PC version, SharpSCII Invaders, Minesnake

It's been a while, so here are various news:

PC-version of Numbertron

I am still working on the PC-version of Numbertron, and it is coming along ... somewhat nicely? Making PC games is tricky, I thought I'd spend a lot more time programming gameplay and figuring out how things should work, but instead I have to consider stuff like how to allow mouse & gamepad & keyboard controls at the same time and not having the mouse pointer interfere if a player is using another control method, and what to do if the gamepad someone is using is disconnected during gameplay. Hopefully some of these solutions I'm coming up with can be used on future projects as well.

I'm hoping to have the early version ready within a month or so. The graphics are mostly temporary, and the same is true for the sound effects. I need to get some music for it, too. Feel free to get in touch if you are good at making Commodore 64 music (there's a SIDPlayer plugin for the engine I'm using, and I'd like to use that for music) and would let me use some of your songs. There will be a number of different level types, coop & competitive multiplayer and various backgrounds.

As mentioned before, the plan is to provide an early version as a free bonus for those who have bought the MZ-version (either directly on Itch.io, via the Palestine bundle or through Sharpworks on cassette). The full version will be distributed as a separate game.

SharpSCII Invaders

Before starting work on the PC-version of Numbertron, I did a small and silly one-button game called SharpSCII Invaders, which I recently released on Itch.io. It's for the PC, but all the graphics were created using the character set for the Sharp MZ-80A computer. In fact, some of it has been created on a real MZ-80A. The sounds and, uh, "music" have all been programmed in BASIC SA-5510, and recorded using an emulator. It's not a great game, but it might offer half an hour of fun, and there are some neat cutscenes and jokes and stuff. The game is 100% free.

Minesnake

My first Sharp MZ-game, Minesnake, was once available on Itch.io via publisher Sharpworks. They've decided not to sell digital downloads, and removed the game from sale last year. I'm working on making it available again, but I need to make some changes first. For instance, I found out that making personalised copies of the game for those who paid was just a bad idea. I had to manually enter their names into the game's code, then compile it, then make an .mzf file of the compiled game and then send it to them. So I need to remove the references to that in the game before re-uploading. But I'm hoping to have Minesnake back on Itch soon.