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View topic - [Coding Competition 2022] Dragon Blaster by haroldoop

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[Coding Competition 2022] Dragon Blaster by haroldoop
Post Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 10:01 pm
https://www.smspower.org/Homebrew/DragonBlaster-SMS

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This is version 0.9 of Dragon Blaster; it adds a prototype boss, that appears on screen when the timer goes below 30 seconds.


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Post Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2022 10:21 pm
Hi, Haroldo. When i face the 1st boss and the time run out appear a message "Time Over" but is screen turn messy.
Oi, Haroldo. Quando eu enfrento o primeiro chefe, e o tempo acaba, aparece a mensagem de "Time Over" e a tela fica estranha/bagunçada.
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Post Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2022 10:30 pm
Last edited by haroldoop on Sun Mar 27, 2022 10:35 pm; edited 1 time in total
segarule wrote
Hi, Haroldo. When i face the 1st boss and the time run out appear a message "Time Over" but is screen turn messy.
Oi, Haroldo. Quando eu enfrento o primeiro chefe, e o tempo acaba, aparece a mensagem de "Time Over" e a tela fica estranha/bagunçada.


Hello! Yes, there seems to be a bug. :P
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Post Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2022 10:59 pm
This game is promising! The concept resembles Dragon Spirit, which is a pretty enjoyable shmup. I look forward to see Dragon Blaster finished someday!
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2022 1:32 pm
Good stuff
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2022 8:16 pm
am I the single guy who thinks the latest SMSLib versions plus SDCC 4.x is WAY faster and optimized than some years (2-3) ago???

I say it because this entry, as bullet hell shmup, which such number of player shoots does not run bad at all.

(In fact, five years ago, Z88DK versions of SilverValley or Galactic Revenge were faster than the SDCC versions... Today I have an SDCC 4.1 Silver Valley compiled this year and runs better, same code, except for zx7 assets compresion, than the old version.)

Also, nice implementation of the tileset of the dragon and the hardware scroll effect. I would decouple the dragon shoots from the scroll coordinates, substracting the scroll coordinates in its creation, so they can go exist the virtual screen clipping.

Can the dragon die??? i were shoot a its head but no luck. Time over.

Congratulations for the effort!
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2022 9:15 pm
It seems like the Dragon Blaster develops at a nice steady pace. I already liked the upgrade mechanics in the version previously available, and now there is even more to the game, with an added great boss, using the good old background scrolling trick. Great work!

On a side note, your setup for this game (scripts, tools, makefile etc.) really inspired me to get going with doing something similar for my own game :)
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2022 9:27 pm
Many thanks, everyone. ;)

eruiz00 wrote
Can the dragon die??? i were shoot a its head but no luck. Time over.

Nope, in this version, I didn't implement collision against the boss, yet. :P

hang-on wrote

On a side note, your setup for this game (scripts, tools, makefile etc.) really inspired me to get going with doing something similar for my own game :)


Nice to know the setup is inspiring. I created it mainly to save time. ;)
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Post Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2022 12:04 pm
Nice work. As someone who has already dabbled in vertical shooter development, I can appreciate what you have achieved so far. Very impressive.

I love the theme. The world needs more shooters without space ships.

The powerup system is interesting. Is it inspired by Gunstar Heroes or Serei Senshi Spriggan?
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Post Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2022 2:26 pm
eruiz00 wrote
am I the single guy who thinks the latest SMSLib versions plus SDCC 4.x is WAY faster and optimized than some years (2-3) ago???


I think it's mostly because SDCC is doing a much better job than what was doing a few years ago, and only partially to the small improvements in SMSlib
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Post Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2022 3:25 pm
Kagesan wrote
Nice work. As someone who has already dabbled in vertical shooter development, I can appreciate what you have achieved so far. Very impressive.

I love the theme. The world needs more shooters without space ships.

The powerup system is interesting. Is it inspired by Gunstar Heroes or Serei Senshi Spriggan?


Many thanks!

The power up system is strongly inspired by Gunstar Heroes.
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Looking great
Post Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2022 5:55 pm
I remember seeing this on Twitter as WIP and is looking great; graphics look nice and some of the bullets shoot give a 1942 feel. Awesome job for including source code haroldoop that makes you 256% more awesome. Great job!
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Post Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2022 8:51 pm
Many thanks!

BTW, here's the Github repository: https://github.com/haroldo-ok/dragon-blaster-smspower
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Post Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2022 10:47 pm
I feel like you did a sort of benchmark test in this ROM. I looked at the CPU usage in Emulicious's debugger, and the poor little thing does some serious workout haha.

But I liked the concepts on display here.
I think the movement speed of the "ship" is just right. And I like the fantasy theme.
Special mention to the mechanic of combining elements to make different firing patterns. My favourite is lightning/fire :)

Overall, as it stands, it is a really nice prototype. I can't wait to see the game evolve more!
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Post Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2022 10:51 am
Not a bad little shmup. The only issue I had was the framerate dropping while shooting which was disorientating because likewise the ship movement would speed up and slow down depending if I was shooting or not.
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Post Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2022 11:07 am
Yep, the code, as it is, is very close to using 100% of the CPU time, at the point that sometimes the framerate drops; the main culprit used to be the collision detection, and, after some effort to optimize that, now the main performance hog is the "draw_meta_sprite()" routine. At some point, it will be necessary to make some changes to fix, or at least improve that; a cheaper alternative would be to simply have less shots on screen.
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