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Messages - Zemmargorp

#1
Games / Re: [TI CE] RGB Express
August 06, 2021, 09:20:10 PM
Thank you very much DJ Omnimaga :)

I'd like to add something about the difficulty of the game: some levels are extremely difficult, and some can even seem impossible. If you're completely stuck on a level, sometimes the best thing to do is stop playing it for a while and only retry it after a few weeks, or even a few months. If you still can't manage to beat a level after that, you may want to wait again, until the 1st of April this time, and retry the level then (in that case, make sure your calculator's date is correctly set - you can see it and set it in the [mode] menu). All the levels are easier on that day.
#2
Games / [TI CE] RGB Express
August 04, 2021, 09:16:38 PM
Hello everyone!

A bit more than a year ago, I started working on a new game remake, and decided not to share anything until it would be finished. Well, it's finished now :)

I'm happy to introduce you RGB Express for TI CE calculators!


You can see in the screenshot above the title screen and the level selection menu - there are 400 levels in total (all the original game's levels).

RGB Express is a puzzle game, where in each level, your goal is to draw paths for trucks to deliver cargos to houses of the same color. The two screenshots below show level 1 and level 20: level 1 is straightforward, but level 20 is more tricky, because although paths are allowed to cross or meet at intersections, every part of the road can only be used once in each direction (up, left, right, down).

 

Each time you complete a level, the next one will be unlocked. If you don't complete a level, but have less than three uncompleted levels so far, the next level will also be unlocked. This way, you can be stuck on a level and keep advancing, stuck on a second level and keep advancing, but as soon as you're stuck on a third level, you'll have to finish one of those three levels to keep advancing.


The difficulty increases progressively. Some levels require more thinking or more trial-and-error because they simply contain more cargos to deliver, or there is more contention on the roads. Other levels introduce new mechanics, that are sometimes used to increase the complexity of planning routes.

On the left, level 36 featuring the white truck, which has the ability to deliver cargos to houses of any color. As trucks deliver their cargos in the reverse order they collected them, you'll need to be careful about the ordering of the different deliveries' steps. On the right, level 72 and its bridges: pressing a button by driving over it will toggle the state of all bridges and buttons of the same color.

 

There are other mechanics that greatly increase the combinatorial aspect of routes planning, but I'm not showing them here to not reveal all the surprises the game has to offer!

I discovered RGB Express (the original game, for mobiles) in december 2017, and I immediately liked it. As much as completing this game was both enjoyable and a real challenge (it took me 2.5 years of weekly/monthly playing), because of some difficult levels, recreating it for the TI CE had its own fun and challenging steps (designing the sprites and the palette, coming up with memory-efficient and fixed-length encodings to store the levels and the paths, programming the game engine with as few state variables as possible, programming the menu, and finding spare time for all of that!).

In case some of you wonder if I've made any progress since last year on my other game remake BOOM, I haven't, and now you know why!

RGB Express CE, its source code (written in C) and the 400 levels are available for download here: https://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/476/47662.html
To run this game, you'll need the CE C libraries (version 8 at least), their latest version can be found there: https://github.com/CE-Programming/libraries/releases/latest

Have fun!
#3
Games / Re: [TI CE] BOULDASH
November 26, 2020, 07:28:11 PM
Thanks :)

You can even have sprites that look closer to the original game by pressing [alpha], which toggles a grayscale palette haha ;D
Otherwise yes, I was really happy to be able to make coloured sprites that kept the original game's visual style.
#4
Games / [TI CE] BOULDASH
November 25, 2020, 09:59:06 PM
Hello :)

I recently became interested in learning how to use the C libraries in order to make programs that can read data from appvars or other programs. (I will eventually need to do that in BOOM, which is slowly but surely growing.)

That gave me idea of porting my old game BOULDASH (written for the TI-83+) to the TI CE, as it was a rather simple game that looked through the calculator's appvars to find level packs (like MARIO).

BOULDASH CE is now finished, and it is fully compatible with the original game's level packs, so the same Windows level editor can be used to edit the existing levels and make new ones!

Here are some pictures of the game, showcasing some of the included levels:

 

The two levels above are part of the tutorial levels (that progressively introduce new items and game mechanics). The two animated screenshots below show level packs from the original BOULDASH game.

 

 

The two screenshots above show the levels "DonkeyKong" and "PacMan" from the "Difficult games" level pack. "PacMan" is hard because you need to collect all the diamonds, and falling diamonds kill you; but if you successfully played all the previous levels, then you have a chance to finish this one as well. Below, you can see a level from the "Balderdoush" level pack, and the "Freefall" level, perhaps the hardest of all the included levels, but it is humanly possible!

 

Everything is available for download there (game, source code, level packs, level editor); the C libraries are required to run the game.

[offtopic]I did my best to keep the source code clean and well organized. Each feature has its own .h and .c source files, and they are all as independent from the others as possible:
  • detect - detection of existing level packs
  • menu - level pack selection menu
  • main - calls detect, then menu, then levelpack
  • items - enumerations of the different game items and their properties
  • levelpack - level pack parsing and levels loading
  • level - the actual game engine
  • draw - rendering of the view
In case some people here aren't very experienced with game development for the TI CE calculator, but would like to learn how to use appvars for level packs, or how a game engine can be split into several parts: feel free to study this simple game's source code.
[/offtopic]
Do not hesitate to make your own levels and share them here :)
#5
Thank you very much!

Nothing except "prgmBOOMDEMO" is required to play this game.

It doesn't need the C libraries because I've written my own drawing routines in assembly, specifically optimized for the needs of BOOM (all the sprites are 16x16, only two bytes are required to hold coordinates inside the sidebar, etc.). The vast majority of this program's source code is in ez80 assembly anyways; I wrote some functions in C (out of laziness!) but I'm progressively rewriting them in ez80 assembly to improve both their size and speed.

BOOM has been since August 21st on ticalc.org, I've been waiting to improve it a bit more before sharing it here :)
#6
Calc Projects, Programming & Tutorials / BOOM game remake
November 03, 2020, 10:53:59 PM
Hello everyone!

I've been working from time to time these past months on the remake of a game for TI CE calculators: BOOM.

BOOM was a one-or-two-player Macintosh game made by Factor Software in 1997 (and still edited until ~2016). They described it as "Bomberman meets Doom"; to quote their website: "As a space trooper your mission is to penetrate 8 alien infested areas, each one divided in 10 sub-zones, eliminate all enemies using your bombs and finally kick the Big Alien Boss back to where he came from." Some extremely good players have uploaded a complete playthrough of this game on YouTube:

I've played this game as a child and loved it; I decided to remake it so that other people would discover it and could enjoy playing it as I did (although it's not the same without the musics and the sound effects).

Without further delay, here are some screenshots of my BOOM remake for TI CE calculators:

 
 

The game is still under development (there are currently no bonuses, no time, no scores, and it only includes the first 20 levels out of 80 in total), but it's already well playable so I thought it was time to share it with the community. You can download it there: https://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/475/47504.html

Have fun :)
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