being 'hard coded' it feels very fresh. The time limits can be disheartening though - if you don't make a good start, you can spend about half the clock playing knowing you'll never do it now.

That said, in the best traditions of Speccy games—it's not for wimps

[Joefish]

I notice it's got that odd quality that a lot of C64 games have, where the main sprite is slightly larger than its collision detection.
On the C64 this amounts to sprites that, when you bump into a wall, often overlap it by a few pixels. In this case, a few pixels of the character disappear behind the wall (I assume thanks to solid matching of INK and PAPER). Although the nit-picking engineer in me wants to say "well, that's just wrong!", It certainly gives it a unique and very casual style - which fits the theme perfectly. It just needs a bit more Doobie Brothers on the soundtrack to properly carry it off!

[deanysoft]

It's certainly that! I'm about seven levels in now, and am finding that inertia brutal. There's lots to like here, and being 'hard coded' it feels very fresh. The time limits can be disheartening though - if you don't make a good start, you can spend about half the clock playing knowing you'll never do it now.

That said, in the best traditions of Speccy games—it's not for wimps

Right, well if you're seven levels in...!

I tried to make it so you'd have enough time to get a few goes for each life. Yeah, it's not easy but I have to say, the first time I sat and played it on my old 128K with a Kempston Joystick, I got all the way to the last level where I failed but DID find a bug! Typical. But that got me thinking it was just too easy! I discounted that though as I've been playing it so much. It's a real tricky thing to get right. I did think it was too hard hence the 'more than seven levels in' feature...

[deanysoft]

I notice it's got that odd quality that a lot of C64 games have, where the main sprite is slightly larger than its collision detection.
On the C64 this amounts to sprites that, when you bump into a wall, often overlap it by a few pixels. In this case, a few pixels of the character disappear behind the wall (I assume thanks to solid matching of INK and PAPER). Although the nit-picking engineer in me wants to say "well, that's just wrong!", It certainly gives it a unique and very casual style - which fits the theme perfectly. It just needs a bit more Doobie Brothers on the soundtrack to properly carry it off!

I fiddled with the collision and it was different initially but eventually settled on a pixel position that's centred on 'Jeff' which resolves to an attribute. So you can, as you say overlap a block a few pixels, but I liked that and could use the feature in the levels.

With other methods in games you can hang seemingly in free space so long as one pixel of your character is over the floor - this is obviously done with a range of X positions. This is fine but with my main sprite, I wanted the inertia and the frames to change independently of his X position but this meant that his feet might've been together when hanging over a block which would have made him seem to float rather than fall.

So with Blue Notes it's a little more... vague - you might slip off if you're not careful.

As for the music, yeah maybe - a bit of Long Train Runnin' would go nicely. I wrote a composer on the CPC many years ago but it was really simple. My newer AY driver has more features but I haven't done a composer (yet) so the tunes are all hand rolled with values in DB statements so it's a bit tortuous.

[Joefish]

Yes, I'm thinking of writing my own AY player so it can handle music and sound effects. And maybe not always running on every interrupt either. The tunes would have to be written specifically for it. But it's a case of building up the effects it can do. And a major decision is if you want to use the noise generator primarily for sound effects, or for the tune, or juggle it between the two. I think for a platform game you could probably do the FX without needing noise (unless it involves machinery), but for a shmup its pretty essential.

Frankly, I think that Amstrad update of R-Type, where the main melody drops out to be replaced with a 'pew' effect every time you fire a shot, sounds absolutely awful.

[alejandro-ems]

It looks great. I'm looking forward to testing it and announcing it.

[deanysoft]

Yes, I'm thinking of writing my own AY player so it can handle music and sound effects. And maybe not always running on every interrupt either. The tunes would have to be written specifically for it. But it's a case of building up the effects it can do. And a major decision is if you want to use the noise generator primarily for sound effects, or for the tune, or juggle it between the two. I think for a platform game you could probably do the FX without needing noise (unless it involves machinery), but for a shmup its pretty essential.

Frankly, I think that Amstrad update of R-Type, where the main melody drops out to be replaced with a 'pew' effect every time you fire a shot, sounds absolutely awful.

I cheated a little. I've got two channels on the tune and one for FX. I thought that if I could get half decent tunes using two channels then I wouldn't have to spend ages writing another AY driver to pause a channel while an effect occurs. And I was happy with the tunes. The effects channel is really just playing its own 'effect-tune'. Either the music or effect can enable the noise if required. There are some simple simultaneous 'noise/drum and tone' effects. I could do with rewriting it as I've subsequently thought of better ways to do things - maybe one day.

You're right in that a 'shmup' simply has to have noise, lots of noise! I've had a quick look for the CPC R-Type but can't find a vid on you-chewb that shows it. I've heard similar though. Clockwize's 'Captain Fizz' did the same thing of 'remove melody for an effect', and I never really liked it. I thought it better to remove the 'bass' and keep the melody going.

[ianace]

This looks great, will there be a .tap file version, as this won’t run on my +2 mmm future interface

[worcestersource]

Is there an ELO theme going on here?

[R-Tape]

It's in the archive now, but something's gone funky with the screenshots. I've uploaded some replacements if @Einar Saukas/@PeterJ/@pavero can't fix it at source.

[pavero]

It's in the archive now, but something's gone funky with the screenshots. I've uploaded some replacements if @Einar Saukas/@PeterJ/@pavero can't fix it at source.

Yep, it was strange, both files had the correct size 6912B and I could open them in Spectaculator.

[pavero]

It's in the archive now, but something's gone funky with the screenshots. I've uploaded some replacements if @Einar Saukas/@PeterJ/@pavero can't fix it at source.

Hm, now I think where is the problem. The char "&" in the filename ...

Fixed now ...

[deanysoft]

Is there an ELO theme going on here?

mmm, maybe? Yeah, there is. The Jeff sprite is a bit of a giveaway. I used it because I already had it drawn - way back in 2009 for another idea I never pursued. It seemed just right for this game and kind of fitted in once I'd got him running around collecting things.

[deanysoft]

It's in the archive now, but something's gone funky with the screenshots. I've uploaded some replacements if @Einar Saukas/@PeterJ/@pavero can't fix it at source.

only one of my games could cause so much trouble!

[deanysoft]

For anyone who found the game too hard, there's a walkthrough...