Make the C64 Great Again!

Posted on 01-April-2025 by Kodiak

Oops!

In my previous update I tried to extinguish some of the fires started by the unsanctioned release of a technical testbed of Parallaxian, but I carelessly made a couple of blunders.

First of all, I said that the culprit, PCOLLINS, was a member of Excess but it turns out he had left them by that stage and is now part of the Quantum cracking group, so I have apologised to Excess and corrected the mistake in the article accordingly.

Perhaps worse, however, I rushed to provide a code snippet from the Parallaxian demo showing the FLD method I was using in the tech demo, given that You-Know-Who had taken aim at it in one of his numerous diatribes against the game as part of his neverending quest to discredit the project.

In my haste I didn't properly read what I was saying about my own code and, consequently, didn't properly count the cycles for a fully expanded FLD deployment, presenting him with a gift-wrapped opportunity to savage what I had written. This was an opportunity he gladly seized, from what I have been told.

So yes, I was sloppy and he called me out on it. LESSON: Don't be in a rush to prove a point, especially involving someone so passionately disdainful of you.

Back to Parallaxian

For the past 6-7 weeks I have been working flat-out most days on the game in a grand bid to get it finished before WW3 comes.

Due to the unsanctioned tech demo release in December, I have made many changes and ripped out huge swathes of code, removing things that add nothing to the game and replacing them with things focussed on producing better gameplay, for which policy I have the development of Seawolves to largely thank.

Without going into too many details, this is a list of what has been done since the last update:

• Panel zone redesigned and refined further, mostly to reflect the search-and-rescue aspects of the game gameplay.
• The new fuel and damage gauges have been designed, with the former now fully functional.
• The central shields indicator has been shrunk into a compact square and its new purpose (as far its colours go) is to let the player know when a colonist is below waiting to be picked up, and also when / where it is safe to land.
• A low level terrain-avoidance warning system has been added, as some levels have substantial obstacles that must not be crashed into.
• A new lives-remaining indicator.
• Satellite dish repair indicators - each level has 3 such dishes in need of repair and the player must locate engineers to ferry to those satellite dishes to conduct said work!
• A passenger indicator showing which kind of colonist, if any, is currently aboard the plane.
• A lock-on indicator (not yet functional) for when enemy homing missiles engage the plane.
• Some substantial redesign of the desertscape to freshen it up.
• A massive refactoring of the feed-in + scroll code for sprite objects littered around the landscape, with a new facility enabling "tall" or "stacked" objects.
• A totally new shadow generator.
• Some minor but noticeable redesign of the home base, most notably the addition of a tall radio mast.
• A complete redesign of the Hunter-Killer, as the original was too blocky and required too many sprite frames to animate.

Hunter Killer V.2.0.

Yes, the old design was (a) stale, (b) too blocky, (c) too tall, (d) consumed too many frames and (e) not "droney" enough, so I took some inspiration from the nasty drones in the Tom Cruise film, Oblivion, for the redesign. The image below shows the different variations I tried out in Photoshopped snaps of different game worlds en route to settling on the favoured new design.

Will I redesign any other major sprites?

Maybe, but only if it adds to the gaming experience or freshens things up.

Obviously the prime candidate for that would be the player's plane, i.e., the Figment itself. After all, when I first designed it back in 1995, Flankers were all the rage but nowadays it's the sixth-gen stealth vibe that's red hot.

Any WIP Videos?

After the damage done by the December debacle, I am in no mood to publicise the game before the eve of its release, and so I maintain my stance that there will be no more previews emailed out and no WIP videos to further soften the impact of the game.

Posted on 11-February-2025 by Kodiak

In late December 2024, it came to my attention that someone had declared to the Commodore 64 scene that my game, Parallaxian, had been cancelled and the news was quickly relayed by IndieRetroNews without first consulting me (although they very graciously withdrew the article when I complained about it).

Backing the false news up, the person who did this took a technical demo of the game that I had privately sent him and released it on CSDB, as a “Christmas gift” to the scene.

That person was a scener called "PCOLLINS", whom I had naively trusted as a play-tester for Seawolves, my first C64 game release.

Of course, when I had sent him what is now a very old and outdated Parallaxian tech demo, I had no idea he was actually a cracker associated with the QUANTUM cracking group (previously, I had mistakenly asserted he was a member of Excess, but they contacted me to explain that he is not and that they do not condone what he did at all, and on the contrary, have a respectful attitude towards commercial games, so this is my public apology to Excess).

As a consequence of this, I have made the decision to make no more digital releases for the C64 beyond Seawolves.

Enter my Stalker

This turn of events was instantly and gleefully seized upon by a very unpleasant and argumentative know-it-all persona within the scene who has passionately hated both Parallaxian and me from the beginning, having tried to sabotage its Kickstarter campaign back in 2018 by viciously attacking me and attempting to have me “cancelled” for opposing his far-left views supporting the LGBT agenda (views which, for the record as a conservative Christian, I unapologetically find utterly vile and abominable).

Meanwhile, his hatred of Parallaxian seems to come from an exaggerated interpretation of my statements about the game back when I first made it known it was under development.

Consider the following:

• I said that Parallaxian was unusual in that it used both NMIs and IRQs at the same time; he has reframed this to say that I was claiming that mine was the first or only game to ever do so, a claim I simply never made. He further added that there are many games that do this, though so far I only know of the Samurai Rabbit game (and my own Seawolves and the chase level I coded for Hend’s The Wild Wood), although I am sure there are a few other rare examples out there.


• I said Parallaxian made use of a technique I arbitrarily called “toggle-plexing” and that LuftrauzerZ was an example of a game that had done the same thing before I did; he twisted my words to say that I was claiming that Parallaxian was the first to do this, when not only did I say no such thing, but went to lengths to say the opposite!


• I said that Parallaxian was the first C64 game to have parallaxed vertical-within-horizontal scrolling; it transpires (allegedly) that he made a crude prototype of something extremely ugly and blocky back in the mists of time, albeit his was (a) an incomplete effect with large black gaps appearing between the horizontal scroll layers and (b) the subject of some controversy when for a long period of forum back-and-forths over on Lemon64 the tape / disk of it had vanished and he was only able to “prove” he had done it after finding said long lost tape / disk (or, as some cynically speculated, hastily coded it to make it appear like he had dug it out of his attic). My point is that an incomplete effect is not a "scene first", just as Leonardo da Vinci's 'helicopter' sketches did not constitute the first example of a viable rotorcraft!!!


• I said Parallaxian used only a little FLD in implementing the verticality of the parallax scrolling, whereas it seems he has tried to allege I used it more than that and did so with a shoddy implementation of FLD, thereby casting aspersions on my abilities as a coder (I will let the reader judge for himself my credentials in that regard – the actual techniques are covered further below).


• I said that even the Amiga had no games with the vertical-within-horizontal parallax effect, but was since proven wrong and am happy to admit I was wrong. Oddly, I don’t think my enemy took issue with me on that one, but I mention it now for completeness.


• In addition to all of the above, he has accused me of misrepresenting his sexuality, despite no written record of me ever making any such assertion; on the contrary, some who have privately made that suggestion have been met by a firm contradiction from me. Despicable though I find him and his values, I am not going to have him slandered for being something I have no grounds to believe he is.

He further crowed that "the game is dull"...

My reply is WHAT GAME?

A tech demo is not a game. It's a tech demo. That's why it is called a "tech demo" and not a "game".

Then again, he thinks his ugly, unfinished project from decades ago is "the first game to have such an effect", so that proves beyond dispute how twisted his logic is.

With that all said, I don’t need to further belabour any points. He is a demonstrably odious character with a victim complex who appears to seek confrontation not just within the C64 scene but across multiple domains, while at the same time showing a pathological need for adulation, so I am sure he will carry on twisting my words and rewriting the past to suit his narrative - when he's not busy stirring up trouble elsewhere, that is.

Accordingly, at this juncture I think it would be wise to let this be my last word on his vendetta for now, although I fully expect he plans to go on another rampage against me when Parallaxian is released. Sadly for him, he has bigger problems in his life to worry about than trying to attack me; like the rest of us, he desperately needs Christ.

How is Parallaxian’s Vertical-within-Horizontal Scrolling Really Done?

The screenshot below shows the different vertical parallax zones used to make the effect work:

• ZONE 1: A plain old un-sync’ed write to Y-SCROLL on $D011. This is not FLD, although I have reason to suspect my critic imagines it to be some attempt at crude FLD execution on my part.


• ZONE 2: The same is done for the 2nd layer of vertical scrolling, albeit with the raster line it happens on also being adjusted.


• ZONE 3: The most complicated is the 3rd layer, which adjusts raster line and grabs vertically adjusted gfx (i.e., each vertical position uses its own little block char definitions). What it does not do is FLD or in any fashion touch Y-SCROLL on $D011.


• ZONE 4: The final layer adjusts 2 raster trigger points (one for the colour-setting, one for the rest of the effect) and is the only FLD layer. The “shoddy” code for its FLD element is here:

If you are an experienced coder, you will see that it is an extremely lightweight and efficient implementation of FLD.

UPDATE You-Know-Who released a video disproving that assertion, and I address that (and my underlying faux pas) in this article.

Ultimately, however, who cares? As long as the game works, that's what should matter.

Okay, so how is Progress with Parallaxian now?

S-l-o-w.

After I released Seawolves, I started a new job that consumed unhealthy amounts of my time as well as draining me mentally and physically. That meant I was pinned down and, given that I have a family as well, I was left with very little time other than Saturday afternoons to advance Parallaxian.

That said, I have since moved on and will hopefully have a little more time each week to work on the game, just not as much as I had for Seawolves.

The major items of progress I made since my last update are:

• The total overhaul of the low speed handling characteristics of the plane, which mean it now feels much more natural when trying to carefully land it. This was torture to get right and took months of endless rewrites of the relevant code before I was happy with it.


• A totally redesigned panel zone, with a new fuel gauge, a damage gauge, a G-LOC indicator, a laser temperature gauge, a missile lock-on warning system, and a score feature. Yes, I finally caved in and decided to add a scoreboard (not shown in the mock-up image below).



• A redesigned Hunter-Killer, to freshen things up after that despicable release of my tech demo in December.


• Several new worlds / scenes. The game was originally have 5 levels but now I am aiming for 6.

The only place you can see these updates is this website, so please check in every so often.

Closing Thoughts on the Fake News of December

With half the scene (or more) having now been exposed to Parallaxian's tech demo, the unsanctioned CSDB leak has robbed those who might eventually buy the game of the thrill of seeing it in action on their own machines for the first time.

The person who did this - PCOLLINS - should be hounded from the scene for what he has done.

But guess what?

He has been playing the same little trick with other game coders, one of whom showed me what he was up to; thankfully, the coder concerned ghosted him.

Of course, I understand what happened with that unsanctioned tech demo release.

He saw that my website was down, my email was down and could not resist the temptation to score some kudos by uploading the tech demo to CSDB in what was an extremely rude and selfish act.

This has solidified my resolve, however, to never again release any of my games in a digital format. Parallaxian can only be sold as a cartridge, on a limited edition basis, and on a right-to-refuse-to-sell-to-certain-people basis.

Seawolves, too, will hopefully have a cartridge release, and for now I am going to allow the updated digital version to be sold here on this website. However, I might suspend it at any moment, so move fast if you want to buy it.

And yes, when you buy it and don’t distribute it to your mates, you constructively support C64 game development. That stands in stark contrast to those bottom-feeders who share games and spread their lame cracked versions for three seconds of “glory” on CSDB. We’re not teenagers any more fellas, we’re all middle-aged or close thereto and can afford a paltry few quid for a game, surely?

But I know that will fall on deaf ears so... When the lights finally go out for real on the C64 game dev scene, maybe you crackers could, for the first time in your pathetic “careers”, apply your coding skills to making some games yourselves, because you’ll be the last ones standing at that stage.

This Kodiak, signing off.

Posted on 10-February-2023 by Kodiak

Time for another Parallaxian WIP update!

I this blog post, I cover the following snippets of progress:

• Ground object collision detection
• Take-off and landing sequencers
• Nozzle theory + rotation sequencer
• Airbrakes theory + sequencer
• Pilot actions out-of-cockpit
• Colonist rescue sequencer
• RAM issues
• WIP clip (YouTube video)
• Next steps

Ground Object Collision Detection

This was one of the easiest things to code in this project, purely because I just cut-and-pasted the fundamental detection routines for the airborne objects, made a few bespoke tweaks, and now the plane erupts in a fireball if it smashes into any solid metal ground object.

I still need to make the same thing happen if the player flies into the ground, but for now I want to hold off on that while I develop other low level features, as it could become very annoying to lack invincibility when testing and debugging those features.

We also have a nice earth-shaker effect - in full parallax, of course - for when the plane slams into any solid objects on the ground; prior to that feature, the sudden stop in acrolling was too jarring on the eyes, but now it's perfect.

Take-off and Landing Sequencers

I optimised and cleaned up the auto take-off sequencer and added a 100% new VTOL automatic landing service that kills the lift jets when it detects the ground (or the landing platform of the home base beneath the plane), so that the plane drops in freefall under gravity for the last few "metres" and relies on its brand new suspension effect to absorb the kinetic energy of the fall.

It works very well and allows the pilot to deplane with ease once he opens the canopy, but... I have decided I want a more manual feel to the landing and take-off processes, slightly more like the inertia-centric take-off in the hangar scene in-picture Raid Over Moscow, but without the nightmare sense of losing control.

So, I intend to rework it again to bring it closer to the Choplifter feel when taking off and landing.

The suspension effect, meanwhile, is a personal favourite of mine and adds a real sense of physics to proceedings when the plane touches down.

Nozzle Theory + Rotation Sequencer

Hitherto in every WIP video of Parallaxian, I have shown the nozzle in a fixed lateral alignment but given that so much of the gameplay involves VTOL actions, it would have been remiss of me to just settle for showing the lift jets without showcasing the nozzle's variable geometry.

With that in mind, I have introduced rotating nozzles (as the YouTube clip below shows), controlled by the Figment's automated systems.

The gfx data is streamed-in on-the-fly via the game's main loop (no need to burden the interrupts with that work!) and modifies only a small region of the tail-end of the plane, as the schematic below depicts.

(The same principle applies to the airbrakes, landing gear (or "undercarriage" as we Brits prefer to term it) and canopy animations, allowing all of these systems to operate freely and independently of one another at minimal RAM overhead).

Airbrakes Theory + Sequencer

Following the same reasoning as that which applies to showing the nozzle rotations, I thought it imperative that the Figment's yaw-based agility should be underlined by drawing attention to its airbraking system.

And so for tail-sliding, when it pulls a 180 degree rotation around its yaw axis so that it can fire backwards while still moving forwards, it should have powerful double dorsal airbrakes (on the upper and lower surfaces of the fuselage), as the illustration below shows.

Likewise, for the slow-down in normal forward flight, it should also have a ventral airbrake more akin to that found on conventional aircraft.

However, note for now that the ventral airbrake is the only one shown on the video clip, but I do intend to add the double dorsal shortly.

PS: If RAM permits, I would really like an engine failure mode as well, in which acrid smoke would be emitted by the engines as the player struggles to maintain control of his damaged plane.

Pilot Actions Out-of-Cockpit

It was always the plan that the pilot should be able to dismount from the Figment's cockpit and interact with the terrain, with a view to collecting items related to the mission.

I am tempted to say what those things might be, but I want to retain some mystery for the game's release so I'll say no more on that for now.

The pilot can presently disembark and roam about the surface of the planet, with a detection routine for ground objects and he has his own walking and leaping physics, based on the idea that he has a powerful exoskeleton suit enabling high leaps.

Should the pilot be killed on one of his walkabouts, the player loses a "life", just as would be the case with a plane crash.

Colonist Rescue Sequencer

I mentioned Choplifter earlier and for good reason: a major aspect of Parallaxian's gameplay is Choplifter-style search-and-rescue but with some subtle differences:

• In Parallaxian, you can only airlift one passenger at a time as the Figment is a two-seat aircraft, not a transport helicopter.
• Some of the passengers are stranded colonists out in the open, hiding in the foliage or trapped and awaiting rescue.
• If RAM permits, there should also be special forces operatives that you ferry around to guard important installations.

The sequencers for these things are pretty much complete and the video clip below demonstrates their typical functionality.

RAM Issues

Speaking of RAM issues, I have had to spend some time compressing everything down with a view to leaving more memory for additional features.

Whereas in the past I was fixated on saving CPU time, especially in the interrupts, now I have to find RAM-saving trade-offs, leading to the following considerations (among many):

• I experimented with VSP for the foreground scroller to save RAM and CPU time in one fell swoop; however, maintaining a stable display there with all the cycle-stealing sprite interactions and the FLD for the vertical component of the parallax effect has made this an impractical solution, even with cycle-correction measures for the presence of sprites... It's one of those "whack-a-mole" affairs, where you get one part right but it fouls up the rest.
• Parallaxian has 4 different explosion sequencers: 1. The mega effect for the Figment, 2. The ground-burst effect when bombing tanks, etc., 3. The normal mid-air explosion and 4. The Hunter-Killer's own unique explosion. Sadly, the latter will have to be replaced with #3, at least on the C64 version, but can be retained for the C128 version.
• The gauges in the panel zone at the foot of the screen are needlessly convoluted and could be redesigned to consume less RAM.
• I need to stop being silly about the distant landscape and just make it a series of blocks instead of the current bloated mega-memory hog that it is; admittedly, I should have done that from the start, long ago!

WIP Clip (YouTube Video)

The YouTube video below showcases progress made in the past few weeks, albeit still in the form of a technical testbed rather than depciting the real-game world layout.

The "display circuit" in this clip features:

• Nozzle rotation effect.
• Seeking a colonist on the ground.
• Rescuing colonist & returning to base.
• A brief bombing run.
• A dogfight with a Hunter-Killer drone.
• Rescue of a second colonist & returning to base.
• Deliberate crash into large transformer, to show ground collision detection is working.

What Comes Next

The next near-term items on my to-do list are:

• Rework the controls as described to improve VTOL transitions and manoeuvring responses.
• Refine and improve inertia effects.
• Rework camera shifts / drift-back to make it feel more natural.
• Rework the Hunter-Killer sequencer and add the homing missile capacity to it, as the same basic game logic applies to both.

Anyway, enjoy the update and feel free to let me know your thoughts by email or in the comments on the YouTube clip!

Posted on 11-November-2022 by Kodiak

I recently mentioned a new Commodore 64 game I have been quietly developing concurrently with Parallaxian, the idea (proposed to me by someone else) initially being to knock it out fast and, among other things, I thought I should use it to test the market and to serve as a "dry run" for the subsequent release of Parallaxian.

That new game is called Seawolves and is being designed as a multiplayer shoot-em-up based around the original premise of the old CBM release Seawolf, which was designed to be controlled by paddles, of all things (yes, the horror!)

As usual with me, however, some mission creep set in and now Seawolves has acquired a heavy dose of Parallaxian tech, including extensive use of the NMI... It even features some warping effects originally concocted for Parallaxian's water landscapes, so it should hopefully give the player a feel for the quality they can expect in Parallaxian.

Seawolves, however, also introduces some very special new tech of its own in the form of the trick used to render the torpedo sprites, but you'll have to wait until the first preview video is released to see that in action.

In the meantime, I can reveal the prototype logo (below, obviously!) for the title screen which should, I hope, provide a foretaste of the vibe I am going for with this game.

Stay tuned for more updates on this game in the coming weeks!

Posted on 10-November-2022 by Kodiak

I have heard it said that all charset designs on the Commodore 64 that could possibly exist have already been created and I would guess that, as far as the standard 6x7 pixel or 7x7 format goes, it might be close to being true.

However, I would also speculate that other less common matrices have not yet been exhausted and with that notion in mind, I set about tinkering with a baseline model of 7x5 pixels instead of the standard 7x7.

The theory behind it is that it offers natural symmetry around the horizontal axis, since 5 is an odd number and we could have 2 pixels of reach or "stroke" above the centreline, and 2 more below it, perfect for forming the perennially awkward letters "B", "E", "S", etc.

So now let's check out some of the results of my experimentation and marvel at the pretentious "fonty" names I assigned each new typeface (I suspect the names took more creative thinking time than the actual fonts did - how's that for pretentiousness?)

Font Swatch A

Some commentary on each design in turn, and please note that the names were also chosen to include critical letters of each font, just to see how they would perform "in the wild":

• Cyber Samurai Scriptography: This one started out as a standard 7x5 but then some little embellishing strokes were added to give it a futuristic Japanese vibe. This is a trend, by the way, I found in developing these designs: use 7x5 as baseline and then work from that foundation.
• Tech Noir Typographical: This, of course, is a scaled down version of the font in the Tech Noir logo I designed for branding all my games, and that in turn was a C64-ified take on the Terminator 2 font.
• New Mnemonic Monotype Retropolis: A nice mouthful to pronounce, this design was meant as a squared ultra-retro 8-bit font, which would go well in a space shooter type of game or something designed to look pre-1985 in the C64 scene.
• Seawolves Light: Actually, this should have been #1 on this list as it was the first one I designed under this methodology and was, I am going to reveal now, meant for the other game I am working on (concurrently with Parallaxian) which, strange as this may seem, is actually called Seawolves (look out for a preview clip of that on this blog in the near future, all being well).
• Seawolves Heavy: As above, but with thicker strokes. I still can't decide which version I prefer.
• Tesla Retroactive: Obviously, this one was inspired by / modelled on the font used in those impractical electric cars made by that dude that thinks he's Iron Man. I find it legible, but it's probably my least favourite of this batch.
• Delorean Dystopian: All that Tesla stuff got me thinking about cars, the future, Back to the Future and my homeland of Northern Ireland where the car used by Marty McFly in said movie was manufactured. That car being, of course, the utterly awful Delorean. It did have one redeeming feature, though. It had a nice logo and so I based this font on someone else's idea of what that logo turned into a font should look like.
• Chunky Blox Gamer Font: Changing direction somewhat, I thought I should round the first batch off (or should that be "square it off?") with an upbeat, less sci-fi, less 1980s tech noir, more silly, more playful kind of font suitable for deployment in a platform game. It's not the most legible on this list, but it still works.

Font Swatch B

This was the second tranche of experimental designs, and with these I took a few extra liberties.

• Ninja Neon Nightlife: I can't remember whether this was inspired by some 1980s sci-fi mental flashback or just some glimpse of a Chinese takeaway logo, but in any case, it is meant to be redolent of a neon sign for an oriental shop of some flavour.
• Art Deco Narrow Empire State: I have never mentioned this before (as far as I know), but I have been a huge fan of art deco style design for many years, and would like to make an art deco style game environment some day, but in the meantime am pleased to dabble with art deco fonts. Now to be clear, this is not a 7x5 font, but pretty much a 4x7, so it marks a major departure from the stated model. Nevertheless, it comes from the same kind of approach, i.e., "let's try something else".
• Art Deco Medium New York: You can tell I was struggling for inspiration for names here, as the half-educated among you will know that New York is also known as... The Empire State. This design is just a heavier set version of the previous one, with the same art deco notes.
• Art Deco Heavy Gotham City: Okay, I get it, I'm really milking the New York theme now (well, why not, it has some very iconic art deco architecture, such as the Empire State Building, which looks like it might belong in Jellyland in Mayhem in Monsterland). And as all Batman enthusiasts will know, Gotham is a longstanding nickname for New York. As for the font, it's probably the least legible of the three art deco variants, but I personally still find it quite iconic.
• Seawolves Light Squared Off: This is just as it says: the Seawolves Light font squared, and I really like it and feel it has potential for in-game use.
• Seawolves Heavy Squared Off: As above, but it doesn't gel for me as well as the light version does..
• Vintage Radio: I was looking for a 1950's vibe narrow font (and actually designed this before the art deco ones), somewhat based around the kind of lettering common on old radios, diner logos, maybe even cars and fridges back when the world was much, much saner than it is now. Sometimes I think this is a great design, other times... just okay.
• Rounded Broadstroke: I could pretend I knew what I was thinking with this one but I don't really know much more beyond the fact that it started as another squared-off design and somehow ended up nicely rounded. And, being another 7x5 design, it brings us back to where we started this little study.

In closing, I hope the above was interesting and helpful if you are into C64 gfx design, as I realise probably too many of my articles are coding-centric.

Anyway, enjoy and kindly share on the usual places if you think it's any good!

Special Afterthought #1

Over on the Reddit thread for this article, someone rather sagely pointed out a traditional shortcoming of single pixel width vertical stroke char designs, namely, that they tend to be not the most readable on the CRT displays typically used with real hardware back in the 1980s, so that has rather swayed my decision in favour of using the heavier Seawolves font in the actual game.

Special Afterthought #2

While researching ideas for title screens, I noticed that Dropzone uses a 6x5 font in its "Arena Graphics" / copyright line just below the game's upper logo; as usual, Archer Maclean was ahead of his time (okay, so it's not the 7x5 I like, but it's close!)

Posted on 01-November-2022 by Kodiak

I realise I have been inexcusably neglectful in providing any substantial news on my "next gen" Commodore 64 game in development, Parallaxian for a very long time, so this blog post is an attempt at redressing that shortfall.

Let me begin by saying that, in addition to a host of issues behind the scenes unrelated to the game itself, I have also been absorbed in developing a smaller, less ambitious unrelated game which, among other objectives, should serve as a pathfinder for the release of Parallaxian.

So those are my reasons, rather than excuses for the lack of updates.

Now let's crack on with showing some real progress!

Videologue

The video below shows me playing the latest Parallaxian technical testbed and includes the following highlights:

• Chasing down the Backfire.
• Dogfighting with some Hunter-Killer drones.
• Engaging the Groundhog (aka "Tarantula").
• The Figment's prototype main explosion, along with Shuttle-borne recovery sequence (in a nice little nod to IO).

Some features are disabled, for example, the landing sequencer and others have been removed, such as the enemy homing missiles, which require a ground-up rewrite to make the code more efficient and performant, but the key point I make concerning the testbeds is always the same: proof of concept, for later transplanting into the playable version of the game.

And, being a technical testbed, it also showcases some previously unseen items of special "next gen" tech developed specifically for this game, such as the totally unpretentiously (!) named "hyper sprite" concept and "compound sprites".

(I also realise I have somehow messed up / accidentally done away with some of the older SFX, such as the Hunter-Killer's laser sound, so apologies for that).

Hyper Sprite Concept

I wanted a hovering, belligerent adversary that is hard to dispatch and is armed with homing missiles, so that the player would have to perform multiple swooping attacks on it to try to destroy it.

My original design called for a vertically expanded sprite with transparent flame effect beneath it, but I found the look too blocky for the overall game aesthetic, which meant I could either dispense with the y-expand altogether and run with a conventional MCM sprite, or use a hi-res overlay at the cost of an extra sprite for the enemy ship.

But then I recalled that, whilst standing in the queue at an alternative medicine shop in eastern Europe not so long previously, I had the idea of alternating hi-res and MCM definitions in a single sprite to generate a dynamic smoothing effect.

(I'm sure you'll agree, there is nothing quite like shopping in a dodgy looking slum for triggering creative thought processes).

The concept is explained by the diagram below.

As a special bonus, you can download a little hyper sprite demo (.prg file) showing another hyper sprite designed for Parallaxian in action.

This is an enemy designed for later levels, and it goes by the name of Ironside; I won't tell you what it does yet, but there's a hint in its name ;-)

Compound Sprite Concept

Far less innovative than the hyper sprite idea is the compound sprite, which in one form or another has been around in the Commodore 64 gaming scene since the mid 1980s, if not earlier.

However, the form of it that I am talking about does not use hi-res sprite overlays; rather, it uses hi-res char underlays, and as the video clip above showed, that's what the ground vehicles were refined with in the Parallaxian testbed.

Note that the tank is x-expanded, but the hi-res char underlay diverts from the unavoidable resolution loss entailed in the x-expansion.

And of course, there is no rule that says overlays / underlays can only be used with MCM sprites, as the hi-res satellite dish shows.

Sneak Peek at other In-Game Sprites

Since we've gone all spritey in this blog post, let's have a quick peek (not a poke!) at some other in-game adversaries developed for Parallaxian.

• Bomblebee: This is an airborne enemy that can only be destroyed by bombing it from above as it bobbles about. This was one of those very rare examples of an idea that looked cool at the design stage and in my imagination, only to look far less impressive in actual deployment. I think it will be removed as I just found basic play-testing with it irritating rather than fun, plus the visuals just don't work (for me) in the game.





• Groundhog: An as-yet not superlatively designed ground-based foe that also can only be destroyed by bombing it; unlike the Bomblebee, this one fires back and is highly mobile. The version in the WIP video is more arachnid-like, hence the working nickname of "Tarantula" which may become its formal name in due course, unless I replace it with a different design in the interim. You have to destroy the Groundhog to make its adjoining Swarms vulnerable to your laser, an idea loosely based on / stolen from Creatures (on the occasions where Clyde has to kill enemy A to destroy enemy B)... or you could say it's the inversion of Space Invaders! Anyway, until the Groundhog is killed, the Swarms remain invulnerable (indicated by being in monochrome hues) and just suck your plane into their path and thrust it away from the Groundhog.





• Backfire: I have shown an early prototype of this enemy before, which you have to hunt down while avoiding its truly savage backfiring "sunbeam" laser. The present Backfire codebase has to be 100% rewritten as I am unhappy with how it feels during testing and would prefer that it would dive down low to skim at treetop level and thereby give an enhanced sensation of high speed chase to the player.







• Piranha: A shape-shifting liquid metal (yes, Terminator 2's T-1000 inspired this idea) stealthy attack aircraft that likes to sneak up behind you and drain your shields. This enemy was designed specifically for the Figment's tailslide action, so that you can turn and fire back at it while still sliding forwards. I was going to include this in the WIP video but went with the Groundhog prototype instead.

The Cutting Room Floor

Just as musicians make more material than they need when recording an album, or directors of a film record more scenes and demand more takes of each scene than is required, so in the process of designing (and coding) a new game does a developer produce more gfx and code than will ever make it into the final product.

Some of it ends up canned forever, whereas some gets put on hold until a better version can be cooked up.

Below I present a cameo of such "not good enough" designs, some of which will just be abandoned and others I hope will make it into the game.

So When will the Game be Finished?

The only reasonable answer to that question is "when I get all the components completed".

The project has been delayed because of external issues, yes, BUT... The game is much closer to completion than I had imagined up until I returned to working on it in recent times.

But, it is also important to take note of the following observations:

• I have almost zero support from within the scene to continue with the project (not a complaint, just an observation!), so I have tended to proceed cautiously, lest I go all-in with it at the expense of making a living!
• That said, I was ridiculously generously supported (privately off-platform - and thanks again to the person who did that) during the abortive and extensively sabotaged Kickstarter campaign, so that still drives me to see the project through.
• I have deliberately taken a step back from the game over the summer so that I can finish the other game I mentioned earlier, and see how the scene reacts to it; like Parallaxian, it is a very technical, ambitious project, but on a smaller scale.
• Parallaxian has been a labour of love for me and a pet project for a long time, so no matter what happens, I know that finishing Parallaxian would be a dream-come-true for me and the realisation of an ambition going back to my teenage years when I first started coding 6502 on the Commodore 64... As I have said before multiple times, Parallaxian is the C64 game I always wanted and now I have a chance to make that happen.
• When I started coding Parallaxian, I was returning to 6502 after a 25 year absence so let's just say I was a little rusty. Essentially, I have been learning on the job ever since, acquiring new technical knowledge through the pain of many mistakes and a lot of research. That in turn has seen the codebase for the game undergo multiple refactoring processes to strip out bloat and make it do more with less code, and do it faster, so that as much as possible can be squeezed into the available CPU time and RAM. Needless to say, that has also been a methodical, but slow, process.
• Following on from my previous point, something like 95% of my development time is either debugging or trying to overcome hardware limitations; to do anything ambitious on the Commodore 64 requires a real fight with the hardware. I'm not talking about one or two fancy demo scene effects; I'm talking about an advanced game environment, with all the additional raster time overhead and RAM demands that come with that. It often boils down to a case of whack-a-mole, in which you get one feature fully functional, only to find you have degraded another in the process. And that takes time to resolve.

A Bonus Downloadable Effect: Large Explosion!

Okay... that last section was a little... heavy.

So let's lighten the mood with another download, showing the prototype of the Figment's explosion (.prg file) when it finally succumbs to enemy attack in the game.

When you run the program, hit the space bar to view the effect! (You can press it again to repeat, ad infinitum).

And kindly contact me if you have any questions about the project going forward. Encouragement, even if only a few words, means a lot!

To-Do List (Major Items)

• Radar functional on airspace indicator.
• Rescue / ferrying sequencers.
• Ground object & terrain collisions.
• Landing sequences (as current one is not good enough).
• Enhanced vertical parallax effect (mostly done, just needs some laborious GFX tweaking).
• Homing missile sequencer.
• 100% rewrite of the Backfire.
• Piranha sequencer.
• Add boats, water effects, terrain (for other levels).
• Add other in-game enemies not mentioned yet.
• Superlative SFX.
• Improved handling + scrolling mechanics, esp. @ low speeds; presently acceleration @ u-turns is too "snappy".
• May also revise the camera situation on turns.
• Redesign all other levels.
• Presentation.
• Disk loader (not looking forward to that one!)