Let's start with wishing everybody a very happy and healthy 2022! 
There are so many things I want to work on that sometimes my head just explodes and overloads...resulting in me doing absolutely NOTHING!!
It's one of the worst habits I would like to change...but I guess I am stuck with it for the rest of my life! Well, sometimes I find enough concentration and motivation to actually get something done. That's how my homebrew project BatteryCheck started and over the years got improvements and ports to other console's. There are also a few (currently) failed attempts to port the game that did take up a lot of time actually. Mostly the GBA, DS and DSi are what I am talking about here. I am still sure that I can make it work with the low resolution some day....but that might not be this year!
What I do want to do this year is make some mayor improvements to my game engine and add more stuff to do in the game itself! There is so much to improve that I think I should talk about them in separate blog posts. But here is a list of things I have in mind:
I am sure there are more things that should or could be on this list, but this is what I could think of right now from just what I remembered. The installer I want to have working on ALL the current platforms within the next few weeks! It will still require the ZIP or EXE file from the original game but you can now easily download that right here in the download section! Since the installer is only required once to unpack the files....it will be a text interface just as it is now on the Wii and 3DS. The biggest change will be that it will do some more checking and asking for a button to be pressed BEFORE it will do anything. Might include a warning about losing files and such to be a risk
For the rest of the items on the list it will be difficult to estimate when I will have time to work on them. Or how long it will take to implement or fix something. I am also not saying the order will be exactly like it's in this list but some things will depend on others. Like all the objects: checkpoint, freddy, belts, elevators and waterpumps first need a "working" batteryholder. With that I mean that the state of the batteryholder needs to work, but it's animation or efficient usage of VRAM is not a requirement. The same goes for freddy which is just a "zone" that you walk into and where the battery counters are manipulated. There are animations involved...and I have talked about how HUGE they are before and that the differences are really small between frames. That's how I got the idea for "sprite dicing". But that is only "required" for optimal usage of VRAM and only really matters on slower or limited platforms.
I think this is enough for this post.
Thanks for reading
There are so many things I want to work on that sometimes my head just explodes and overloads...resulting in me doing absolutely NOTHING!!
It's one of the worst habits I would like to change...but I guess I am stuck with it for the rest of my life! Well, sometimes I find enough concentration and motivation to actually get something done. That's how my homebrew project BatteryCheck started and over the years got improvements and ports to other console's. There are also a few (currently) failed attempts to port the game that did take up a lot of time actually. Mostly the GBA, DS and DSi are what I am talking about here. I am still sure that I can make it work with the low resolution some day....but that might not be this year!What I do want to do this year is make some mayor improvements to my game engine and add more stuff to do in the game itself! There is so much to improve that I think I should talk about them in separate blog posts. But here is a list of things I have in mind:
- Rewrite installer to work on ALL current platforms (no GUI yet, just text)
- Release new version for ALL platforms that includes the new installer
- Implement "sprite dicing" to improve VRAM usage
- Make batteryholders functional (with the animation and sounds)
- Make the checkpoints work (crystal ball next to battery holder)
- make the belts work and give extra speed or friction depending on direction
- make the elevators move and keep the player on it's platform
- make the water pumps work
- make Freddy the Dragon recycle used batteries (get 1 full for every 3 empty)
- add enemy AI to jump and walk
- add enemy AI to attack player
- Fix sound on PS2
- Add music on PS2
- Add debug mode/screen/options changeable at runtime
- Add functional menu system
- Fix or rewrite the collision system! Again!
- Fix and release the PSP version!
- Port to PS Vita?
I am sure there are more things that should or could be on this list, but this is what I could think of right now from just what I remembered. The installer I want to have working on ALL the current platforms within the next few weeks! It will still require the ZIP or EXE file from the original game but you can now easily download that right here in the download section! Since the installer is only required once to unpack the files....it will be a text interface just as it is now on the Wii and 3DS. The biggest change will be that it will do some more checking and asking for a button to be pressed BEFORE it will do anything. Might include a warning about losing files and such to be a risk
For the rest of the items on the list it will be difficult to estimate when I will have time to work on them. Or how long it will take to implement or fix something. I am also not saying the order will be exactly like it's in this list but some things will depend on others. Like all the objects: checkpoint, freddy, belts, elevators and waterpumps first need a "working" batteryholder. With that I mean that the state of the batteryholder needs to work, but it's animation or efficient usage of VRAM is not a requirement. The same goes for freddy which is just a "zone" that you walk into and where the battery counters are manipulated. There are animations involved...and I have talked about how HUGE they are before and that the differences are really small between frames. That's how I got the idea for "sprite dicing". But that is only "required" for optimal usage of VRAM and only really matters on slower or limited platforms.
I think this is enough for this post.
Thanks for reading
