Jos : Special delivery

[jgroenendaal]

Hello everyone,

I’ve decided to dive back into game dev with BBC BASIC! Last year, I attempted a few other projects that didn't quite take off, so now I want to start with something simpler but hopefully fun.

The idea is a prequel to one of my previous games, Joop. This time, you play as a postman being hunted by a giant pig. Since it's a prequel, I’m going for a retro aesthetic: low resolution and a 4-colour palette (MODE 1), just like a classic BBC Micro platformer.

I originally came up with this idea when I was a kid learning BASIC on my Electron and BBC Master, but I didn't have the coding knowledge to pull it off back then.

My additional plan is to make it compatible with the A3000. I remember Joop ran at around 12fps on that machine, but I think I can get this one running at a smooth 25-50fps on an ARM2 Acorn. For now, though, I am doing the main development using BBCSDL.

[Ric]

Have you got any links to YouTube videos or any way of showing the game in its current form?

[jgroenendaal]

Hey Ric,

Actually I never done that before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC5I7qQJXkI
It's a very early version, so I'm still struggling a bit with the playability. It aims to play closely to Chuckie Egg and Magic Mushrooms, if you are familiar with those classic BBC Micro games.

I used a tool called ScreenRec to capture this footage, but the compression is terrible. I'm sure there are better tools out there for recording YouTube videos, so I'll have to look into that.