#galaga

Now everything is in a text file, and I've started drawing sprites. Both games will have a rendered background. And sprites. Each game has its own set of sprites. And its own small text section. Which describes what's happening.

It's fantastic. In both cases, but different. In terms of gameplay, it's a Galagaxian clone. Move left and right. And shoot. And enemies from above. In a line. Now I'll tell you about the art part. That's what it all started for.

Balag4C. This means that 4S is 4 colors. Again, the MS-DOS palette is SGA. I use only 4 colors. The white lines are the submarines themselves. Think of them as spaceships. The surrounding world is just water. But it's essentially the same as space. The blue background is water. The white is the outlines of the ships. Like spaceships. Only underwater.

Balag4C. Underwater. I had this idea a long time ago. This is Lake Baikal. It's probably cold. And deep. Very deep. That's the game. There's a crack under the water that leads downwards. A large underwater portal. And there's an underground ocean. Like in caves. There are underground rivers or large pools of water. And there's a civilization there. It's not known whether they know about this portal to the surface or not. But they're very busy with their own affairs in their underground ocean. The submarines look like spaceships—they're called Balags. And they swim there. And it's an action game or a shooter. And that's why there's such chaos. Everyone's shooting and swimming and busy with that. That's the idea.

Flynix. It's about space. About distant, dark space. So far away from here it's hard to imagine. And something unique is happening there. Mechanical evolution. Made of gears and all that. There are mechanical stars. Rust is ejected into space. And everything is so old and rusty. Flyniks are mechanical flies that live under a mechanical sun that spins like rusty, dark orange gears. And they eat rust. There's a rusty mechanical evolution there, which created these mechanical creatures. Rust and iron. A mechanical sun. And mechanical flies. Something unique is happening there, too. Some kind of chaos. Movement. Interactions.

Essentially, they will be roughly the same. Just some things will be different. Text and sprites. Graphics. I'm already formulating that. I'm continuing the idea of ​​these shooters. I've only just begun, so to speak. With a drawing and an idea. The story is a text screen. There are no gameplay features yet. The games will most likely be in 800x600 or 1024x768 resolution. They'll be based on SGA shooters, which are 800x600. So there will be a choice of languages. The text will be text. Sounds. MP3 music. Technically, it's all already been worked out.

I'm making two games at once for now because I just draw and compose. I finish one. I'm tired. I start another. That's the simplest. The creative process. This is a very initial stage. Starting with an artistic idea. Each game will have its own style of art. Both are fantastic. The second game, Flynix, is full-color, 256 colors. And the first, Balag4C, is in 4 SGA colors. The theme is deep space—deep ocean. Deep space—underground ocean.

Basic Pascal version 1.22 "Fly" – most newest version. In this version there are 2 new games! WinoFly, BasGa. And even more retro games! It is a pack of retro games with modern versions of Basic and Pascal.

Two games in this release. It so happened that in the winter and spring I used a new development approach. Both games are written in the Free Basic programming language. In the Vim editor. I've already made a note of that. Plus, both games are Galaxian or Space Invaders, and similar. I already have the groundwork, a template, and an engine for this. I've also made a note of that.

And now I've added a new component. New modules. For the first time, I've configured the use of third-party libraries for Free Basic. This includes working with sound and music. Working with text. And working with PNG graphic files. This was more challenging. It was a bit of a challenge for a programmer. It took a while. But I managed to overcome it. That's a plus and a positive.

Ultimately, I settled on these libraries, with versions specifically for Free Basic – FBSound, PngImage, and FreeType. FBSound is a library for sound and music. It can play MP3 files. PngImage is a library for conveniently working with PNG graphics. FreeType is a library for working with TTF and TrueType fonts. I have to thank these components! Excellent libraries!

And two games demonstrate this new approach. They are in the Galaxian and Space Invaders genres. The first game is about flies and insects. The second is about space and spaceships. The first is in the style of Windows 3.11, the second is like early CGA graphics games from MS DOS. Winofly is a game about flies and Windows 3.11. It's a vertical format. It features about 70 sprites with cheerful flies. Drawing them was a real blast. I love drawing! And I was able to apply my sprite-drawing skills to this game. The background is always white. It all feels like a Windows 3.11 window.

The levels are portals. There's cheerful music and sounds. The flies are arranged in a row. You're a fly yourself, and you shoot at them. You can move left and right. You can also shoot by pressing the spacebar. It's standard gameplay. Your score and level are displayed during the game. There are waves of enemies. The fly also performs a special move: it moves in a square pattern in the center of the screen. The flies also shoot at you, but not as often.

A fun and upbeat game about flies in an old Windows window. Bright flies. Sometimes they make cheerful movements. To add variety to the gameplay. And you move. To music. And with sounds. There really aren't many of them. Simple game menus. Another feature of the game is the screen size. In the main menu, you can select the zoom level. From 1 to 5. Use the left and right arrow keys. That's also a feature of this game. A vertical shooter. You can play in a very small window, or you can zoom in and reach almost 1080P. This is all made possible thanks to libraries. You can play music and sounds simultaneously. And it's so good to work with sprites in PNG format.

BasGa – Another game, like Galaxian and Space Invaders. Here I use the CGA color palette. There are four colors. But the palette sets can be different. For example, I used blue and pink as a base. And there are two palettes to choose from. In the main menu, you can choose which color palette to use: blue or pink. The background changes accordingly. It turns blue or pink. And the sprite set changes color. And the text color.

These are these square shapes. In the drawing. Like retro space. Everything is square. And you're like a UFO or something like Star Trek. A round ship. The game is also level-based. The levels are called "space" here. You fly deeper and deeper into space with each level. You complete levels. Every other level, the enemies create a structure with a gap. One row is full. The other is empty. Just for fun. They shoot. You move left and right. And you shoot with the spacebar. Everything is in the same concept. The style is new. There's music and sounds. It's 8-bit retro. Like the first Dendy games. Or a 286 processor.

Two rows of enemies. They just stand still. Kind of like a 286 processor, as I imagine it with CGA graphics.

And all these games have a choice at the very beginning of which language to play in—Russian or English. I use the FreeType library. And now I can write everything in font. In different languages.

Two games for this episode. And the episode title is "Fly." First game each. A whole summer ahead! Joy and fun! And retro games! Joy and smiles! Wishing everyone a positive mood this summer season! And beyond!

Basic Pascal version 1.22 "Fly" – most newest version. In this version there are 2 new games! WinoFly, BasGa. And even more retro games! It is a pack of retro games with modern versions of Basic and Pascal.