Virgil's Purgatory

[Amaweks]

Etid: game finnished and lauched: zx-dev-media-demakes.proboards.com/post/228/thread

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About a month ago I've started doing a "Demake" of one of my old PC games (with Super GameBoy aesthetics) for the ZX Spectrum, usind MPAGD:

Virgil's Purgatory ZX (a not so short Metroidvania game):




(The video capture has some glitches, they are not prsent on the game, it's just a capture lag)

So far I've done:

- All of the player code and graphics

- All NPC code and graphics

- Almost all enemies done

- The first Boss

- Some main screens that I'll reuse on teh game: the "refil your vitality" and NPC screen, Pre-Boss, Boss, and new artifact, screens

- I was able to sucefull make use Jonathan Cauldwell user routines for merging screens, so I think my vision of the total screens for the game can be acoplished within the engine limitations.



Still To do:

- maybe one more enemy

- 3 more bosses graphics and code

- Intro and End screen

- All the rest of the screens for the game

- redo all teh musics and see what I can fit on the 48k


For comparission here is the PC game:
amaweks.itch.io/virgil

[Admin]

Hey Amaweks, welcome to the ZX Dev forums! WOW I see that you already have managed to code quite a lot, and by seeing the video, I have to say that I saw some original details, like the character´s attack, and that special colour scheme, a bit similar to Devwill too, so I will be looking forward how it keeps getting developed and playing it

Will it be a long AGD game? (as the original was a long Metroidvania).

Looking good!

[Amaweks]

Aug 6, 2021 23:42:13 GMT Admin said:

Hey Amaweks, welcome to the ZX Dev forums! WOW I see that you already have managed to code quite a lot, and by seeing the video, I have to say that I saw some original details, like the character´s attack, and that special colour scheme, a bit similar to Devwill too, so I will be looking forward how it keeps getting developed and playing it

Will it be a long AGD game? (as the original was a long Metroidvania).

Looking good!

Hi, thanks for the Welcome.

Yes, some of the colour scheme will be similar with Devwill Too. It's my atempt to overcome the colour clash, but now I'll go further ont this "pixel-tile" draw for the backgrounds, making some shapes with full tiles with plain colors (AGD offer just one method of colour clash that it subtract the overlayed shapes)

One special thing to note is the sort of "ascii" title screen I aready done, I've managed to create "4x4" pixels, in fact all the combinations of that over the low case fonts, so i can draw entire screens with some sort of "semi-graphics" style.

And yes, the intent is that the game have similar lenght to the PC game, if not the same lenght but as long as I can get. MPAGD is very limited on total memory space, so for this I'm using a workaround for merging screens. If it is in interest of other MPAGD or AGD participants here is the link for the workaround: AGD forum post

My idea is have 2 "background" screens for each area of the purgatory, like the first image below. Then I can redraw over this "background" screen other "foreground" screens (second image), with only the colision tiles on them. The engine will ignore the "tile zero" on these screens and not redraw the screen on these areas. I've already made asucessfull test (third image). Normaly, a full detailed screen will use arond 400 bytes on MPAGD. But whith this I can reuse the background screens and have the colision ones with much less space comsuming (like 150, 100, or less bytes per screens). So I'm optimistic that I can make the conversion of the game.

[Admin]

Wow, excellent explanation of the technical matters and tricks you are trying in order to overcome the limitations! With all this, the game looks even more promissing

[Amaweks]

These Enemy test screens on this video I did before starting working on the bosses:




My original Plan was having these and some more enemies. Bur for memory storage reaons now i think that these enemies are enought for the whole game.

This week I'll nave no time to work on Virgil's Purgatory ZX, but next week I must start a "code cleanup" to see If I can save more memory before doing the rest of the bosses.

[Amaweks]

Testing the Merge Screen feature.

The routine did not worked as I planed, but in a inverse way (puting the screen I want behing on front of the others), So I did some adaptarions on the code to have it as planned.

The downside is a little bit more time when loading a screen. It first load the screen base (the one I whant on foregorund), them loads the screen to merge (the one I whant to be the background) on top of it, and them i make it loads the base screen again so it can draw on top of the background screen. Technichal stuff aside, its just take a little longer to load, but I think it worth to have a really good byte saving method to have as much screens and content as possible.

[Amaweks]

last 2 days working on code cleanup (to sabe some bytes) and implementing Boss 3 and 4:




Below some Screenshots of some of the progress so far:

[Admin]

Like I told you before, interesting aesthetics and use of colour, that is nice to see in the Spectrum Also, another interesting feature you are adding, very unusual in AGD, final bosses

[Amaweks]

Sept 14, 2021 20:14:28 GMT Admin said:

Like I told you before, interesting aesthetics and use of colour, that is nice to see in the Spectrum Also, another interesting feature you are adding, very unusual in AGD, final bosses

Today I've finnished the bosses, there are 6 in total (final boss is a 2 in 1 boss)

You have to kill boss 1, 2, and 3 to acess the final (5) boss. Boss 4 is not compulsory, but if yu kill it you'll receave an extra hability.

Here is the showcase in an "Boss Rush" test I've done:




So far Ive done another things too; unfortunete deleted the "ASCII" screen i did for title screen, since  the engine is not done for it I've saved 1,4 kb in space.

Lots of cleanups, some sprite animations simplifications, and so far the game, with all enemies and bosses implemented, have 35,5 kb.

So, I still have something like 10 kb for the screens using the merge feature to bem able to create more screens. Hope that's enought for it (I still can simplify some animations for the enemies, that can save me and extra 1kb.

Do not know if I can fit any music, but I'll try it any way.

I have now a functional "game over or continue" screen, fi the palyer chose continue it will restart on the initial screen with the artifacts he collected so far (and with killed bosses already dead), as it shows in the end of the video.

[Amaweks]

This week I've worked on rewriting the game musics. The original ones were made on "Mario Paint Composer", with a "sound font" that simulates the game boy sounds. But MPC gives the freedom of 6 or8 chanels at the same time 9can't remember exactly). For the ZX Music we all know there is 3 chanels to use.

Unfortunate I do not know if I can fit all these musics on the game. The 7 Tracks takes a total of 7kb (more or less 1kb per music). I'vre tried my best to keep each song on this size (on my previous game, Devwill Too ZX, the songs have 1,4 to 2kb in size).

I'll try to make compromises here and there and have as many musics that i can fit on the game.

 Anyway, here are the songs in comparission with the original ones (first i play the 2016 PC version game music, and them the new version for ZX)






















Next step is another clean up to free space (simplify some animations, and the last resort, mess with the .ASM file of the engine deleting some assembler codes most on try and erro to see what happens, it's aid that you can delet things that the game does not make use such particles engine and alikes).

[Amaweks]

I have very sad news...

I'm out of memory. I'm optimizing and doing all I can to free memory for the game screens, but now I'm out of options.

I already deleted lot's of unused ASM lines on the engine (particules, ant unused stuff by my game). I was monitoring the memory usage, for every day of adding stuff I was having 2 days of celanup and simplifying things to keep memory usage down.

I get to a point where I have all sprites, bosses, everything coded, all "Background" screens done (the ones to use behind the colision screens using the merge trick), 4 musics, everything, less the actual collision screens, and with a total .tap file of 41kb (I was happy thinking that it left me at least 6 kb was enough for a lot of screens using the methot I've used). But it seems that the total memory usage isn't the onlyrestriction, I've coded too much stuf because I have a lot of enemies and a lot of bosses.

I already considered reducing the number of enemies and bosses, that's a possibility, but this makes me sad too.

But evem so, adding 2 more screens and the game crashes again. I'm feeling on a dead end and without options. For Now, it seems to me that I can only do a small "boss Rush" version for ZX, and maybe use what I have done so far to make an MSX version later.

I'm really sad with this, and I really do not know if I can finnish this version. I'll try anyway.

Edit:

Ok, leaving the sadness aside, I'll reduce the game and make it fit. I can delete 2 Bosses (there will be still 4 on the game), a few enemies, the extra "secret" area and another small area after the boss 2, and may be this will make it work.. Let's see how it goes.

[Admin]

What about doing 2 different loads? Dividing the game in 2 separate loads?

[Amaweks]

Oct 8, 2021 22:02:43 GMT Admin said:

What about doing 2 different loads? Dividing the game in 2 separate loads?

That's was a thoutgh that occours me, but the problem is that the game is design to have an open world. you have to wanderer trough the entire Purgatory, and I can't think right now on how I can separate things.

But last night I made a copy of the project and starting changing things, likve I've said, removing 2 of the 6 bosses (the boss from the excluded secret area, and the small boss before the final boss), one enemy, and redo my level design plan excluding the secret nom obrligatory area. I think that this will alow me to finnish thegame with most of it's content, cau'se the bosses have some big, big chunck of code lines.

I'm doing a "Aesthetic" change on the graphics too. I'm redoing it all with just Black, white, grey, and red. The 2016 PC game uses only 4 colors, and have the intention of ressemble "wood cut" art (because it's inspired on a sort of folk literature here in Brazil that uses wood cut art to ilustrate a sorte of poems that ressembles medieval poemes, just like Dante Alighieri Divine Comedy ... long story ).


Soom I'll post the changes.

[Amaweks]

Ok, I'm back on track:




I really like the new aesthetics. The game may look more colorfull before, but now it's have some unique flavor that remindes me of the Wood Cuts arts, one of the main inspirations.

[fued]

Man.... the music shines on this game!
Excellent work @amaweks!

Nice art change. There is an aspect on the art style that reminds me of the "cangaço" era in Brazil. Was it part of the inspiration?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canga%C3%A7o