itch.io

Interesante historia. Aunque la tendré que rejugar ya que en la primera pasada he acabado en "bad ending".

Excelente ambientación a la cual contribuyen sus magníficos gráficos. La banda sonora es excelente también. Muy bien elegida, creo yo.

Le pongo un 4 porque aún está inacabada, tal y como comenta el autor, y le faltan algunos gráficos que incluir.

It's a trimmed down version of Elite. Only jump between planets and commerce. No combat cause no more memory in Basic to implement combat sequence. But If I redo it in machine code I could optimize things much more.

Yes... I would like to redo it in machine code and with some 3D. Let's see if I can do it. ;-)

I must look at market prices algorithm. The slaves price bug is something that must not happen. Probably I've trashed something when translating  the formulas from Excel to BASIC. Whenever I've some time I will try to fix that bug and improve keyboard response times. Thanks for your comment!

Thanks Jupiter!

Also I've spotted a bug in Slaves market Price thanks to your video! O_O

Ok. Done! I've uploaded version 1.1 with market bug fixed.

Ops. Will look into that bug!

And yes, no fuel consumption. All related with refueling and buy modules for you ship have been left out due to time constrains.

Yes. Keyboard response is not as good as I want it to be. I've had no time to redo the keyboard code to optimize it. I've used the "trick" to make a BEEP whenever a key press is detected. But I know that's not enough.

Will try in future versions look around this problem... and others the game have. The game is "crude" but playable. And I want to attempt, in the future, to convert it to "machine code", perhaps via a Basic compiler, to speed up things.

But now is time to try all the games people has submitted to this Jam! :D

Thanks for the feedback!

Finally! Finished!

Due to memory restrictions has been imposible to fit the combat mini-game I've had created. Perhaps I will see if I can optimize some things to fit it. So finally the game is about exploration and trading around the Galaxy.

As I said has been funny to program in an environment so restricted that, each line you type, you must think in terms of optimization. I've been doing tricky things to fit all this in memory and also to make things as faster as I can. Using string arrays to store byte numbers instead of declaring number arrays that waste memory. Unwraping loops to make things faster. Caching and precalculating data to speed up local map redraw.

Thanks all for this nice jam!!!

Finishing and uploading my game! Thanks!

Nice!!!

I only need some time to finish things. Promise to release a playable version today.

I others don't complain about late submissions, of course.

Finally can't finish in time. Sad. :-(

Anyway has been a great experience to return to the old days.

I will try to publish  a version playable here in itch.io.

20 levels are a good number. The same number as Manic Minner has. :D (if I remember well)

Things progressing... this weekend I've had time to code the galaxy map, the local system map, the space-combat module, the UDGs for "enemy" ships, debug some errors in the planet-name generator algorithm, start to polish the interface, add some beeps here and there... that's the good news.

The bad news are that I must finish the market logic and procedural generation algorithms, the market interface, the logic to travel from planet to planet, the docking "mini-game", and the advancement system (levels).

¡¡¡And I've only around 15Kbs free!!!

Sure! I've done it via INs. That way I can check many key pressed at once. But I've made some nasty tricks to check "bits" because ZX BASIC doesn't have binary operators to work at bit level.

Yes. It's a version of Elite. Trimmed down, of course. But all planets are there. Travel between systems. Trying to fit also economy. Docking and space combat but with no fancy 3D graphics. I've tryed 3D but it's slooooow on a 3.5 Mhz original machine. So 2D (or 2.5D) simplified should do the trick. Nothing overcomplicated.

Too much work on weekend. Hopefully I'm alone those days and can code from day to night. :-D

I understimated the complexity of my project, and overstimated the resources of Spectrum BASIC :-). Although I've tried to stay low on features, I've had problems in terms of optimizing BASIC code. I've forgotten how low on resources the Spectrum was.

Fitting 8 galaxies with over 200 diferent planets per galaxy is a complex task on such low resources. Also trying to make the gameplay cool giving a sense of freedom to the player, letting him to move between planets (and galaxies), trade and fight and, at the same time, maintain a not so ugly visual aspect is complicated on the limits that ZX BASIC imposes.

In fact, I've been the last two nights thinking on how to optimize the damn keyboard input. To make it as responsive as can be in a BASIC game.

That said, I think I can finish it near the time limit. Ah! and hope not to break the 500 lines limit imposed! OMG!!! o_o

I´m working on a Mac and on PC. Using BasinC on both. On Mac thanks to CrossOver to run BasinC and it runs smoothly.

Just some hours for the compo to start.

My procedural algorithms are ready and hope to be capable to fit all in "only" 500 lines of code. 

Another one joining. Will try to submit something. I will try because 30 years had been since my last program in Spectrum BASIC. :-)