You’ll have better luck asking the devs on this forum (or elsewhere) - people who have poured sweat into giving us fantastic, original games with excellent mechanics, great gfx and sound and fantastic routines that keep pushing the machine boundaries.
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Sorry, but my intention was not to offend.
You took offence because I said the AI is now better than most human developers? You do know that is because and not in spite of those same devs? Just another proof offence is taken, not given.
I did not take offence. That was a wild claim, which you have still not proved.
It is being proven every day, and I gave you recent examples you just don’t accept and that is fine by me. In any case, the AI is only that good BECAUSE of human devs. Not in spite of them. I have been developing for 32 years professionaly and 5 before that as an amateur. I know what I am talking about but this is just my OPINION. Not the word of god.
New version with
- Side HUD and taller game stage
- 2 player support
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Well, shit, and here I was yesterday looking at Iron Lord and admiring its gfx and use of real estate before moving to B.A.T. . Of course your game and its likes, which is a fun little port (not even original) for… 1985, is better than that or any other of the greats. Silly me! I’m sure all those games will be enshrined in the annals of Greatest Games Ever. R-Type 128? Nah, this is the better shooter.
Just do yourself a favor, stop making a fool out of yourself.
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Never said what you say. I specifically said “AI can now make technically better games for the CPC”.Games are not only technical execution. The other 90% is inspiration. I am making a fool of my self?
Dude, your post is still up. I quoted it.
Dude, it was a personal message. Look it up.
Oh? You’re still here?
Gentlemen, really calm down. This is about nothing. Carry on
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So I’ve tried the latest version. Having the status bar at the right-hand side to make the main game screen more like the original portrait ratio works quite nicely.
There does seem to be a new bug where, if the enemy takes your ship and you then shoot any other of the same type of enemy on the top row it releases your ship, even if the alien that took it is still alive.
I got to stage 24, and by that time it’s starting to get a bit harder. The enemy could maybe drop more bombs earlier on to increase the difficulty a bit quicker.
The enemies now can be avoided as they fly down which is more playable.
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@revive8bit You asked how to make them better. Please understand I am being constructive.
- Try to avoid slow down on an action game like this. Choose a frame rate budget 50fps, 25fps, 12.5fps and lock it to that and see if the AI can keep the game in budget.
- Sometimes it looks like there is graphics left behind or partially drawn? I saw something that looked like that in an earlier video of an earlier version. Make sure this doesn’t happen.
- Avoid where possible flicker, maybe use hardware double buffer/page flipping to prevent this.
- The sprite movement feels a bit ‘jumpy’ is it moving byte by byte horizontally? Could the sprites move pixel by pixel if it is.
There are a few other visual polishes that can help. They are minor but they do help:
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Before loading the title screen set the colours to black and once it has loaded then set the colours. This can look more polished than seeing it load in.
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When the game starts there is some graphical ‘corruption’ on the screen I think when program is loaded in/relocated? Set the palette to all black before and then set colours once the screen is displayed.
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Try a different font. A font like the one in Donkey Kong (CPC version, the mode 0 font under BONUS, matching a similar style to the mode 1 font used), may look more arcade like.
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The logo on the title screen looks like it has additional pixels around it and maybe it could be tidied up and a bit cleaner visually.
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Mix modes like Donkey Kong, use mode 1 for some text and mode 0 for graphics. Amstrad has 6 interrupt zones so something to work with there.
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For your logo try ‘ordered dither’ rather than the random dither. It may bring out the text a bit more in it.
After playing it a bit more:
In the image below, there is some corruption left behind (the blue), the % symbol near 55 is a bit hard to read, and the enemy on the left with yellow and red to me looks like it’s missing some graphics?
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@Slider271 I should hire you to test games!
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@Arnoldemu, thank you for your input. I will try those suggestions.
I have tested games in a professional capacity, happy to help!
Just to let everyone know, this user has been suspended, then banned, for abusive and frankly, vulgar behavior in PMs.
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Oh I’m sorry to hear that they were like that towards you. Well that’s OK, I’ll go play some better games 
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I’m not against the use of AI and I think as time goes on we’ll get a better understaning of the best ways to use it, but everything I’ve seen made with AI for the CPC so far has been a bit shoddy, and I think this “Galaga” is a good example.
As a generic shooter it looks all right, but it also doesn’t show any understanding what makes Galaga special. The sprites superficially resemble Galaga, but the movement and behaviour of the ships bears no resemblance. The enemies are even the wrong way around. Nobody who was a fan of Galaga would create something like this by hand.
Certainly you can crank out games rapidly with AI tools, but I think the lack of care is evident. It might be better than what the average person on the street could do, but it’s not up to the standard we see from coders in the scene or people prepared to put in the effort.
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