Rogue

[fizgog]

Took a short break from Pitfall and played around more with generating random mazes of any size

I was maybe thinking of some sort of dungeon explorer similar to rogue in the 1980's. At the moment it's just generating a random maze on screen and plotting a couple of objects, it will need to be able to also generate rooms and I'm not sure if it should all fit on one screen or allow to scroll over a larger area.

Not sure what screen size I should go with either a 20 column or 40 column. Any Thoughts?

This one shows a random maze in Mode 4

And this one shows a random maze in Mode 5

[Cybershark]

I suppose a lot of it comes down to whether you wish to add scrolling or not. It would probably be unnecessary for a 40 column screen.

Obviously the higher res looks better but I think the top-down shaded 3D blocks look great in either MODE

[fizgog]

After work I knocked up a quick C# version so I can prototype stuff, and have added ability to generate several random size rooms

When I say rooms I really mean large spaces (caverns) as a room normally has just the one exit

I’ve highlighted in red the rooms that it’s created

[fizgog]

Bit more work done last night

Added "rooms" to 6502 code

Made dungeon size fixed at 40 x 26 in Mode 4 (leaving 6 rows at the top for stats / score etc.)

Still not sure if I'd go down this route though or a scrolling viewport and maybe a different mode, but think I'll leave it for the time being and go back to finishing Pitfall

[fizgog]

I said I'd leave it but had to scratch an itch

Last night I converted the treasure and stairs objects to mode 1 and made the map size 20*12 instead of 20*13 which means I could fit the map into 1 page instead of going over into the 2nd page and have centred the map vertically giving 4 spare rows top and bottom

Not sure If it's looking a bit squashed though, lot's of things to think about, when I finally get around to doing some sort of game.

[Rob_hawk]

Not sure If it's looking a bit squashed though, lot's of things to think about, when I finally get around to doing some sort of game.

Screenshot 2023-02-23 at 10.50.13.png

I think it looks very pleasing like this!

[fizgog]

Whilst I wait for bug reports on Pitfall, I had another look at this last night, still not sure what I'm going to do with it but just liked playing with random mazes

Anyway I've gone for a 19 X 13 (16x16 tiles) maze which is 38 characters by 26, which is still under the 1K for memory storage

Also added a couple of places holders for lives and armour

[lurkio]

I had another look at this last night

Very nice design! Hope this turns into a playable game!

[Rob_hawk]

I had another look at this last night

Very nice design! Hope this turns into a playable game!

I second that.

Have you seen "Shovel Adventure" on the Spectrum Next? Interesting maze type game that's a lot of fun to play but way above my pay grade to even consider doing something similar at this stage. Perhaps some inspiration / ideas for how this could evolve?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ75EMWQ5nQ

There's also an old school Spectrum 128 version as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOpsBw4XBqc

[Anastrophe]

Anyway I've gone for a 19 X 13 (16x16 tiles) maze which is 38 characters by 26, which is still under the 1K for memory storage

I was thinking about this… could you use a bit for each wall position so that it takes 3x13 bytes for the whole maze and then use another 3x13 for treasure chests, hordes and play position? In other words 39 bytes per layer, in this example 156 bytes.

Edit: fried brain, bad math

[tricky]

It isn't the same, but I'm my micro really-x game the map is 32x56 and I store one bit per square and then calculate the edges and movement data which is one byte per square for movement and one for graphics on level start. This is because the arcade game has four maps and I wanted to include all four.

[lovebug]

It looks wonderful

[fizgog]

Thanks, I’d forgotten about this, after I’d gone back to finishing Pitfall

You could also ignore the outer wall (apart from the top row) as it’s always the same for this game, the reason I wasn’t too bothered about compressing the map was it generated random maps and 1K plus map generator code wasn’t to bad a trade off with having to decompress the map. Definitely if the maps weren’t randomly generated I would have compressed them

I’ve got quite a few games I started in between other projects but have never finished yet, due to time constraints (would love to retire and do this full time)

NB Also you couldn't use 1 bit for the walls as it uses the following to draw them: -
0 - blank
1 - solid wall
2 - shaded wall

[lovebug]

I think it would be possible to store the map as 1 bit per tile and calculate if a solid or shaded wall should be drawn

if bit = 1 then if bit below = 1 then draw solid else draw shaded

but this would mean drawing the map from bottom to top

this and ignoring the outer wall would make a great saving of memory

[Cybershark]

I think it would be possible to store the map as 1 bit per tile and calculate if a solid or shaded wall should be drawn

if bit = 1 then if bit below = 1 then draw solid else draw shaded

Yeah, it seems wasteful to dedicate a bit to something that can easily be extrapolated from surrounding walls.

I was thinking about this… could you use a bit for each wall position so that it takes 3x13 bytes for the whole maze and then use another 3x13 for treasure chests, hordes and play position? In other words 39 bytes per layer, in this example 156 bytes.

Maybe excessive to create layers for each, depending on the desired numbers of such items, as there may well be other thing types to figure in - eg breakable walls, doors, keys, health, weapons, start and end positions, etc. But 2 bits would be sufficient to cater for 3 types of "wall", and then other items could be stored as separate data