Untitled Spectrum game project - Design overview

Just a short post to outline the main points of how the game will be structured.

Concept
Pretty basic; It'll just be a scrolling platformer with a limited number of weapons. The player will have the ability to swap weapons around depending on the situation. The backstory such is it is will simply be the usual crashed spaceship on a hostile planet and you have to work your way through to the end. I'm going to try very hard to work within the limitations of the 48k machine so although it would be nice to throw a few puzzles in, I'm not sure if I'll have the memory available.

Gameplay path
Starting on the surface, enter through caves and work your way down

Graphics style
In many ways this will be a Joffa tribute, but his graphic style was so unique I'm not even going to try and replicate it - It would just look crap. I'm experimenting with different looks to see which suits my way of working best. I have some drawings and sketches from years back and if I can dig them out I might try using them to help

Sound
Will be minimal, depending on how many cycles are left in the frame after updating the screen.

Untitled Spectrum game project - intro post

I'm working on a little game for the Spectrum to get back into coding again so I'm going to try and document the process here to help me keep track of it and refine some of the ideas.

I have a hitlist of techniques I want to cover:

• PWM multi-channel sound
• 'Multi-threaded' game engine (separate display rendering, map decompression and tile management tasks)
• Graphic effects in the border
• Smooth scrolling (25fps)
• Multicolour effects in the display file area

It's ambitious I suppose but if I don't aim high then I've nothing to work towards.