28th February 2010 - I like to move it,
move it!
Today I have
been working on the tweaking of the IRQ routine. Seems that I was using
one that runs on the BASIC kernel, so I decided to switch that off and
use the standard non Kernel interrupt vectors $FFFE & $FFFF and
also switch to NMI Lock using $FFFA & $FFFB. Works fine, now what I
want to do is get those enemies stopping at a certain Y position, then
move an X position, then walk the rest of the way downwards off screen.
To get this working, I need to create some loops and some data tables.
I will also need to create some triggers to make the characters stop
moving Y if they are moving X. Also depending on which X direction each
character should move, I should create a table with switches to show
whether the characters have to go left or right. In theory this method
should hopefully work.
I tested the movement for the first character with the random stopping
position movements for just one character and it worked a dream. Next I
implemented the same routine to all of the characters (except for the
store assistant) to get them moving. This wasn't working properly at
first, but after a few tweaks or rewriting of the code, I got all the
characters moving through a random basis, to make game play slightly
more interesting.
Now was the time to work on the sprite to sprite collision. I used the
same collision method as usual as it makes programming much easier for
me. I know I have used this collision routine time and time again, but
it is something that could be remembered really well, without having to
do so much research. I created separate routines corresponding to each
character and linked all of the collision routines to the player's fire
button press routine. Unfortunately there seems to be a silly error in
the code, in which all but one character stops if Granny hits that
character with her cane. I found where the problem lies. It seems that
I RTS the movement command which causes all enemies to stop. So I made
some multiple JMP to next routine commands to make things work
correctly. Well, it seems to work now. I also got the coin routines to
work nicely as well.
After all the collision routines worked correctly, I worked on some sub
routines that will show the death animation sequences for the player,
and also for the enemies that have been hit as well. Seems to be
working fine. Now to add the scoring and lives counter, then I shall
call it a day for today and do some other time.
Stay
tuned for
more crazy Granny antics some time soon.
17th March 2010 - Some more levels
Bionik Granny
Returns now has 4 levels. Well, 4 different backgrounds implemented
into the game that is. I have worked on the level reset routine that
will check for any levels that are currently available. So now after
the player completes the first level (by collecting coins after
whacking enough folk with the cane) the next level background and set
of characters (sprites) are changed. I have the following scenes set
up: Level 1 - Mini Mart, Level 2 - Park, Level 3 - School and Level 4 -
Public Toilets. The levels implemented into the game look very nice,
but need some major tweaking for the character sprites. Well, we don't
want the sprites to use the same movement patterns as the first level.
So a new X+Y movement table will need to be created. I'll do that some
other time.
7th
April 2010 - A little email from and to DFlame/Blazon/Crypt
I received an email from Michael asking me if he could
program a PC port of one of my own games called, Camels in Space. I
gave him permission to do exactly that as long the game will be
freeware, rather than commercial. After finding out about this game, I
will probably be looking forward to seeing the PC port of the game. I
do hope that it will be better and more playable, compared to my 2001
version of the Commodore 64 game. People seemed to have enjoyed Camels
in Space, so that was a sort of bonus. A shame I don't have the source
code for the original game, otherwise I would have probably gave it a
major tweaking and release it to Cronosoft. Ah well, Wayne wants me to
do a Camels in Space 2 game. I might have some excellent ideas for this
one. :o)
I sent an email back to Michael to ask if he would like to draw a logo
for the Granny Returns game. I asked him to just use GRANNY RETURNS for
the logo and also if he could put a picture of Granny beside the logo
on the right hand side. Hopefully the logo should turn out pretty
funny. :o)
8th April 2010 - Granny gets an ASBO
Michael got back to me today replying about the logo. He says
that he will do a logo for the game. I'll be looking forward to what I
see here. Anyway, I got fully motivated today and did some more on this
game (As I am hoping to do Up in the Air on a weekend basis). So then
what have I been doing today? Well, I added some extra byte data
tables, which will represent the X/Y speed of the game sprites. Once I
got 4 different X/Y speed tables set up for the game, I went back to
the level set-up and added some low/high byte pointers which will store
the values of the X/Y speed tables on to the current sprite movement
routine.
After I assembled the first routine and compacted the data with the
Exomizer compactor (It is not one of those machines which you throw
boxes in to to see them get crushed into a huge pile of squashed boxes.
Oh no!) then I executed the compacted game in WinVice. Well, it seems
that some of the level 1 speed is working okay, but when I started
moving Granny left/right. Two of the character sprites seemed to not
respond correctly. It seems that instead of just adding the low and
high byte of the memory where the speed was. I only stored the low byte
of those TWICE. A silly mistake, but I am human, not a robot. After a
couple of alterations, we were back to normal with the game. Then
played through the whole 4 levels. TOO BLOODY EASY!. Those hazards,
which the enemies throw were TOO SLOW. So I altered the speed table and
got a better result. Plays much better.
Before I decided to call it a day with today's version of the BGR game,
I decided to alter the Game Over text, where instead of saying that
Granny found modern society too much, I made a Game Over where she has
been reported, the police find her and send her home with an ANTI
SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR ORDER (ASBO). I wanted to make some sarcastic/funny
game over text to make things look more interesting, so that's what
happened today.

This may subject to change.
I'm about to email a preview of the work done so far to Frank Gasking
and Martin Piper, to see if they like what they have seen so far :o)
16th April 2010 - Raise the tables
I showed a few of my C64 friends last week's preview of Bionik Granny
Returns. They seemed to be impressed with what they saw so far of the
game. One or two of the gamers came up with some ideas for future
levels. Level 4 is outside the toilets, but at the moment I have the
Ghetto Blaster blaring out pure bassline music, which Granny has to
avoid. That was only a temporary idea. The idea for level 4 is to have
an old tramp as the main enemy and the hazard can be toilet paper. This
idea was suggested by Kenz. He come up with some other ideas which
could be tried out for level 4 and showed me the Xmas Chortles sprites,
which were used in his Amiga game. It made me smile, but I have decided
at the end, an old tramp, throwing toilet paper will be ideal for this
level.
I wanted to do some more work with the game today before I have my
cooked tea. Each level seems to use the same control tables inside the
random tables control loop. So I decided to create some new ones that
will correspond to the level, which the player is currently based on.
So I added some more byte data tables for each level. Then I added
three labels where the reading of the data tables lies. I used
StorePointer1, StorePointer2, StorePointer3 as the labels. Where
StorePointer1 will read the level's character movement X stopping
position, StorePointer2 will read the level's character movement as Y
limit stopping position. StorePointer3 will read the level's left and
right sprite direction control per game character. After I added the
labels. I went down to the level setup routines in the code and added
commands that will store the two low and high byte addresses of where
the data tables for the current level are stored. Then store those on
the low and high bytes of the StorePointer address.
After I assembled and test run the game. I played all 4 levels and
there were a few minor glitches, but what I did (Storing the low and
high byte of the data tables to their chosen pointers) worked nicely. I
still have to tweak the tables a little. This is because on level 2, I
spotted one of the characters walking off screen, when it was moving to
the right. So I checked out the data table for level 2, inside the
source code. I found it. It seems that the problem caused was a simple
mistake. I used $B0 instead of $80 inside the data table. That is why I
had those silly movement errors. Apart from that, everything else was
working perfectly.
I shall now call it a day / night with this and do some more work on it
perhaps tomorrow afternoon because I am going to be waiting for Wayne's
response about the latest UITA preview.
17th April 2010 - Enter the tramp.
Today I have been doing a couple more new sprites for the game.
Not much, but just level 4 sprites. I copied the store man sprite and
pasted it into the sprite editor and turned the store man sprite into a
tramp. Yes, level 4 has a filthy tramp for this stage. To try and make
the tramp look quite realistic in the game, I adjusted the coat, by
adding some pink to the colour - to make sure that the tramp's coat
looks as if it has been torn. I also drew some frames for the toilet
paper. Then I imported the sprites into the project source and added
some new animation tables to be read, updated the animator loop and
then tested the game. Works great. Final touch to the game today, the
scoring system - so that will continue when moving on to the next level.
Tomorrow, I shall draw some new graphics for later levels, and also
draw some new sprites for those stages as well. I shall also make some
colour schemes of the characters for each stage as well.
18th April 2010 - Rebuilt graphics
Oh no. Just when I was about to create some new level graphics,
and tried to load the .d64 files. It seems that the .D64 image was
corrupt. I took a look at the .D64 using the .D64 editor and found so
many of my files were cross linked to other files. Therefore those MSCK
files we unrecoverable. So I created a new .D64, imported the graphics
charset file into the .d64 and then recreated to in game graphics then
saved all the correct data. The graphics design look similar to the
previous BGR graphics, so it was worth the effort. I designed all the
levels and made a better *school* building for level 3. After a couple
of hours or so, I started drawing the graphics design for level 5 -
Outside the pub. I gave the pub a name, which is called "The Old Fart".
Hahaha! That'll do for today.

Hmm, this pub must be full of grumpy
people.
10th May 2010 - It's time for BINGO
The Sideways SEUCK Compo prizes, and the competition has finally
finished, so now I can get back to getting the cantankerous old lady,
Bionik Granny, back into action. Also, THIS WEEKEND. I WILL be doing
more work on Wayne's UP IN THE AIR project. Well, the programming side
of it of course. :o)
A few days (or maybe it may have been a couple of days ago), I had was
on MSN messenger, speaking online to a C64 fan Lars (I won't give his
surname out). Lars came up with a suggestion that for a level for BGR.
I should do a bingo hall. We discussed what the baddies could be, and
what they could throw. I came up with a funny idea. A bingo caller,
throwing large bingo balls at a fast velocity. As for drawing inside
the actual bingo hall. I decided not to do this due to a small amount
of free characters that I had left were too limited. So I decided to
base level 6 outside the bingo hall. It would have looked to plain
without any additional background, so I decided to base the bingo hall
with an actual car park.
Unfortunately, I thought that things would not really turn out that
well on the graphics front for this stage. Especially when I was trying
to draw cars inside the background. Luckily for me, I have regular
internet access and I thought that I should have a look at what the
cars in THE RACE (Players Premier game) looked like, and I tried to
draw one of my own. Well, it turned out quite nicely. However one
colour car would be too boring, so I decided to do copies of the same
car object and paint them a different colour. Now I made some parking
spaces, and put those cars inside those parking spaces. Looks nice now.

Red and yellow and ... where's the
pink and the green?
Some time later on this week, I have some funny ideas for level 7. I'm
thinking about getting ALIENS involved in this game. Yes, you have just
heard it. ALIENS. :o) One bad alien with a zap gun, and some other
aliens running out of the broken barbed wire fence of AREA 510 :o).
Stay tuned for more Granny antics next time when we - erm, well ... do
more on it - if we bother to that is :o))
6th June 2010 - 4 level Preview
released
I have decided to be kind to you all and show you the work which
has been done on the game so far. This is a 4 level preview in which
you must clobber passers by and collect coins, but watch out for the
hazards such as shopping trolley, bassline notes, lollipop sign and
toilet paper. Plenty of Granny like antics to keep you amused -
exclusive to this page too! :o)
9th June 2010 -
The aliens are coming, send in the doctor.
Well, it has been a while since I last did some more work on
this game project, so today I decided to finish off all the level
screens before drawing some sprites. For level 7, I created an Alien
Base called Area 15. So where there were some spare charsets remaining
in the graphics data, I decided to draw a barbed wired fence with two
signs and a silly alien sign, which shows an alien type character
rasping. I was sort of determined to draw a blue Tardis to put near the
bottom of the screen, but I did not have enough charsets for this one,
plus it probably wouldn't have been a good idea anyway. Even for a free
game :o)

Now then, who broke that fence
wiring? Nothing human.
Now that I am very happy with the level 7 graphics, I decided to do the
last stage, which is outside the Poilice Station. There's a plan for
what happens after this stage is complete. A funny surprise of course.
:o). Ha ha ha. After completing level 8's screen (Police Station) I
decided to work on the bonus background stages, where Granny has to
cross the busy road to get to the bank for her pension. For a laugh, I
have made 3 different small unnamed buildings, so that if she enters a
wrong building, no bonus is made. Otherwise a bonus should be scored.
:o) So I created 3 similar buildings and also added 3 roads (as for
this stage, Granny has to watch out for the cars and bikes, etc for the
bonus stage. I'll be drawing the sprites for those stages tomorrow
afternoon after work. I saved a VICE snapshot of the game graphics data
then I saved all of the Multi Screen Construction Kit colour, charset
and graphics map data to a .D64 as well as saved the final library
file. I'm finished with the level graphics front. :o)

Level screen built from the Multi
Screen Construction Kit
13th June 2010 -
Sprites ahoy
Oh all right then, it's not really a pirate game. Slightly later
than planned, due to overtime work. Ah well. This afternoon I have been
working on the sprites for the whole game. So I downloaded the Sprite
Yaper V1.0 by YAP/Albion and I drew some assorted characters,
which included smartly dressed people, an angry bar man, a bingo
caller, some aliens and also the police. Well not exactly draw, but
more like copy and paste the existing characters and adjust them a
little to make them look slightly difficult. I also drew the cars
(based on the in game charset graphics from level 6's background map)
and I drew something for a surprise game over scheme. I'm not going to
tell you what it is, as it would spoil the surprise. I shall not give
you any clues to it either. Hahahah. Finally I saved all of the
sprites to disk. My next task later on this week will be to create some
new music for the game - then import the new data into the code
routines and do heck of a lot more programming on the game.

21st June 2010 -
Songs for Summer :o)
Today I have mainly been concentrating with doing some tunes for
this game. I loaded up the DMC V4 music editor, and loaded up the
Bionic Granny Theme tune bassline remix and altered the tunes. Made
some better instruments and worked on the main sounds. Of course, the
game music still needed to use the Bionic Granny theme tune, as this is
a remix. So I made a sort of disco version of the Bionic Granny theme
tune. The introduction uses an echo effect when it starts. I also
rewritten the sequences in the sequence editor and also worked on the
game over ditty (Minor version of the Bionic Granny theme jingle) and
also some Title screen music. The title screen music starts with an
interesting introduction, and then the Bionic Granny theme tune comes
on. Quite entertaining :o)
22nd June 2010 -
Source updating
Just a tiny bit of work has been put into the project today, due
to tiredness through to the long hours that I worked today (10 hours to
be precise). I relocated the game music to hex $8c00 and also removed
all of the unecessary .PRG files and replaced them with the later
program data files and the implemented everything into the source code.
I used the following addresses:
$0800-$1000 = Multi Screen Construction Kit charset (The MSCK library
code relocates the charset to this address)
$1000-$2000 = Reserved space for additional data or code
$2000-$4000 = Game sprites
$4000-$5800 = Game Code
$5800-$8C00 = Reserved space for additional data, such as bitmap
picture, scroll text, additional code, etc.
$8C00-$A000 = Music
$A000-$FFFF = Multi Screen Construction Kit Graphics library data.
After inserting all of the data that was available to me, I removed a
few unecessary routines and added some JSR statements that would
process the Multi Screen Construction Kit data. Unfortunately the
screens seem to display in a funny way, by gradually placing the screen
data bit by bit visibly. The way to solve this problem was to switch
off $D011 so that the data cannot be seen when building the levels (by
placing background objects on to the screen).
Now I test the game to see if the 4 levels work 100% so far, with
removed routines and the MSCK JSR statements added (Which made the game
code slightly shorter). Great. Done :o)
18th
July 2010 – Logo received
After
coming back from my 2 weeks vacation at the Isle of Wight, I got up
this morning to check my emails. I had 29 outstanding emails to
answer. Well, 23 as some of it was junk. One email was from Johan
(JSL) about the Bionik Granny Logo. I received Johan's logo and I
took a glance at it. It's fabulously colourful and I really like it
as well. I will most definitely use this awesome logo on the front
end for this game.
Note: The
Bionik logo might be sprites, as I asked Johan if he could leave out
the Bionik :o)

19th
July 2010 – Granny gets mashed
Bah.
Back to work (I wish I could live in the Isle of Wight :o) ). No, I
don't mean the Granny game project. Real life
work of course. Well, we all do have to earn a living don't we? :o)
Anyway, after I had my tea, I moved back on to this project. Yes my
friends, it's the programming side again.
First
of all I booted up WinVice and the I auto started the Bionik Granny
Returns preview to see whether or not I have the latest sprite data
stored into the code. After browsing through the sprites, I found
that all correct sprites were stored. So now it was time for me to
expand my game code to make way for new enemy frames. So I created
loads more byte table data – mainly for the sprite animation frame
data. Then I created some new data for the sprite animation store. To
be able to do this, I had to browse through the sprite data, by using
Datel's Action Replay Cartridge freezer and then enter the sprite
viewer. Then I had to work out what the correct value for each
sprite frame should be.

After
I entered all of the data for animation frames, etc. for the new
sprite types. I added additional routines to read the frame data and
store to the actual sprite storage pointers. Once I did this, I added
some more routines to check for levels 5 and 8. To get level 5 – 8
set up. I copied the level 1 data to make the later levels (for the
matter of testing for now) and paste those – renaming them as new
levels, but only add the low and high byte of the new enemies for
levels 5 to 8. This was only for testing.
After
assembling and crunching the source, I restarted the updated .prg
file and play tested the game. Sadly there seemed to have been a
silly issue after the first level was played. It seems to be the case
where the Multi Screen Construction Kit library code needs to use the
KERNAL to process the next level screen data. So after a level was
completed I enabled the KERNAL flag to process the next level screen
from the MSCK library. The good thing about this, is that it worked.
Well,
the game seems to be progressing quite well, but all I will need to
do is make some new random X / Y moving positions and speed for each
level, and then set up routines to change the amount of coins to be
collected for the chosen levels … and of course, program in the
front end screen, high score table + entry, new game over sequence
and end sequence. Then the tape mastering (based on the loader which
Mastertronic used before they started using Invade-A-Load).
24th July
2010 - Speed it up
I just about finished setting up of the
game speed, for the levels, although the tables will need a bit of
tweaking later on, before I can confirm that the game is finished. I
added some set pointers to show how many coins should be collected
before a level is complete. Then worked on the front end title screen
scroll text. Then I created the text lines for the front end
presentation. Finally I programmed the front end, but it is still not
quite finished yet, as I want to add granny to the screen, and also
make the title screen flip pages to toggle the credits, followed by the
high score table. That can wait until later on, as I have done
quite a bit with the project today. :)
25th July
2010 - Give us a high score
After working on the front end yesterday, I
worked on adding a little routine which flips the page from the credits
on the title screen to the top 5 grannies high score table, simply by
adding a timer routine to flip pages, just like I did with the Pour Le
Merite game title screen. Now that the high score table was set up. I
tested the program, and the front end seems to work quite well. Next I
drew some sprites to put inside the logo, using Skylight's Sprite
Designer. Then I imported the sprites into the code, and added a
routine to display the sprites where the logo is placed. Now I
can confirm that the front end is now finished :)

After the title screen was done, I programmed
in the high score name entry and detection routine. I tested it to see
how well it works. Seems to work pretty good. Later on this week, I
shall work on the bonus stage for this game. As I'm getting a bit tired
with programming today, so I'll call it a day for now and do some more
on Tuesday evening, then Up in the Air, Wednesday evening. :o)
Due
to various events that have been happening recently, I was unable to do
any more programming on any of those projects over the week.
1st August 2010
- Bonus round started
Time is quite short today due to stressful attempts at trying to fix my
C2N tape deck to get it to work with tape that used the Wildsave
loader. Unfortunately, despite all the hard work to get the damn thing
working right. It just failed miserably. Perhaps I should consider
looking for Interceptor Software's Azimuth Head Alignment program. I
think!
Anyway,
I got started with the bonus stage, by adding a new routine which will
display the bonus stage screen. Then I added a single IRQ interrupt to
test to see whether or not the music will play and code outside the IRQ
(Inside the cleared IRQ flag) will synchronise. Simply by adding inside
the synchronise loop an INC $D020. Then I inserted the granny sprite
into the code, and added a routine to get her moving. Seems to be
turning out quite well. I shall leave it like that for now. Will do
some more work on this game tomorrow :)
2nd August 2010 - Granny gets hit by a car
Now
that the design's finished. I worked on adding some more code to the
bonus game so that Granny can cross the road. I also added some raster
splits to display MORE than just 8 sprites for the cars. Then after I
got those cars on screen, I called the animation routine and had the
cars animating quite nicely. Now it was time for me to get those
vehicles moving across the screen, so I added the usual routine which
makes sprites move across the screen. Just a simple data table and a
loop controlling the virtual movements of the objects. Finally I added
a very simple $D01E collision routine, as all sprites are of course
cars. Then I added a funny feature. If Granny gets hit by those passing
cars, she will fly across the screen. Then a message "YOU GOT HIT BY A
CAR - NO BONUS!" appears on screen, with "PRESS FIRE TO CONTINUE"
underneath it. I also got the bonus time ticking as well.
5th August 2010 - Finishing the bonus stage
On
Monday I started working on the bonus stage and today I decided to do
some more on it. Starting with updating the Y speed of Granny's
movement. She seemed to have moved slower when moving up or down. This
was a typical mistake, which should be sorted out as the bonus stage
was just too difficult. After correcting Granny's walking speed it was
time to do some random building entries. As granny has to enter the
correct building within a time limit, otherwise no bonus would be
awarded. What I had to do first was to position the player at the
actual building, so that I could work out the range for the door ways.
Then I created a loop that would check for the X and Y position of the
player - to see if it would MATCH the position of the doorways, so that
Granny could enter one of the three buildings. As today was a hard
working day at work, I decided to call it a day with this. Maybe I
shall do some more tomorrow evening after I have been down the pub for
2 pints of lager (After work of course). :o)
7th August 2010 - Finishing the bonus stage
part 2
Quite
a bit has been done for this bonus stage. What I done this time is
added a routine which will randomise the type of building which the
player enters. So when the player enters any of the three buildings,
either it is a wrong building or it is a correct one. I also came
across some silly problems with the bonus stage's interrupts. There
appeared to have been cars in wrong positions on the screen, I altered
the IRQ slightly more to get a better layout so the cars were in a very
accurate position without any glitches whatsoever. After dealing with
the bonus stage, and adding a bonus counter which gives points left
from the time to the player's score (If sucessful enough that is). I
returned back to the main game source code.
I
wanted to add a selection of different colours to the game characters,
so that when the level is on appropriate colours were used on each
character, depending on the level. I cannot really be asked to create
colour new tables and randomise the colours as the characters look just
about right for the levels. Plus there's not really any need for random
colours anyway :o). Then I stored the Bonus level game speed (of the
cars) to the game then linked the bonus stage to the game code.

Finally
I tweaked the levels slightly as I could see sprites at the right of
the game screen near outside the border. This only occurred for any
time a player hits an enemy before the enemy is repositioned. So I
updated this routine, so that the enemy is further outside the game
screen - and that the player cannot see it after it has been hit -
until it comes out of the building again.
...
tomorrow I will be working on the end sequence for the game, and code a
little end demo for it as well :o). Then final stage tweaking and beta
testing shall probably commence this coming week. If all goes well,
Bionik Granny Returns will be released near to the end of this month
(or maybe before then). :)
8th August
2010 - Final touches - the end sequence
I have been spending
most of today tweaking the game code, and also adding an end sequence.
I split the end sequence into two parts. The first part is a funny
sketch where Granny walks on to the screen, and bumps into PC McPlod.
McPlod tries to deal with Granny, such as arrest her, but you will have
to wait for yourself what happens - I don't wish to give too much away
here :o)

The second part of the ending contained a little colourful demo with a
huge scrolling message with some nice colour rolling ending. Then I
linked a routine to see if the player will get a high score, after they
press the fire button in joystick port 2. Finally, I updated the game
movement table data and set up new default positions, so that it looks
as if each character appears through the doorway. Nice :) Final touches
- if a bonus stage is complete and successful, Granny is awarded an
extra life as well as bonus points - as the game gets harder per level
complete.
Finally, I mastered the BETA test version of this game with Martin
Piper's IRQ tape loader source and rather than use Dance-A-Load, I used
the Bionic Granny Garage/Bassline remix, which was used in the 4 level
preview - but I'll be doing some new loader music for the full game,
using Martin's latest version of the Music Studio V2.1 editor.
9th August 2010 - A bit of tweaking
and fixing.
I have had a report from one of the BETA testers about the
glitches in the game. The testers mentioned that there was only one
level in the game. Oops, it seems to me that I forgotton to reset the
first level to be level 1, and the person was actually playing level 8.
Man, I hate making mistakes, and was probably one of the most silliest
errors I made last night - especially when I send the thing to all of
my chose BETA testers. Man, what a silly move. I have now corrected
this problem today. Anyway, I got a small report back about the end
sequence. It seems that the cartoon part's text changed too quick, so I
added another timer routine, to delay the text. The same person also
mentioned about the name entry in the high score table. When the fire
button is pressed after the game over screen, the button is too
sensitive. So I have added a waiting delay routine to delay the high
score entry more. Also the end screen was missing the BIONIK logo, so I
added that as well. I also added some delays to some of the routines.
Tested the game. After game is over, number of lives is now 5 and the
number of coins for level 1 is 5.
Finally to end it all today, I loaded up Martin Piper's PC/SID music
editor Music Studio V2.1 and worked on a brand new loader tune,
exclusively for this game. (No, not another version of the Dance-A-Load
tune, silly, but the loader tune might sound quite familiar if you
downloaded Grid Zone Remix and loaded the .TAP image from my web site.
However the loader tune I done for this game, has a bit more variation
to it. Then I mastered everything and sent BETA V1.2 to all the BETA
testers of this project. - Hopefully no clumsiness this time. :o)
10th August 2010 - Could this be the
final tweak and fix? Well? I bloody well hope so :o)
I got some reports from the BETA testers about BETA V1.2 of
Bionik Granny Returns. It appears that there were more problems in the
game, than there should have been. The high score entry crashed and
also there were some weird sprite bug on the end demo. Well, I took a
look at the code and assembled it with the V3 command. It appears that
the logo's colour RAM data overwritten the code for the high score
table. So I moved the colour RAM to somewhere else and updated the
title and end demo's code. So that it will display the colour RAM
from $5800 rather than $8000 (Where the rest of the high score code now
rests). Frank Gasking suggested that I should tweak the levels, so that
the harzards start moving faster and more frequent per level. I also
noticed that level 7 was HARDER than level 8, so I swapped the level
tables round so that level 8 is the most difficult stage, but possible
of course. I did a final test - all seems to work fine now. But it's up
to the BETA testers to try BETA V1.3 out shortly. :o) ... I bet that
Bionik Granny tune is getting on their nerves already :o)) Okay, I'm
off to do a new TND intro for the final version of the game now ...
Byeeeee!
15th August 2010 - All done - The end
of the project. !!
Some fantastic news is that the final bug (the tape loader high score
bug) is finally fixed. Now that all bugs are fixed, the final disk was
compiled. I also did two different versions of the tape master, for the
same disk. One, which is a high speed loader with no music, and another
which is a longer loader, but can play loading music during loading
time. Unfortunately I cannot try those out on my real C64, because all
3 of my datasettes are not working. I've ordered a new one on EBAY
today. I do hope this new one will last LONGER compared to the one that
I received a couple of months ago (Messing up with some of the tape
loaders, such as Wild Save). So for probably about 2 weeks, I've got no
datasette.
20th August 2010 - Got another
Datasette
This is quite a surprise for me, as on that Friday afternoon
after I came home from Work, I recieved my order for my C64 datasette,
which I won on EBAY. I was surprised that delivery was fast - although
it was despatched the day before as second class post. A good thing was
that it was working on most tapes, including the dreaded wildsave and
pavloda. Some tapes would not load, but it appeared that the datasette
heads required a good clean. And so it happened and works nicely. I
created some new tape masters of the game and saved the game to disk.
Brilliant, it works!
21st August 2010 - Bionik Granny
Returns Inlay
Quite a funny thing happened today. I recieved the the printable
Bionik Granny Returns tape inlay for the game, and I just could not
resist printing the little sucker and making my own tape badge for
sticking on to the tape. It looks quite authentic, except that when I
printed the thing off, it was too flippin' small. So I had to resize
the thing. It still printed a bit small, but I managed to stick it on
to the tape okay - with selotape HAHAHA!. It'll be up to the gamer to
update their tape inlay thingy if they needed to. :o)
After printing off the tape inlay, I inserted it into an empty case,
along with the tape. Finally all this has finally finished.
22nd August 2010 - A couple of suprises
- and it's released AT LAST!
I was mucking around today making some surprise releases. I won't say
what they are. It's just up to you to find it.
The game has been released, and also consists of a new Dance-A-Load
loader theme tune for the tape mastering. Although the loader itself
looks pretty authentic. :)
The game is finally available on the TND Games Page
and also the TND Games Room page. Not
to mention, I have upped a .D64 on to CSDB as well.
Enjoy the production. :o)