Development Diary - Scumball

February 12th:
After weeks of playing every game I could get my hands on, trying to find something suitable to re-write, I finally narrowed it down to 3 possibles. I’m not saying what the others are, because I may do them at some point later ;-)

The game I fancy doing now is Scumball from Matertronic. It got mixed reviews from what I can see, although Your Sinclair didn’t rate it much. The game is a kind of (according to YS) runaround-collectem-equinoxe-alike with bits of shooting.

You control LINDA, a small robot sent into the sewers to destroy a big slime. To do this LINDA has to collect 8 grenades and chuck them at the slime, but can only carry one at a time. Out to stop Linda are various nasties that appear and chase her around. LINDA can replenish her power by collection power-ups, and re-power her laser by collection laser power ups.

The game itself is a flip-screen (although I will try to implement it in a large scrolling window) arcade adventure with pretty graphics. So… let the work begin.

I emailed Nick Humphries from YS RocknRoll Years a few weeks back and asked him for the review from YS. He very kindly sent me the review, so I know the aim of the game.

I emailed Peter Gough, the original author, who is happy for me to do the re-write (thanks).

With all that sorted out - I took a look at the game...

Examining Scumball reveals just how huge this task will be. I began to map out the rooms to see just how big this thing is.

Blimey! Its huge. So far I have managed to map (hopefully nearly all) a lot of ‘rooms’ and at the minute the map is something like 26 rooms high by 9 rooms wide. That equates to a playing area of approx. 3380 x 1170. Not all of the ‘squares’ are used though.

I will continue mapping the rest of the rooms, then set up a kind of trial to see if that size playarea will scroll happily about. I know I had trouble with Lunar Crabs’s large play area before I changed it.

February 15th:

Phew!
Mapping finished. The spectrum play area is 32 x 9 screens. Because the game only used the lower 2 thirds of the screen for the play area, this equates to a relative play field of 4160 x 1170 pixels.
The spectrum version had 124 screens, seems a bit of a weird number, maybe I missed some and there’s 132 ! I will re-check the map while I am sifting through the graphic tiles later on.

Now I have the map, I will create a playing area of the same size, stuff a few blocks in there and see how it scrolls around….

Bugger me…
Began work with the graphics and then decided to bung a few into some test code and see what happens. My maths is really crap, and the previous estimate of 4160 x 1170 was completely wrong. After much prodding of the calculator the game play area will be a massive 9216 x 4626.
That’s a mighty big play area to scroll around !!

February 21st:
I knocked up some test images and then inserted them into the game to see what happened.
Mmm interesting – it seemed to scroll about quite happily, although it was on an AMD 1gig CPU. After a few hours of further testing, I decided to plod on and get some of the graphics sorted out. With ZX32 running, I grabbed some images and imported them into Paintshop pro. Much re-touching was applied, and now I have about 25% of the tiles done.

I am creating bits of the game and tiles and graphics as I go. I am a bit worried about the size of the play area and the amount of ‘active’ sprites. I may have to figure out a way to activate sprites only in the vicinity of the main character. Any tricks I can use to keep the speed up will improve the end result.
At the moment I have the first 2 rooms complete. Only another 122 to go !!

Here is a piccy of the first 'room' with the Speccy control panel...

February 27th:
Been working to get some of the rooms done, and have been making good progress. About 10 rooms complete now. Had to grab more graphic blocks from the game and re-colour them as I went on.
As I made progress down the map, I discovered a few exits that I have not mapped, so there may be more rooms than I first thought !
Added (at last) some animation to LINDA (the main character) and she now happily charges around the few rooms that are available.
Haven’t got any nasties yet, but I have ripped them from the game in readiness to add.

March 5th
Looking at my map, I nearly have a third of the rooms done now.
The control panel at the top isn’t complete yet, nor is it working, but I have enhanced it a bit and rounded off some of the edges. Its only a small update, but there's been loads of work. Unfortunately there is not a great deal you can say about creating room after room.

March 11th

Had trouble today!

I miscalculated the start position of the rooms within the play area and spent a lot of time re-positioning all the tiles to make space for the rest of the rooms.
I hope the same thing won’t happen lower down at the bottom of the game map.

I added more rooms to the game and now have a total of 60 complete rooms out of 126.

I also began to add a kind of surround to the rooms. This is because the Speccy version always had a single room visible within the screen and my version scrolls, so you get to see the blank areas between rooms.

March 16th
I have about 80% of the rooms done now, and so decided to add a few sprites to it.
I re-coloured the bubbles, drops and tentacles and added them to a few rooms to see how they looked.
Now these are in, I suppose its time to sort out the panel and try to figure out the best way to implement the energy gauge and other stuff that’s there.

Had a dabble with the power bars today as well.
There are three bars to indicate Power, Laser and something else that I can’t quite figure yet !
I began with the power bar. In the Speccy version each time LINDA hits a nastie, the power bar depletes, when it hits the bottom, you loose a life. After much faffing about I finally got this working, but only with 2 nasties at the minute, the waving tentacle and the dropping water – but its working fully now.

March 21st
Had a go at getting LINDA to shoot laser bolts.
Managed to get this working, but as yet, it does not deplete the laser power bar.
Nothing exciting happens, so nothing explodes or dies when you shoot them – no collision detection yet !

Once I get this working, I’ll then have to do the opposite and create the graphics and code for the items that re-charge the laser and LINDA’s power.

Spent more time doing the sprites recently, so no further coding progress has been made. There are loads of sprites, and I have only just begun to re-colour them. Here is a comparison of original sprite next to the new re-coloured/smoothed one.

I recently emailed Jeppe Schmidt, a very talented musician who had previously produced an excellent Scumball remix track. I asked if I could use the track in the game and he agreed. Not only that, but he has just sent me an improved version for inclusion. My thanks go to him, I know you'll love the track.

March 26th
Phew!
Got about half of the sprites re-coloured and smoothed.
Decided to finish the map, add a few sprites and see how it performs on a slow system. Don’t want to suddenly find I have to start buggering about with it to make it run faster now.
I stopped work on the sprites and started the map again. I managed to complete more of the rooms now, with only about 25 to do.
Got this problem – The area defined is not big enough for the map. Options are to start again or remove 2 rooms from the map. Think I’ll remove 2 rooms. Apologies to all those out there who want a ‘perfect’ copy, but there’s no way I’m gonna start from scratch again.
There are also question marks about the re-generating areas (at least that what I think they are). I will have to play the original to try and discover what they effect !

April 2nd
Continued to add more rooms to try and complete the map so that I can fully test the speed of the routines on slower machines to see if its worth moving forward with the sprites ....
later that day....
Finished all of the rooms – wohoooo!!
I have yet to add the exterior fills (more on this later) but I had enough to test the whole thing on a slower system. The thing runs great on my 1gig PC, and there was not much difference (if any!) on an 800Mhz system. I will test it on slower units very soon and see how it performs. I may then have to tweak a few things to get the best out of it.
If all goes well – and I’m happy with the way it runs, I can then start adding sprites galore along with all the coding for the power drains, power ups, laser fire, explosions blah blah blah… the list goes on…
Stop Press: Tested the whole thing on a PIII 600. Ran fine apart from a few jitters, which i'm amazed at considering the size of the playfield !
So.. onward.
Sorry there's no more screenshots, but will get some for next time...

April 12th
Bugger !
Had a big problem with … well dunno really – but it was a big problem. It meant I had to remove some of the extra fancy backgrounds I had added, but it doesn’t actually show.
I have now completed all the room graphics and its now time to add the sprites.
I re-coloured the big slime monster and stuck him in – not animated yet though.

I have had to stop adding stuff to the game now because I need to go and re-colour some more sprites.
...later.....
Re-coloured more sprites and stuck them into the game.
The next step now is to try and get the sprites to re-generate at the right time and place after being destroyed. But before that I have to get them to be destroyed. Arrrghhhh!

Added the big white cant-kill nastie…
Changed the firing routine so it works when you jump.
Modified a few of the rooms so you can actually get in them now !
Added an explosion – you can now kill the baddies.
Still no sound or scoring yet.
No re-generation of nasties – this is going to be the headache now !

The map layout is the same as the original, but some of the platforms have been moved around to improve things. Not many, I’d say the game is a 96% copy of the original.

Things to do… (in no particular order)
Add sound
Baddie re-generation
Scoring
Laser and backup metres
Power ups
Grenade collection and throwing
Points collection…
Erm…. More stuff

As promised, here are some screen shots. Approx 50% reduced they do not show the (as yet) none functional top panel or all of the screen. There just a few snippets to brighten up the page !
April 30th
Got an email from Peter Gough (ya know – the guy that wrote the original), says he’s reading the development diary and waiting for the game… He also told me some interesting stuff about the original… here’s an extract..

"You seem to be experiencing the same problems that I did when coding the game. Apart from the graphics which I made using a paint program by Melbourne House, I took ages trying to get the feel as close to Starquake by Steven Crow (I think) – the gravity and the overall feel was tweaked for ages. I coded the game on paper whilst bathing in the sun in the back garden then entered the code late at night while my parents were asleep to avoid the power surges that always seemed to crash my system when my mother used an electric carving knife in the kitchen beneath my room. As for LINDA, (acronym of LASER INCORPORATED NASTIES DISPOSAL ANDROID) she was my girl at the time and was also my mothers boss ! "

Great stuff, thanks Peter.

Did some work on the top control panel (at last) and made it look better.
Got the laser depletion bit working and the backup energy working.
Part of the top panel includes ‘location’, don’t think this is needed, it simply displayed the room number (for mapping?) so I took it out.
The top panel is now fully functional (depletion wise) but as yet there is nothing to increase any of the meters.

Played the original today and actually finished it (with the help a few pokes!)

Will try to get some of the game mechanics working soon.

May 6th
Worked on the nastie re-generator and cobbled together a bit of code that works, but so far only with 2 nasties. I will extend it to all of them and see how far I get !!
...later
Continued work on the re-generator. I have to make each individual nastie re-generate at the right place, so it’s a long boring job. I am plodding my way through it though.

I add the collection of the 1000 points, which suitably increases the score now.
I added the collection of the battery which restores your power.

May 14th
Phew!
Done a lot.....
Got all the nastie re-generation sorted out.
They all re-generate now, so you can move about killing things, and they come back!
Finished all the power and laser level bars.
Your laser stops firing if you ruin out of laser power, and the meter can be replenished by collecting the power ups.
You can now collect various extra points scattered about the map (I have yet to implement the flashing bonus when you do this!)

The game is looking really good, and is fully playable apart from the grenade collection and throwing bits. You also can’t die just yet!!

I have also removed a few things from the game (mainly because they served no real purpose. So now there is no ‘weapon carried’ gauge or ‘location’ indicator.

Nearly there…

25th May
Tried to sort out the grenade collection and throwing thing. Got it sort of half working. You can collect grenades and the counter clicks down. You can get to the monster to throw it. The controls stop (this is supposed to happen), the grenade is thrown – but it explodes in mid air and stays there… hovering !

I also added a few sound effects – and it certainly makes the game more ‘polished’. So far I have been doing all the testing in silence. I have a problem with the movement sound though. I don’t know whether to have a ‘clump, clumb’ sound when you walk or a kind of robotic servo noise once (similar to Sub Stryker). Suppose I’ll see which sounds best come to the time.

I will try to sort out this grenade problem, and then that leaves only the death sequence (life losing etc), bonus collection routine (with flashing message and sound) and a few tweaks to sort out before its finished and ready for some serious play testing. A game this complex will need a lot of testing !! The original had various ‘extra points’ scattered about. This baffles me somewhat, as the game is an ‘arcade-adventure’ and not really a point scoring game. I have 100 and 50 point extras at the minute. I may add some more later.

Continued with the grenade problem and eventually got it sorted and fully working. You can now collect all the grenades and throw them at the slime monster. You can’t kill it yet (after the 8th), because I haven’t written anything to do it, but the game is now fully playable.
I added more sound effects, and apart from the walking sound, there all done.
I checked all the rooms against the original and added some missing platforms and graphics. There are still six missing images, (homing pod, snake, mushroom, oil can, ice and misc nastie).
The homing pod I may add (similar to the blue UFO in Sub Styker).
The moving nasties (snake and misc) I’m leaving out.
The mushroom is just scenery and only appears in 3 rooms – again I’ll leave it out.
The oil can - Will add this soon.
The Ice, will have to check to see what this does in the original !!

So – to complete the game:
1) Death sequence
2) Win sequence
3) Playtest
4) Missing sprties

7th June
I have added the oil can. I found out that it gives you back full power when you stand on it, so it’s a kind of infinite re-charger. There are only 3 of them in the game, so be sure to remember where they are !

You can now loose lives. The death anim plays, you loose a life and are sent back to the entrance. The original placed you back at the same location (sometimes giving you the infamous sudden-death-syndrome).

On the original was a room that was basically a trap. If you entered it (bottom of the game map) you fell onto some spikes and a message noted ‘Bad Move’. You then got placed back at the entrance and fell again, and again, and again… game over.
This room is included on this remake, but I have bared its entrance for now.

Finished the game over bit, so now you can actually die and when all your lives are gone – that’s the end – game over.

16th June
I set about creating a 'game completed' bit. Mmmm tricky this – lots to remember and account for, and because of the way I have implemented the slime creature, it makes things a little bit more difficult. I tried a few ways around it and eventually decided on the one that’s in there now. Not going to say too much ;-) but it is slightly better than the original that just says “game complete well done” or something similar.

So, you can now collect all the grenades and complete the game. I haven’t tested this bit fully, but it worked when I set the number of grenades required to 2 and played to the end.

I added something I forgot earlier – death by spike!
There are some nasty green spikes scattered around and touching them means instant death. This has now been implemented.

I dumped out a test .exe to check things and it works brilliantly. (phew!)
There are a few things that need sorting out, like some of the sprites are displayed over the control panel etc.. and some of the sound effects are too loud. But we are very nearly there.
Keep hanging in there guys…

...later that weekend...

I finally sorted out the walking sound problem. Footsteps are now heard when LINDA walks.

I lowered the volume of a few of the sounds.

I fixed the order of the sprites so nothing is displayed over the control panel.

I created a Beta 1 test exe.

I played…..

I drank…

I played some more…

22nd June
Some of the platforms needed moving so you could actually reach them !
I completely removed the ‘instant death’ room as it served no purpose at all.
Changed one of the two ‘reptile’ sprites to something else to add variety!

I played some more… I drank some more…

Played the game all the way through to the end – and still hade 8 lives left. I think its too easy, so have to think of ways to make it harder or at least reduce the number of lives you start with.
I did notice a few more problems on the way. One of the platforms is badly placed, and one of the sprites still gets drawn over the panel. Will fix these and then play it again.

Played some more… Drank some more… Ate Pizza… Played some more… Tweaked some more…
Played some more… Drank some more…
It’s a hard life ;-)

Release coming soon....

23rd July
Long time without an update, but have been on my hols for two weeks !
Anyway - back to the game....
Found a few bugs and squashed em!
Made the game harder now – by increasing the damage that impacts with nasties cause. This means that your power meter goes down twice as fast. Makes it much more playable – as you now have to worry about hitting stuff and where all the power-ups are.
Saved out another beta exe for testing.
Tested it… found more bugs…
Yet another sprite, in the very lower part of the map, decided it wants to be higher priority than the blooming control panel… fixed the blighter… and to make it more difficult I reduced the number of lives you start with from 9 to just 5.
Hopefully it should be there now… unless I find any more…
Played it all the way through and finished the game with 2 lives… but then again – I know the map back to front !
So with all that done its time for a release...

Version 1 released - its in the download area.