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| Operation : PewPew! A new game for 68040 and soon... 68030 | |
| Posted by: DW1992 on 2026-01-09 20:21:39 Pew! Pew!Pew! Pew!Pew! Pew!Pew! Pew!Pew! Pew!Pew! Pew!Pew! Pew!Pew! Pew!Pew! Pew!Pew! Pew!Pew! Pew!Pew! Pew!Pew! Pew!Pew! Pew!Pew! Hi Everyone, What started out as a little fun experiment to get more familiar with CodeWarrior by making a parallax horizontally scrolling star field, like I'm on an Amiga in 1987... has somehow turned into a little mini-space shooter game that's become way more fun to work on then it should be. 😊 OPERATION : PewPew! Due to a clerical error and absence of a real space hero, you've been given a ship and are Earth's last hope for survival! The evil right to left floating asteroids are attacking and the pesky alien's in their UFOs keep trying to shoot you down and steal your pizza! (avoiding the Noid didn't help!) 👽🍕 Worse yet,just when you think things can't get any worse, every 500 or so points, a scary alien jelly fish lookin' thing attacks you, and gets meaner the more you shoot at it! 👾  Click to fire your laser and destroy those evil space rocks! Don't let them touch you, or your shield power will decrease! Oh, and avoiding them isn't enough... if a rock gets past you, somehow your shield energy still decreases! So unfair... 😇  Around increments of 500 points, the scary Jelly boss (trademarked!) will appear. The more you shoot at it, the angrier it becomes!  At least there are random Shield Energy pods floating around in space... Shoot one for a quick shield boost, or run into one for a greater gain!  The ultimate goal is to earn the highest score (stored internally in the resource, so you won't lose your score when you exit the game.. but you never will exit because you'll be addicted! 🤓☕🤪  Press [ESC] at any time to be brought back to the main menu and regain your sanity.  Ok, the nerdy spec type stuff... Originally, I wrote the star field as a way to learning more about graphics in CodeWarrior pro 4 and targeted my SE/30. I quickly fell in love with adding more and more and more features and ideas to this and it became the little game before you. But... as such, and because I'm still very much just learning (I'm lern-d-ing...) the in's and out's of graphics tricks on the 68030, I fully admit I have long since run out of CPU cycles for a stock SE/30 to play this. Yes, it will run... but it won't be fun... So, instead of sitting on it for the next month until I have time to learn about CopyBits and VBL, you're stuck with my slow GWorld back buffer trickery. I've tested this on a real LC475 and LC575 (Colour Classic Mystic technically) and it runs perfectly. both has 68LC040 processors. I made sure NOT to use any FLOAT or other FPU requiring functions, as well as all SIN motions are pre-calculated in a table. So no soft FPU slowdowns there. Operation : PewPew is B&W (1bit) graphics. It runs in a window 490 x 280 I've tested it on Systems 7.5.5 and it works no problem (on 040 CPUs for proper speed) This is beta 0.75 There WILL be a v1.0 at some point (ah, free time...) 🫣 But I can't promise when. I'll post all updated versions in this thread. For now, enjoy in Basilisk II for full speed shenanigans, or a 040 based MAC. There WILL be a playable version for the SE/30, that's my ultimate goat for the project. Any feature requests, comments, high score screen shots, etc.. please post or PM me! Would love to hear. Aaron/DW Dark Systems BBS | |
| Posted by: DW1992 on 2026-01-10 07:08:34 Here's a little matrix of how damage, energy & scoring works in the game. Enjoy! 🙂👾👽🍕  | |
| Posted by: LaPorta on 2026-01-10 07:50:56 Now THIS looks like fun. Also looks like it would be at home on a 68000 based compact. | |
| Posted by: VMSZealot on 2026-01-10 08:08:44 Excellent work! So you're at the optimisation stage now then! Is the small window (rather than 512x342) a function of getting it to perform better? Would it help to have a code review - maybe some of the big brains here will be able to identify efficiency improvements? I kind of fancy writing a Canabalt type game for the Plus or SE - but I think I'm going to need to work out how to clone myself first! | |
| Posted by: DW1992 on 2026-01-10 21:33:19 Thanks for the kind words and suggestions! 😊 I'm hoping to learn enough to get this optimized and running smoothly on a 16MHz 030, or even an 020 based machine. The screen size was partially for speed (less real estate) and also because it started life as something else, just a little learning star field experiment that grew into something it wasn't. It displays centred on a real SE/30 Just a little update. I've added some sound effects to this version (Beta 0.8) I'd be happy to post the source or even the full CodeWarrior project if anyone is interested. I've love another set of eyes and any advice, tricks & tips on how to optimize it further! Just let me fix it up a bit and edit my bad code comments. lol 😅 I'm a hobby programmer, so I apologize for the mess it'll be in. Aaron/DW Dark Systems BBS | |
| Posted by: adespoton on 2026-01-12 12:21:00 Have you tried it on System 7.1 yet? That tends to have a bit more head room than 7.5.5. | |
| Posted by: DW1992 on 2026-01-12 13:20:36 I'll have to try it on a lower System 7 version, see how low I can go before something breaks. 🫣 🙂 Cheers! Here's a new UPDATE. Operation : PewPew! beta 0.81 Now has a mute option on the main menu (why you would want to mute it I don't know...) 🤪🔇 I have also updated a few of the sprites using my fancy SquirrelEDIT tool. 🔌⬅️ shameless self plug 😂   | |
| Posted by: aladds on 2026-01-12 14:32:39 This is really fun! I tried it on infinite mac under 7.5.3 and it's smooth as butter. Sound effects are perfect. Racked up a score over 3000 and the only thing I'd say is maybe increase the asteroid frequency each time you destroy a boss to make it a bit more challenging as you progress? I am brought back to my Crystal Quest playing youth 😀 | |
| Posted by: DW1992 on 2026-01-25 09:40:04 Cheers Aladds. 🙂 I'm glad you are enjoying it so far! hopefully some new updates coming soon! Please let me know if there are any other changes / features you want to see, I'll look at making the asteroids spawn and behave liek you mentioned. Considering adding a 'settings' screen where you can define the attributes of all characters, or just go with defaults. --- I'm still working on making it run at a playable speed on a real SE/30 (works fine on any 68040 or emulator). Slowly making progress... I think... 😂 Here's a little screen shot from the next update I'm working on... Little better sprites (I think) 🧑🎨 Enemies have slightly different HP and Damage values to make it more fun. New bonus weapon... Plasma Bombs float along, requiring the player to collide with them. MAX of 5 bombs in your inventory (showing at the top). Pressing space bar activates one of your bombs, clearing all enemies on the screen (except boss characters). There are now 4 boss types that rotate through every 500 points or so, each with their own weapon and personality (working on this, trickier then I thought). I'm in the process of drawing their 32x32 sprites (suing SquirrelEDIT of course) 🤓 Hope to have the updated version out ASAP! Aaron/DW Dark Systems BBS | |
| Posted by: DW1992 on 2026-01-25 13:48:06 Latest update... 🥳 New grumpy game ICON (scary!) 😱 Plasma bomb weapon destroys all enemies on screen (minus bosses). 4 separate Boss characters... can you defeat each one?!? 👾 Improved Hit / taken damage values. Still lagging on a real SE/30, but good on a 68040 and in an emulator. Working on it... 🤓 As always, requests, comments, etc.. please shout! Aaron/DW Dark Systems BBS | |
| Posted by: CC_333 on 2026-01-25 22:35:13 That icon sort of reminds me of the shape-shifting creature featured in the Star Trek: TNG pilot episode, "Encounter at Farpoint" (it was being abused and coerced by some humanoid species (whose name I forget; it's been a few years since I've seen it) into creating the structure of their starbase). I at first thought of the TOS episode "The Immunity Syndrome" (S2E18), but that was a giant cell, not so much a dome-shaped thing with tentacles. c | |
Posted by: DW1992 on 2026-01-26 08:27:20That icon sort of reminds me of the shape-shifting creature featured in the Star Trek: TNG pilot episode, "Encounter at Farpoint" (it was being abused and coerced by some humanoid species (whose name I forget; it's been a few years since I've seen it) into creating the structure of their starbase).haha, I know exactly the episode alien of the week you're talking about, both in TNG and TOS. 🙂 Wasn't there a Futurama about Spock getting high on the spores and smacking Kirk around... 😂  I'm still trying to optimize and get things running smoothly on 68030, but anyone with more experience and knows more vintage trickery then I do who wants to help, I'm happy to make the source files public! Aaron/DW Dark Systems BBS | |
| Posted by: is2scooby on 2026-01-26 09:11:40 Very cool! | |
| Posted by: iantm on 2026-01-28 04:10:53 This is just the kind of stuff I was hoping to see, someone writing software just for funsies! I can't seem to unstuff the archive, though. I run into this issue a lot with vMac — I'm using StuffIt Deluxe 3, does the version even matter? I'd love to see the source code as I want to jump into this pool but know little to nothing about the Toolbox and this era of code. | |
| Posted by: DW1992 on 2026-01-28 13:22:05 BIG update today! I finally got the music routines working! 🥳  You can choose to turn either the music OR the sound effect on/off on the main menu. Separate controls for each. I ended up using the Player PRO 4.5.5 developer kit. Sound-Trecker was just headache after headache converting the inline assembly and pascal references buried all over the place in the glue files. I'm sure most of you will recognize the MOD playing in the background. Stardust Memories by Jester. If you want to play with adding your own music, you will need ResEdit, PlayerPRO 4.5 (registered) and a 4ch MOD file. I only included the import decoder for MOD to save space, so no XM, IT, S3m, etc.. It's quite the workaround to get the music INTO the resource fork.. I may write a little 'how to' thread separately so when I forget how I did it in 3 years I can remind myself, and it might save someone else some headache. 🤣 Also, here's a badly shot game play video. 😂 Running on real hardware. A Colour Classic MYSTIC (so... an LC575 with a smaller screen?) 🤔 68LC040, runs at full frames with music and sound FX playing. 👍 Hard to hold the camera steady and PewPew! at the same time! 👾👾👾👾👾 Now to get it running smoothly on 68030 without having to disable all the nifty effects! As always, comments, requests, anything, please message me! Aaron/DW Dark Systems BBS | |
Posted by: DW1992 on 2026-01-28 13:32:10This is just the kind of stuff I was hoping to see, someone writing software just for funsies! Cheers is2scooby! 🙂 and cheers iantm, 🙂 I've learned a LOT working on this ove r the past month. Lots more to do, but it's starting to come together! 🥳 It's stuffed using Stuffit Deluxe 5, but I can change the version no prob if you want. I've been trying to fix up and write "proper" 🧐 comments in my source, once that's done I'll share the whole CodeWarrior project with the included resource file, music libraries, etc... Would be awesome to see more little games and applications for these old machines. 🥹 Aaron/DW Dark Systems BBS | |
| Posted by: wthww on 2026-01-28 22:23:23 This is awesome! So fun! Great job! | |
| Posted by: Byte Knight on 2026-01-29 18:56:25 Don't know how I missed this, but luckily someone uploaded it to my BBS! 😎 I was not expecting stereo music to come blasting from my MBP speakers when I fired it up in Basilisk II. Fantastic job so far!! | |
| Posted by: iantm on 2026-01-30 04:24:09 I'd forgotten that perhaps the version matters… 😛 I'll get 7.1 running on my SE/30 and vMac and use 5.5 to see if that helps, can't wait to try it out! Would you be able to share on Github? I want to write a markdown editor for my own use and will share eventually. | |
Posted by: DW1992 on 2026-01-31 06:40:35This is awesome! So fun! Great job!Thanks wthww! It was a lot of fun making, started remembering (eventually) a lot once I got going. lol | |
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