I mentioned in my previous post that I have started a new project. I learned a lot about code organization since the last time I worked on Explorer and I wanted to start fresh. This project isn’t as ambitious as Explorer is, so I should be able to complete it more quickly and build my nesdev skills.
Ramses Game
The new game is tentatively titled Ramses Game. It’s a single screen action/puzzle game with a cutscene-driven storyline. I’m using ca65 to assemble and the UNROM mapper.
Story
The story of the game goes like this:
Ramses (the hero) was kidnapped from his home by space pirates and sold at a slave auction in the Artajian system to a cruel master named Bonehammer. Now he finds himself on a monster-infested planet, trapped in a strange prison with a bomb strapped to his chest. He sees a hammer in the corner of the room. Curious, he picks up the hammer and the game for his life begins…
Gameplay
I got the idea to make Ramses Game while I was playing Dragon Quest V on the DS. There is a mini-game in DQV called Slime Smack, which is basically a touch-pen version of Whack-a-mole game with slimes:
Ramses Game has a very similar concept. The flow of gameplay looks like this:
There are a series of HOLES. CREATURES come out of the holes. You whack them in the SEQUENCE indicated before the TIMER runs out.
Successfully whacking all CREATURES in a SEQUENCE will add time to the TIMER and bring up a new SEQUENCE. Successfully completing a series of SEQUENCES (7-10?) will advance you to the next AREA.
If the TIMER ever reaches zero, you lose a LIFE. If you lose all your LIVES, game over.
Ramses Game will differ from Slime Smack some key areas though:
- You use an NES controller instead of a touch-pen. This is why I was working on up+B, down+A button combinations.
- A much larger variety of monsters with different abilities. I have a design document full of monster ideas that will make the game more fun and challenging.
- Multiple area themes, with matching monsters.
- Possibly bosses at the end of each area.
- Difficulty curve: at the beginning of the game there are eight holes and sequences of four monsters. By the end there will be ten holes and sequences of six monsters.
- Cutscene-driven storyline to give the game more depth and color.
Progress
I’ve made quite a bit of progress in the few days I’ve been working on it. I have a placeholder gameboard that displays. I have input-reading routines that successfully detect button combinations. When you whack a hole on the gameboard, you get a visual and audio cue. I made some dummy monster images that display up in the sequence indicator. Everything is coming along nicely. Here is a video of current gameplay:
I’ll post some code snippets next post.
