Blastaway, a new game for AmigaOS 4 (?)

Maintenance release.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4U02xatwAg

CHANGELOG
* Changed slightly darkening of arenas start screen background.
* Fixed (again) Gjawor's AI (it might get stuck due to a missing check).
* Fixed wor spawning delay calculation (it became negative on the last arena).
* Fixed layout of last arena.

Demo download: https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

Another maintenance release. A complete playthrough and a revision of the code revealed a few things to fix/improve.



CHANGELOG
* Made WEAPON bonus less rare.
* Fixed an AI-related bug.
* Fixed milestone when resuming (it was restored instead of being reset, which made sense only when points used to be restored as well).
* Made various other minor changes/optimizations.

Demo download: https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

@Saimo

The game has shaped up very nicely! One idea though - could the menu text blinking be a little less intensive? The epileptic in me is cringing on the floor

@trixie

Are you sure it's the blinking? It isn't that fast and it only affects a single short string. Maybe its the background scrolling (which I've been thinking of replacing with something else for a while), instead?

@saimo

No, I mean the text blinking in the menus. It just feels sort of uncomfortable; a slightly longer delay could improve it.

OK, I didn't like the slower blinking so I went for an old solution - check this video out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z94sw_JvIRI
I'm not 100% sure yet: maybe I'll have to use a darker color for the unselected items.

@saimo

Looks much better now IMHO.

Glad you like it. It wasn't good enough, though: too little contrast. Now I have used a darker font color and also made the blinking text alternate between the color gradient font and the font used for the other items (instead of the grayscale gradient font).

Video-related code improved.


(click to enlarge)

CHANGELOG
* Changed rendering of menu items.
* Added 6x zooming.
* Reworked/optimized CRT filters.
* Improved/fixed video initialization.

Demo download: https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

Getting ready for release!
Development is complete (even the installers are done), so now Blastaway only needs to go through the final (and heavy) playtest. Then, if everything turns out to be OK, the game will be released - and for free ;)



CHANGELOG
* Made doors sounds of stages 1 and 4 louder.
* Assigned the menu "back" function also to [DELETE].
* Made some internal optimizations/improvements.
* Fixed bug that caused illegal memory reads at initialization (and might crash the game).
* Fixed/improved/updated manual.
* Written installers.

Demo download: https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

@saimo

such an fun and exciting game to play & especially great to play it with AmigaOS4.1 on my X1000

@328gts

:)


@all

Closer and closer to release.
Work could not proceed at full steam lately, but still intensive testing revealed a few things to improve/fix (that subsequently were improved/fixed, of course). Further testing will tell whether the game can be released.

CHANGELOG
* Improved last arena.
* Made a little optimization in shadows rendering.
* Fixed collision detection bug (beams were handled incorrectly).
* Fixed a recently-introduced bug in wors handling.
* Fixed a newly-introduced bug in transparent tiles handling.
* Fixed graphical quirk between soldier corpses and keys.

Demo download: https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

Release candidate ready!
Some more heavy testing revealed only a little bug. While fixing it, the related graphic tiles were improved as well. Everything else was OK, so Blastaway is basically ready for release. Just to be sure, it will be played again from start to finish on two different machines before it's released. Stay tuned.

CHANGELOG
* Touched up blast mark tiles of THE MACHINE ROOMS stage.
* Optimized a little bit the graphics of some blast mark tiles.
* Fixed corrupted rendering of blast marks (a line of code consisting of just "do" had disappeared).

https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

More testing, more improvements, and a new release candidate!
Further testing suggested a few new little ideas that I found irresistible: it's definitely late for new features, but still I just had to implement them. Of course, I'll repeat the testing thoroughly to ensure that nothing got broken in the process. Also, adding one of those features revealed a little bug (that was subsequently fixed, of course).
Overall, testing went very well, so I believe that the current release candidate is the one that will get released. More testing will tell.

CHANGELOG
* Added little screen flash effect while Hodwork and Ikuwor are active.
* Made SOLDIER bonus award points when the maximum number of soldiers is already available.
* Added MILESTONE bonus points to post-arena report when awarded thanks to the other bonuses.
* Added randomization of menu background scrolling.
* Doubled speed of menu background scrolling.
* Fixed handling of dead soldiers sprites (they got erroneously re-linked to a list).
* Fixed/improved manual.

https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

@saimo

The download links are not availible anymore ?

@samo79

Nope, since the release is very close, I've decided to remove the demos:
* keeping them updated would have spoiled the fun;
* keeping the outdated versions would not have done justice to the game.

Final build (?)
In the last days, Blastaway was played from start to finish many times. Technically, everything was perfect. A few little ideas came to mind, though, and again I couldn't resist implementing them. Anyway, I'm confident that the current build is the final one. Of course, before releasing, it must be tested thoroughly to ensure that the latest little changes didn't break anything.

CHANGELOG
* Added ALIVE SOLDIERS bonus: awards 1000 points multiplied by the number of alive soldiers when the game is completed.
* Added sound effects specific to MILESTONE bonus.
* Lowered points awarded by the SOLDIER and MILESTONE bonuses to 5000.
* Updated manual.

https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

@saimo

What about Speedball 3 we were talking about earlier.

@Joeled

Did I ever talk about Speedball 3? I can't remember that - and I never had it in my plans, actually. I have a sports game concept on paper (it's something like 15 years old), but I don't plan to work on it either. You can see my plans on my Patreon page. But who knows if I'll ever be able to do anything.
One thing that might happen shortly is the backporting of some of the features of the Blastaway video system to BOH, Huenison, and KOG.

@saimo

Yes we talked about that a couple of years ago Will become a patreon end of this month. Thanks for creating games.