rombus 2018-12-03 04:37
Wow! this is really interesting. Also the art reminds me of BATTLE CITY a classic NES game from my childhood :D I'll see tomorrow if I can run it
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD43 → Maze of Death
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 284 | 3.33 | 35 | |
| Fun | 334 | 3.03 | 34 | |
| Innovation | 204 | 3.30 | 36 | |
| Theme | 204 | 3.60 | 36 | |
| Graphics | 270 | 3.24 | 37 | |
| Audio | 324 | 2.66 | 29 | |
| Humor | 296 | 2.54 | 27 | |
| Mood | 267 | 3.10 | 31 |
Wow! this is really interesting. Also the art reminds me of BATTLE CITY a classic NES game from my childhood :D I'll see tomorrow if I can run it
Phew, well that was a lot of effort to play it, but I'm glad I did! Gave me an excuse to replay some of my older favorites too. :smiley:
The core game mechanics are solid and work as intended. No bugs that I can tell! I didn't get to the end, unfortunately. I think what might improve it would be a way to set your own spawn, or have the algorithm put some checkpoints along the way. The only reason I didn't complete it was because I got really far, but didn't feel like going through it all over again.
Can you share a little information about how you made the game? I've been interested in starting another homebrew game and wanted to try making some C64 homebrew, is it all in BASIC, or did you use some other tools? I'm really interested to see what your process for this was like. Thanks!
@tomcat94 Thank you for playing it! :)
Yeah, I also see room for improvement. Eg. different level sizes to make a game easier. Seed based labyrinths would also be cool for highscores. Also extras would be cool, eg. randomly reveal part of the labyrinth, get an additional life, etc.
The idea is based on a rather unknown game for C64 called SHIFT. It was a mix between Sokoban and Chip's Challenge and had a bonus level similar to Maze Of Death. Only difference was the level was not randomized and it was insta-death.
For development I used CBM prg Studio, an IDE for Windows. You can code in BASIC or Assembler, draw sprites, charsets, etc. and test it directly in an emulator like WinVICE after compilation.
Maze of Death was completely written in BASIC, except for a little routine in Assembler, which activates the charset modifications. After I felt happy with the result I compiled the code with Austrospeed, an old BASIC compiler for the C64 (saved the code to a disk image, launched Austrospeed in WinVICE and compiled the code in the emulator). Without it the maze generation takes almost a minute. The compiled code generates it within around 15 seconds.
Thank you for the info! I'll have to check those out. Maybe one day I can get around to trying some C64 homebrew myself! :smile:
@tomcat94 I'm also just at the beginning. Next time I really would like to do a game in Assembler. :smiley:
Nice game! I like the idea and it keeps you playing for some time
This game takes a lot of patience! I almost made it to the halfway mark with plans to finish, but got up and yanked my headphones out which crashed the emulator. Oops.
One thing I think might improve the game is to make it a little more Minesweeper-like by letting you mark possible walls. Whenever you hit a corner, there's a chance of taking the right direction, which is actually bad for mapping purposes, so I was sacrificing lives just to indicate both edges of corners.
how do I open and play it?
@sillyman987 You need an emulator for C64 like WinVICE. Unfortunaly I have some workmen in the house at the moment and can't use my desktop computer, but I'll improve the description as fast as possible.
It's really nice to see people creating games for "exotic" platforms (at least for the ludum dare). The core idea of the game is nice, but it kinda get boring when you figured out a part of the maze and you just have to walk towards where you died.
@triplefox The sacrifice is part of the game. ;)
Nice, that you thought of Minesweeper. In the end I think of it as a mixture of Minesweeper, Simon Says (because you have to remember the way you walked) and a maze game. I already have some ideas for improvement like bonuses that reveal part of the maze.
For mapping I sometimes die on purpose.
@hamrathdoesldjam never mind i have it.
please check out my game at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/$123979
I like for Battle City without resistance
Will check it out after I fix an emulator =) Cool that you did a retro-throwback kind of game
Great job, love the art and the play on the theme is great!
no resistance
Had a lot of fun playing it on my C64. Great Job!
First of all I'm intrigued you went through the effort of writing it for C64! Never got to use one but I've wanted to for ages and this gave me a taste of the experience :) Played it for a while and having to remember the route I took made exploring more exciting since I couldn't just run through it (at first). Having to do the same route over and over again was rough on my hand and in my 3rd run I got as far as the picture below shows before I had to take a break. Skärmklipp.PNG Loved the concept and had fun. Hope this project doesn't end here!
Great game and love that you made something for the C64. If I had one thing I would suggest its that maybe I would add a couple checkpoints. My hand got legitimately sore having to spam my keyboard to get through the parts of the maze I had already explored especially once I got farther on in the level.
I really enjoyed this game and I like the way you used the theme! I really dig the graphics and applaud you for making this on the C64!
Interesting idea, and like the platform! At 19KB, this is the smallest LD game I've downloaded, the next smallest being... 100 times as big. I believe I explored about half of my maze, however, if things continued as expected, that is less than a quarter of the time required to beat it, so I gave up. Hand was getting sore.
I really like the idea of saying how many free directions there are, it both provides a little information, and provides some sense of security (I knew that I had not missed a possible path to the exit).
Good job cranking something out on the ol' 64. Would have liked some gameplay outside of straight up guessing, but I admire the concept.
@madjackmcmad I promise, this page is not the last thing you hear from Maze of Death. ;)
Hey, for anyone who wants to test this, I played your game using an online emulator (I used [this one](https://virtualconsoles.com/online-emulators/c64/)). I downloaded the file from itch.io, dropped the `mazeofdeath.d64` on the emulator, and it worked. I had to switch the joystick to port 2, and then used arrow keys to play.
For the game itself... I have a question: when you were developing this, how many times did you finish a level? Because it took me 15 minutes and I wasn't even a quarter of the way through! I stopped after I started getting pain in my wrist from pressing arrow keys ;)
I love the craziness of it - but that's slightly too much. I think it would be better if brown walls were no-longer poison (it sucks to die while trying to get back to where you were - even though you can see everything!), and dying should expose more than 1 block: perhaps all 9 spaces around where you died.
Also, I think it would be good that somehow the uncovered corridor pieces (more than 2 tiles in straight line) - that are obviously walls and you will never hit - would become visible over time... then it will be more visually "busy" and look cool I reckon.
Lastly, wacky ideas, you can sacrifice one of your lives for a "light bomb" that exposes a bunch of the map, BUT, your corpse is then located in a random location (preferably somewhere in the path to the exit) - so it's hard to recover.
Anyhoo... I really enjoyed this! I was thinking of doing a C64 game (instead I just stole the color palette!), now you've inspired me for the next LD!
Great work!
@mrspeaker Thanks for you kind words.
I finished the game once or twice during development, but was very lucky with the starting points. ;) Every level generated is possible to solve, but you're right (as some other mentioned also): the game takes too long. Almost anyone commenting said that and all of you are right.
Some of your ideas will make it to a better version of the game. Honestly I already had thought of some of them - but the concept of the "light bomb" is new and sounds very interesting to me. I had thought of that, too. But wanted to solve it another way - your suggestions sounds much better.
This is already my second C64 game on LD. The other one was a buggy mess and I also did not thought the end game through. I need to improve that in the future. Still people liked it a lot and I'm already working on an improved version.
Next time I hopefully can do one in Assembler.
Thanks again for playing and voting(?) for my game. I already voted for yours a few days ago. ;)
Wow, this takes me back. Incredible to see a retro game made in old tech in just 48 hours. The graphics are good for the technology and the game concept is solid for its era.
The game overall is very hard since each step closer to the goal increases the game's complexity so this leads to a significant slowdown over time. Maybe a teleporter system could have alleviated this.
I had no sound, which was a pity because I was totally looking forward to hearing the good old SID chip again. Whether that was due to some technical issue or whether the game has no audio I cannot tell.
Overall it's a neat entry that took me back on memory lane. Thanks a lot!
Unbenannt.PNG
@cerno-b Thanks!
Yes, there's sound, but it's only a stepping noise at the moment. You didn't miss much. ;)