Sqrxz CE v1.0.0 is now released! You can grab it over on Cemetech

The World Editor isn't far off either. It's Windows only at this stage, but I'd like to work on a cross platform version as well once have more time to spend with Qt.

As a fair dinkum Aussie bloke, all I can say is CRIKEY!

This gives me much chuckles (Although yes please don't actually kill us, most of us are quite nice.. Most of us )

Quote from: Jkolade936 on January 30, 2017, 03:29:40 AM
Wait..JamesV is making new and cool TI-84+ CE stuff? Has he finished Alien Breed? I'm so lost now that I disappeared once again from this place on account of having no graphing calc and finding a social life and discovering decent video games on the PC(League of Legends). 

Alien Breed for the TI-84+CE isn't finished, but it's not been forgotten about. I've had a bunch of ideas for it whilst working on this project, so I'll be getting back on to it shortly!

Sqrxz update: I'm very close to releasing this now. The last few days or so I've finished off the Windows version of the World Editor and put together a single level "Tutorial World" as well as a new 3 level "Sqrxz World Part IV". So the game will come with 16 levels in total, as well as being able to play .8xp world files from the 83+/84+ archives on ticalc.org.

Additionally, the World Editor can open .83p and .86s World Files as well, and then save them as .8xv appvars for the TI-84+CE.

Right now I'm just finishing off the game by adding in a Teacher Key (quick quit to homescreen and resume game next time the game gets run), and then I'll be uploading to the archives, hopefully end of this week

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on January 28, 2017, 05:50:23 AM
Awesome. Are you still considering supporting levels with higher height by the way? For importing old levels you would probably just need to add a few extra empty rows at the top or just render them with 8 blocks height.

I decided to stick with the 8 tile height. Adding extra height changes the gameplay of the original worlds created for the TI-85, 86, 83, etc. Eg. If the top-most tile is solid, you can't jump over it, so if I extended the level height, I'd need to add more solid tiles above any existing solid tiles on the current top-most row to prevent cheating by skipping over the top of levels, and then this is just going to result in some weird looking levels.

Similar could be said for extending the play area width from 15 tiles to 20 - it would affect the spawn times of enemies as well as the mechanic of making sure the screen doesn't scroll past paths that you need to use, etc.

So yeah, given that my original intention was to simply port Jimmy's TI-85/86 version, and taking into account the above, I've decided to stick with the 15x8 tile play area for the v1.0.0 release (which isn't far off!). I want to finish this and move back on to other projects.

Of course in the future I might come back to this and add in the option to play "new format" levels with a larger play area, but no promises. I have other games I want to work on in the meantime

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on January 25, 2017, 05:45:54 AM
I can't wait for the level editor and the game. Glad this is coming along nicely . Will the editor be able to import levels from the TI-86 version?

Yes it will The game on the calculator will recognise either .8xp program or .8xv appvar World files, and the World Editor will be able to open .83p, .8xp, .8xv and .86s World files (which it will then save as .8xv appvars).

Update: I've been putting together a World Editor (in C# for Windows at this stage, but I've also started messing about with Qt for a cross-platform editor down the track). It's been progressing slowly now that I'm back at work, but over the last couple of nights I've written an implementation of the Huffman compression algorithm that's compatible with Jimmy Mardell's TI implementation, so worlds can be loaded and saved nicely.

The plan is to get the World Editor to at least enough of a working point that I can put together some extra levels, then I'll be releasing the game, and following up with the Editor shortly after

Quote from: Lionel Debroux on January 15, 2017, 07:52:13 AM
Qt isn't perfect, but over time it's become the way to make cross-platform C/C++ GUI programs
It can be used for non-GUI programs as well, though in this case, special care needs to be taken not to over-use it.

I got it installed yesterday but then went out for dinner. So I'll experiment with it today. Given that it's C/C++ based I should pick it up fine, and I'm always up for learning new development skills

Quote from: aeTIos on January 15, 2017, 08:08:25 AM
I only just noticed this thread, I really like the aesthetic of the game. I was just wondering if you noticed that the first level says 'briefing' instead of 'briefing'? Or is that something in the level itself?

Voicing my support for a cross-platform level editor.

Quote from: p2 on January 15, 2017, 09:54:32 PM
You should start reading ALL threads so there is no unread content left by the end of every week ^^
you put the same string 'briefing' twice

Heh he did, but aeTIos is right that "briefing" is spelt incorrectly (as "breifing") on the first level. How did I never notice this? Once I get the world editor up and running, I'll fix this up

Quote from: Lionel Debroux on January 13, 2017, 07:02:12 AM
I'm sure the MacOS X & Linux users would love a natively portable world editor, like Oiram's
But I do understand that it's more work in the short term if you're not familiar with Qt.

I wasn't familiar with Qt, but it looks interesting and I'm downloading it now to give it a try A cross-platform compatible world editor would be ideal!

Quote from: p2 on January 12, 2017, 09:07:31 AM
I dont think you would need anything else than monospace fonts... It's not like there are long dialogues in the game
(great choice, that red font, firs perfectly!)
that robot' walking animation is both super weird and cute 

Heh, he's actually a little bug (apparently). He's a Sqrxz (pronounced skwerks), and he loves sausages Yeah the red font is cool! It's taken from the PC version, so I can't take credit for it.

The game is finished and I've done some final work today separating the sprite & title screen data into separate appvars to reduce the program size. The game file is less than 11KB. All other data & world files can be put in the Archive to save RAM space.

I also added a dark blue background to the play screen to give it a slight separation from the status bar and world details.



Now I'll start working on a Windows world editor

The game is pretty much finished. I just have a couple of minor bugs to iron out, and I also want to experiment with the possibility of having a larger play screen size. Additionally, I think I'll write a Windows world editor, as the old world editor supplied back in the TI-83/85/86 days needs Dosbox to run on modern computers, which is inconvenient.

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on January 09, 2017, 08:14:56 AM
Really beautiful. Do you plan to add stuff at the top of the screen too, such as the stage name, number, the game title and other stuff?

In the short term, yes I'll be putting the world name and author. Down the track I'll experiment with increasing the level height, depending on performance.

Quote from: p2 on January 09, 2017, 11:38:54 AM
I love the blob 

but am I mistaken or is the ground as well as the big rock fickering a little bit...?
(might only be the gif of cause)

That's just the GIF

I've improved my font routines to now support multiple font packages (shown below in the status area). It's currently limited to monospace fonts, with the characters being 15x15 pixels maximum. But it allows for either textured or non-textured fonts, and the option for transparent font drawing if you want to maintain the background behind text, or opaque font drawing if you want to remove trash as the string is being rendered.

Another small update showing Sqrxz running animation, a couple of other enemies and simple status bar text at the bottom showing lives, sausages collected and the level number. I'll probably add a 2nd font for the status bar text to look like the original PC game..

The game is almost running fully as per the TI-85/86/83, etc. versions. Once it is, I'll start refining it further.

Enemies have now been added in - you can see the Blob and Hedgehog in the below screenshot.

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on December 28, 2016, 09:41:12 PM
Do you have any mockups for an HUD other than the life bars so far? Maybe you should add a border around the map like in early Ys games

I haven't done any mockups, but it's planned to be fairly similar to the original PC game. In terms of the size of the play screen vs. having a border, etc. I've got a few ideas about maintaining compatibility with existing Sqrxz worlds but also allowing for a larger play screen for newer worlds...

A little more progress (although I keep getting distracted on this Minecraft CTM map I've been playing for the last month or so), but Sqrxz transparency is now done as well as tile animations/changes, collecting items, etc. Also, the "time" and "air" bars are now there and working