Hero (Greenie - v0.9) - Created by Jayenkai (Rating 87.5%)
Remake of the Activision classic
| Greenie : The Helecopter Hero
My Hero remake.
A game I started, but forgot to finish!
I started this in June 2006 for the Retro Remake 2006 compo, but forgot all about it, and never ended up entering it. Typical!
Comments and Suggestions are welcome. |   | Recent Updates
Release version 0.9
A few more tiles added to the game. Should make for a more interesting selection of levels.
Additional tile/object suggestions are appreciated.
Mouse and Better Joypad control added to the main menu.
A few Command Line settings added. (See readme.txt)
Quite a few bug fixes.
Ability to hit walls on the next screen, along with a switch on the editor to disable wall cloning.
HeroLevelFormatv0.4 levels can be posted directly to the forum.
Also includes Random Generator v2 with a more logical random level outcome.
20 Original levels, 15 by Jayenkai, 15 by B3DMan and also Headache by B3DMan!
Release version 0.8
Proper Release #1
Complete with all 20 original Atari 2600 levels, and 7 of my own.
Make your own levels with the Built in Editor.
Build some random levels.
and so much more! (Well, not that much more!)
Not much added, really, in this release. But the main menu's now working properly, and even allows you to select different level packs!
The "Start Anywhere" option should pick a random pack, and start you off on a random level (once that level has been opened, of course!)
Everything else should be about the same as it was, give or take a few tweaks here and there. |
Latest Comments
| Posted : Friday, 27 April 2007, 14:37 |
JL235
  
| Jayenkai  (Doesn't give a warning, but I figured Delete Key was enough of a distance from other buttons that it wouldn't matter, and couldn't be accidentally tapped!)
What if you own cats? Mine used to always walk and lie over my keyboard, but only if I was using it. You should seriously consider building in more protection against animal interfearance in Hero.
| | Posted : Friday, 27 April 2007, 14:39 |
Jayenkai
| Aaah, but your mouse pointer isn't likely to be over the word Above/Below/Left/Right at the same time, though! I considered cats.. I have one myself!
| | Posted : Friday, 27 April 2007, 16:42 |
Blitz3Dman
| Wow, fortunately ( for you,  ) .backup3 was able to save my 91 room game.
| | Posted : Friday, 27 April 2007, 16:45 |
mike_g
| Why should Jay care if your 91 room game got baked up or not 
| | Posted : Friday, 27 April 2007, 16:54 |
Jayenkai
| 'cos Jay wants a few levels for the next release 
| | Posted : Friday, 27 April 2007, 17:10 |
power mousey
| hahaa 
True.
Blitz3dman,
may I suggest you open your bedroom as
a game consulting firm for full beta testing operations.
Each bug confirmed is applied the appropriate fee.
Additional fees for game bugs fixed.
I'm joking.
But you never know...thats why I'm also serious.
You are attentive to details as well as
to ideas and suggestions.
Hey, why not??
cheers,
power mousey
| | Posted : Friday, 27 April 2007, 17:38 |
Blitz3Dman
| lol, my bedroom  beta testing studio!
my bedroom ~ a dumpster!
| | Posted : Friday, 27 April 2007, 17:56 |
power mousey
| exactly!! True.
thats usually how a developer firm office
or cubicle is supposed to be. Well, the few
that i have seen in real life and especially
in computer or game movies.
hmmmmmm...call your company
The Dumpster Dive
no, seriously....
| | Posted : Sunday, 29 April 2007, 05:50 |
Blitz3Dman
| Oh, jay, a note about my levels: they are all beatable I either beat them myself or lost my last life on the next to last room but there were no doubts of it being possible to bass what was up ahead.
The maps are fully bug tested and I think they should be 100% bug-free (aside from game bugs ).
| | Posted : Sunday, 29 April 2007, 07:10 |
power mousey
| time to punch out....
collect and cash my pay check.
Good job, Blitz3Dman. 
Like I said, you are attentive to details
both in the big and the little things.
Again, your choice, but with all that attention
and focus.....a developer and QA man. I see this
as a most likely and golden opportunity. True.
Serious,
and cheers
power mousey
| | Posted : Sunday, 29 April 2007, 09:56 |
Blitz3Dman
| Oh, Jay, on that pause menu, a restart level option would be very nice.
Also, I'd like to see the ability to save as something other than My_Levels.
To make your stuff look more proffesional, you also ought to add an extension to your level files like .lvl .map .hro or something like that.
| | Posted : Sunday, 29 April 2007, 13:55 |
Jayenkai
| .pak is a pack of levels..!
Other than My_Levels is a thought, but then you'd have to also let the user Load their pack of levels, every time they enter the editor, too.
If I keep it as My_Levels, then they save, build up, then rename and start again from scratch.
I thought that was the easier way to do things?
And I haven't added a pause menu, yet! (oopsy!) Thanks for reminding me!
| | Posted : Monday, 30 April 2007, 07:57 |
Jayenkai
| OK, Last day of April = Version 0.9
I think this is probably going to be the last release. I mean, I tend to forget about my projects days later, so.. I don't know. I'd like to get working on something else for a while.
If there are any major bugs/great suggestions, I'll get to work on them.
Otherwise, enjoy the game, and get building those levels!
| | Posted : Monday, 30 April 2007, 12:57 |
Blitz3Dman
|  |moan| it seems you've forgotten the one-way walls, and I can't figure out what the things shown with white arrows in the editor are doing when you touch the flashing red circle |moan|
|edit| ok, the one way walls are there, but what in the world are those flashing red things supposed to do??? And that wasn't necessarily what I meant by one way walls, I meant they allow you to go through one way but not the other. |edit|
Although I really like the key and door thing.
And whatever happened to coins..?
| | Posted : Monday, 30 April 2007, 13:34 |
Blitz3Dman
| |moan| one way walls only work if your walking on the ground |moan|
| | Posted : Monday, 30 April 2007, 13:50 |
Jayenkai
| The "Trapdoor"-esque wall things only work if you walk on the little lumps on the floor. I thought they were noticable, but not TOO noticable, so they'd be a nice way to do it.
I couldn't logically work out a way to allow them to exist in the world whereby the whole tile would be touchable..
The "Red flashing things"? Seriously? You couldn't work them out? They're mines!
If you get close, it starts flashing, then it goes kabloowee.
If you detonate something nearby, it's flash-time will be reduced.
If you line up a load with about 3 tile-spaces between them, then set off the first, they'll all start a-popping.
Gameplay wise, Try placing a standard 2-wide destructable wall, followed by a mine. Set off the tnt to destroy the wall, and by the time the player's ran back to the hole in the wall, the Mine's about ready to blow.
Or give level 14 of my levels a go.
| | Posted : Friday, 11 May 2007, 16:53 |
Blitz3Dman
| Ok, question:
HOW THE HECK IS YOUR THING ABLE TO SAVE SO QUICKLY MY GAME WORLD SIZE IS DOWN TO 32 x 32 SCREENS BECAUSE IT'S SO SLOW AND IT STILL SAVES AND LOADS SLOW AS A TURTLE!!
|edit| make that a DEAD TURTLE! |edit|
| | Posted : Friday, 11 May 2007, 17:17 |
Jayenkai
| Ok, here's how I do pretty much all my level format stuff.
1) First off, make you test level in a text file. Use notepad.. Test.lev 1's for floors, 2's for walls, 3's for ladders, that sort of thing. S=Start, X=Exit. You get the idea.
Make sure it's readable in plain ascii.
2) Get the proggy to read it line by line, and convert it to a map array.
3) Once that's working, make a small proggy using the JNKrunch routine to take all lines of the ascii, add them together, and spit out a smaller single line of crunched data. Dump that single line into Test2.lev
4) Add JuNKrunch to the level Loader and make sure it gets back all the data and can read it all nice and quickly. Instead of Line by Line reading, you'll now need to read chr by chr from the uncrunched line of data, and move along the lines as each one fills up yourself.
5) Then make the editor, and make sure it saves out using JNKrunch.
6) And last of all pack a bunch of levels together into a single file.
The most important thing I've started doing lately, which REALLY speeds things up, is completely getting rid of extraneous data.
For example, in Hero walls are either 1,2,3,4,5 or 6.
1 is Normal, 2 is Destructable, 3 is Red, 4 is Red destructable, 5 and 6 are Moving walls (5 for right, 6 for left)
When the loader reads it, it finds 5's and 6's that are next to each other, and works out how wide the moving should be.. It does it itself without extra info having to be saved to the data file.
The play engine actually adds the plants by looking at where walls are. Again, this isn't added to the file. It's quicker without it.
All baddies/Objects are also single ascii characters. B for bat, W for Winged moth, S for Snakes.. Snakes and Laterns get moved to the left or right by the Play Engine too.
It's just a matter of keeping everything as simplistic as possible.
Like.. For platforms you could have a row of 1's, and then have the loader add "edges" to the platforms itself..
If you need moving platforms and the like.. Well, you can say "here's a bunch of points, move between those" or even "start here, and bump between the two walls"
Just remember to keep the file simple, and you can't really go wrong!
(And if you need multiple layers, just add 2 or 3 piles of data above each other)
(Try taking a line of data from a hero pack and shoving into the JuNKrunch routine.)
| | Posted : Friday, 11 May 2007, 17:31 |
Blitz3Dman
| Hmm... the problem is, I do it the simplest way I know how: I write the byte for the frame each tile is. I have 20 x 15 tiles in each area and I've got it down to 8 x 8 areas and it takes longer that any other saving/loading program I've ever made and seeing how extremely quickly my The Running Man editor worked this is writing only 2 or 3 times as much. Why the heck does it take so long?
TRM: give or take 10 ms maybe
SF: nearly a minute
| | Posted : Friday, 11 May 2007, 17:38 |
Jayenkai
| Then, check the save routine.
If you're writing byte by byte, then maybe there's something slowing down the loop.
Perhaps try writing to a buffer then saving a larger amount of data.
If your bytes are <200 then try doing txt$="":loop:txt$=txt$+chr$(byte+32):endloop:writeline(txt$)
| | Posted : Saturday, 12 May 2007, 08:42 |
Blitz3Dman
| Your Greenie game has maximum give or take 20 (not sure of exact number and too lazy to check) by 4 and contains the datat for 100 x 100 x 20 x 4 tiles which is 80000 x 20 levels per pack is 160000 tiles worth of data and it saves in an instant.
My game has 20 x 15 tile areas with one world saved in a file. Supposing I had 100 x 100 areas in the map, that would be 100 x 100 x 20 x 15 tiles worth of data which is 300000, not even tiwce as much total data as Hero.
I'm suspecting what I need to do is pack it into a string using your JNKrunch method... am I right?
| | Posted : Saturday, 12 May 2007, 09:08 |
Blitz3Dman
| Ha ha, it's saving and loading very nicely now. Thanks much.
| | Posted : Monday, 27 August 2007, 06:19 |
caffeinekid
| Is the download broken? 
| | Posted : Monday, 27 August 2007, 06:57 |
Jayenkai
| Bah... Yes it is!
I only just changed it a few days ago, too!
Hang on..
Ok, try now!
| | Posted : Monday, 27 August 2007, 08:53 |
caffeinekid
| Cheers buddy.
|
|
Hero v0.9
