Development Diary - Arcadia
16th June 2002
After the completion of Scumball (quite a large project), I want to do something a bit simpler and easier, something that I could see the results and play each stage as I wrote it. I have many projects in mind, some have been flying around my head for ages, some are relatively new.
Th
e next project will be one that I have had a go at before (see Crabs diary), and is of the type that I have always fancied doing – a shoot-em-up.
My new project is going to be Arcadia, originally done by Imagine in 1983, and is often quoted as being the first shoot-em-up for the Spectrum.
Previously I created a fully playable version of this, which was pretty good, but I only got as far as the first level. I stopped because I got fed up trying to ‘play’ my way through the original to find out the other advertised ‘32’ levels.
Arcadia will begin soon, taking my original 1 level and building on that.
22nd June 2002
Got the scrolly starfield working again, added more multicoloured stars to it – looks nice.
Original Spectrum version
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Re-created the player ship – based on the ads and cassettes sleeve rather than the game sprite. tweaked the ship movement so that it drops to the bottom of the screen like the original.
Created the first few aliens and got the ship shooting and killing things.
Got the aliens to drop bombs – and kill the player ship…
Added score, lives and counter to count down to the end of the level.
Bloody hell – a lot of progress for the first session, level 1 fully playable (in its new incarnation).
Now have to duplicate the levels, change the alien sprite and movement, tweak the firing and move onward.
As mentioned earlier, most of the game mechanics were already in place about a year ago, all I’ve done is tweak a few things.
Played the original with the infinite lives poke to try and grab more of the level sprites. The info on Sinclair Infoseek states that there are 32 levels… mmmm interesting that. I got to level 12 and the game just loops back to level 1 after that.
If this is the case, I may add some extra levels myself.
Anyone got the cassette inlay text (the bit about the name of the ship and its dual plasma lasers or whatever there called?)
Email me and let me know… Thanks.
2nd August 2002
Did more work and got up to level 5 working and playable.
The game engine is close to being complete but there is plenty to do.
Things that spring to mind include:
Music for both intro and game over – got some ideas for this.
The dive bombing aliens at the end of each level. I know how to implement this, so its just a case of sitting down and doing it.
Limiting your ship to half the screen – I may add this.
More levels. With only 12 levels I think I need to enlarge it – this will need more graphics – so I will finish the 12th level and then add more....
8th August 2002
Did more work and graphic conversions and now have up to level 8 fully playable.
I improved the intro thingy and added some nice music and logo.
18th August 2002
Complete all of the original 12 levels now. All are fully working and playable (cool!)
Still have to add the dive bombing aliens and possibly the half-screen limitation.
Just found another little problem – when you loop back to the first level it still says level 1 on screen. I will have to add a counter so that the levels add up correctly.
Tried to fix the level loopback thing. Did loads of changes to fix it and it seemed to work until I lost a life, then it looped back to level 1 on the counter !!
Argh!!!!
Did more work and this time I think I’ve got it licked.
Have started to draw the extra aliens and have enough now to do a 20 level version, thats 8 extra levels.
Here is a comparison of old and new sprite so you can see the difference !
28th August 2002
I am have introduced some real nasty aliens that home in on your ship and missiles that follow you about on the later levels….. Ooooooo!!!
Now got 20 levels fully playable. The game is 99% complete including the aliens dive bombing at the end of the level. Been playing testing it….
...later that week....
Tweaked a few bits, saved out the final EXE and its ready for a few hours blasting to test it (or at least that’s my excuse!)
Found a few very tiny annoyances during testing – fixed em.
Also (finally) got round to putting in a hi-score table.
I changed two of the new alien types because I felt they didn’t fit in with the other graphics.
Reduced the ‘lives’ image so it fits in better with the rest of the stuff.
Saved out the beta 1 exe for testing.
Found a few tiny problems but got them sorted.
Cleaned up the logo.
Reduced the sound effects so now your speakers won’t explode !
Hopefully killed a bug that caused the exe to remain in memory even after quitting !
Its ready…. get it while its hot....(its in the download section !)