Tagged “retro”
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The last couple of bitsy games I've made have focused more on the design and aesthetics of the game rather than the functionality and gameplay.
That was mostly due to the types of games/stories I had opted to tell; this time I had an idea that was more limited in scope but involved different mechanics.
Given the theme of 'supermarket' I instantly had the idea of running around a supermarket in a post-apocalyptic zombie situation, as I'm sure we all would.
Side note: you can play the game direct in your browser right here: https://alansuspect.itch.io/supply-run
In my original idea I thought about the supplies randomly appearing each time the game was played, but it's either not possible in bitsy, or far beyond my abilities. I might come back to this idea in the future, maybe even on another platform.
So for this I just created several different 'supplies' (in the game dev these are listed variously as 'fruit', 'veg', 'chips', etc but not listed in the game itself), and placed them randomly around.
Due to the design of the shelves in the supermarket I had to make the tiles that the supplies sit on non-wall tiles so the character can pick them up (which also throws out the random supply placement idea).
One thing I knew I could do in bitsy was display random text each time an action happens. So each time the character walks into a zombie the sounds the zombie makes a different. After the random action I then added a quick palette-switch-and-back to a reverse palette, to give that injured red flash.
Lastly, I wanted to add some kind of message at the end rather than just have the game end. It's fairly easy to add a variable to the text so the next step was to count each time a supply is collected and each time a zombie attacks.
Once the counting variable is ready I add it to the text message at the end. Easy!
Still, it's not super exciting. I then decided to try out the if/then/else to display a message based on the results.
I tried writing out the logic but it doesn't look right. Basically it checks if Attacks = 0 first, and if so then if all supplies were collected you get the congrats message. If no attacks but not all supplies were collected you get a different message. Lastly (and I was running out of time) if Attacks >= 1 you get the 'bit' message, bad luck!
And I think that's about it. I enjoyed playing with bitsy's mechanics more this time - for a simple game maker it actually allows for a lot of experimentation. Give it a go yourself!
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We've had an old (2021) Dell laptop lying around for a while and I thought turning it into a gaming machine for the living room might be fun.
Now when I say gaming, I'm not really a gamer. I grew up playing point and click adventures (still the best game format in my opinion) and in the late 00's I had an XBox 360 where I played a lot of Red Dead Redemption. Oh, and I have a WiiU in a box somewhere but it has a UK plug and it seems dangerous to have it plugged in to an adapter all the time.
I like playing old games. I got my daughter a Miyoo game boy-style handheld for Christmas and under the guise of "testing" to make sure it would be good to go on the big day I also picked one up for myself.
I've looked into a few options for this Dell laptop (Inspiron 5502 for those who are wondering, whatever that signifies), I'm not a big PC guy - I use a Mac as my daily driver - so removing Windows was a priority. I've played with Linux here and there over the years so that's always an option.
I first tried Batocera, a convenient living room display-style screen mode for retro gaming but I wasn't able to install it off the USB stick to the drive in the laptop.
So now I'm trying out ChimeraOS. It bases itself off Steam so I can access games I have on there, as well as retro emulated games.
I've realised I don't actually have any games in Steam so the homepage is a little lackluster right now (mainly Half Life when it was on a free promo and classic YNAB), but that can be added to.
I found my old WiiU Pro controller and it connected instantly which I was impressed with. The next step is to get Steam Link working on my iPad so I can play some new point and click games I've been interested in but they're only on PC.
Now I need to find some time to actually play some games...
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