Cyclista - a noob's first game attempt

[cycleric]

Hello and welcome.

This is my first game and it has been in development for only a week but it is starting to feel like an actual game. Try it out.

Things it has:

Maze base
Start screen
10 screens of main game
8-direction movement
11 Monsters with random and directional movement
Monster shooting object with animation
Hurt animation and screen reset
Prize collectibles
Score display at end of game
Win tile (currently a trophy cup 6 screens north of start)
Win screen


Things missing that I haven't figured out how to do:

Game over screen
Lost a life screen
Screen resetting to designated coordinates (not inside a solid tile)
Persistent prize collected/uncollected states
Drawing sprites over top of others where desired
Monster hurt reactions and recoil
A+B button functionality
Fast/slow tiles
Complex AI behaviors
Sound

Big shout out to the 12 days of NESmas series for getting me this far.
Here is the link, enjoy.

Cyclista WIP demo.nes

drive.google.com

 

[Logana]

The ingame graphics are really, really dark and i can't really make out what i have to do or what kills me idk, i liked the little path section, kinda strange that you die to water and it is way to easy to get softlocked

 

[cycleric]

View attachment 5510The ingame graphics are really, really dark and i can't really make out what i have to do or what kills me idk, i liked the little path section, kinda strange that you die to water and it is way to easy to get softlocked

I would not know why the graphics are dark on your end, as they look fine for me. They are, after all, using the limited palette of NES colors.

Basic objective is to explore, collect stars for points, and reach the end without dying. Pretty simple, and I see that you made it to the end of the demo so kudos to you. There's already somewhat of an element of difficulty to get there but ultimately the goal will be pretty far away and maybe some NPCs can direct you where to go or give hints to secret areas. I could certainly flesh out more of a reason to get where you're going with a little bit of story.

I can see why tiles that trigger a crash are very ambiguous. trees, rocks, and buildings are solid whereas potholes, barricades, trash cans, logs, briar thickets, bear traps, and (some)water are considered hurt tiles. They are not so good on collision physics as you can move diagonally across the corner of a tile and lose a life even if it appears you have not collided with the hazard. The only way i can think of to remedy this is to create something with a hitbox in the corner but if they are static "monsters"there are only four per screen which would be very limiting. Other solutions would be to draw hazard tiles up to the edges more and make virtually everything you can hit a hurt tile but move them further away from the paths in early screens as that would ramp up the difficulty a lot but be much less ambiguous.

Softlock is due in part to bad design on the screens themselves, if you move to a new screen and there is solid tile at the edge where you arrive you get stuck. Rearranging things so that solid and walkable tiles at the edge are similarly placed from one screen to the adjoining one would eliminate that problem.
The other is that resetting the screen always puts you in the same location every time, and in some cases that position is a solid tile. As mentioned I don't know how to specify what happens at screen reset but the simple solution is to just make that tile walkable in every case with a viable path to move on from.

Thanks for testing and giving some input!

 

[mouse spirit]

It's an odd even screen problem. On every other screen, you can have non null tiles on edges. But on every OThER screen, you can't really,because it'll mess up the next screen. It's tough to work around that problem.i suggest it though. Any tile does this on the edges. Even checkpoint or hurt tiles,whatever.
It can cause a ton of issues and shouldn't be such an overwhelming issue in a program that is apparently at version 4.5 ...... . .... ... I can only dot dot dot so much about this glaring thing that's needed fixed for YEARS.
Sorry you have to deal with it too.

Anyway,ill be at my laptop later and will try out your game fersure!

 

[cycleric]

Here is a new version of Cyclista.

added 8 screens to main game
Infinite lives
deaths will subtract 500 points from your final score
safe respawns on screen reset
less getting stuck moving between screens but you may find some still
MUSIC! total of 7 tracks, i just included everything i put together and they don't always fit
also two sound effects

I think the big things to solve next are having the prize tiles disappear permanently and jump/sprint worked out for the A+B buttons.

CyclistaWIP2.nes

drive.google.com

 

[mouse spirit]

I really enjoy it so far. Keep it up!

 

[SciNEStist]

Looking good so far! I do suggest you watch out for collisions on different screens not matching up 100% along the edges, you dont want to ride from 1 screen to another just to end up inside a solid tile.


I love the little detail of the can thrown out the window of the truck

 

[Basty]

Got softlocked 'ere.

 

[cycleric]

This version I re-worked background tile so it screwed up what I had started. I cleared the whole overworld and started again with generic tiles to copy that had certain settings that I wouldn't have to configure screen by screen as much. I started making bigger areas that were more consistent with each other, like simcity blocks. So far there are 10 finished screens in the starting suburb, 4 on a highway going east that is at the north end of the starting neighborhood, and two screens of city to the first exit north off the highway. There is no win tile at the moment screen respawn point is in the middle now but i don't know how exactly I did that. I made sure you can spawn safely in all screens but you may be in the path of a vehicle on some. Still want to make prize tiles disappear permanently if anyone can help me out with that.

CyclistaWIP3.nes

drive.google.com

 

[SciNEStist]

I'm not sure how to toggle off individual prize tiles, maybe someone else can help you there.

you could make it so theres no backtracking at all and just trigger every screen on exit, then have the prize tiles not show up on triggered screens. It would make it so a player cant just keep driving back and forth to get infinite points.