Planet X16

[The 8-Bit Guy]

planetx16 title.png (31.67 KiB) Viewed 24314 times

Planet X16 is finally ready. If using this in the emulator, BE SURE to capture the mouse by pressing CONTROL-M, otherwise the game will be hard to control.

Instructions are included as both an ASCII file for your modern PC and a PETSCII file that can be viewed with the built-in text editor. Just type EDIT "USERGUIDE.TXT" to see it.

screenshot2.png (31.48 KiB) Viewed 24314 times

[desertfish]

Fantastic!

The first triple-A game has arrived

[quantamm]

Maybe it's a silly question, but how do you actually run the game? I've got the emulator downloaded and running and I've got the game unzipped in another directory beside the directory where the emulator is at. But I have no idea how to actually point it to the game and run it. In DosBox, you mount the game directory and then change to that drive and run the game, but I haven't found the equivalent set of steps for the X16.

Before anyone yells at me to just RTFM, the Web emulator (https://www.commanderx16.com/webemu/x16emu.html) just shows a Basic program, the User's Guide (https://github.com/X16Community/x16-use ... _guide.pdf) looks to be mostly about writing Basic, and the Docs link (https://github.com/X16Community/x16-docs) just has programming guides. The UserGuide in the PlanetX16 zip is tips for playing the game, but no instructions on how to run it.

I'm looking for a quick start or getting started guide.

[ahenry3068]

DOS "$"
DOS "CD:GAMEPATH"
DOS "$" (Gives you the directory listing)
LOAD "GAMEEXEC"
RUN

[ahenry3068]

Also copy the directory underneath the Emulator folder, not beside it. When you start the emulator it's going to see it's folder as "Root"

[pixel_shade]

8-bit Guy, let me know if you need help with palettes and re-coloring of your tile-sets. I am quite used to pixelart and color downscaling. I am pretty confident that I can make very dynamic 16-color palettes for Planet X16, with hue-shifts and color blending... if 16 colors is the limitations per tileset. I think we can create something that is even perceptually close to the VGA version. Here are some examples:

I remade Final Fight in 16 colors with the primary purpose of keeping all the shades found in the arcade (256colors+) The reason being that the AtariST and Amiga versions looked atrocious at 16 colors.

It ended up being quite duochromatic due to the massive amount of skin tones used, but still, it is still leaps and bounds better than the original. With 32 colors on the other hand (16 colors for background and 16 color for characters),I think it would've been easy to fool people that it was the arcade version.

I also created this palette and texture assets for the Amiga game Dread. Also 16 colors:


Both these examples have their own distinct style, but I could make a palette that cover more of the RGB-range with colors that blend well together. That way you could (as an example) use yellows, greens and blues together when coloring trees and the trees will still be perceived as green by the player but they will have much more color/contrast depth, while also preserving more of the VGA shades.

It would honestly just be fun messing about with the assets (if I had access to them) and see what I can come up with.

[Ed Minchau]

8-bit Guy, let me know if you need help with palettes and re-coloring of your tile-sets. I am quite used to pixelart and color downscaling. I am pretty confident that I can make very dynamic 16-color palettes for Planet X16, with hue-shifts and color blending... if 16 colors is the limitations per tileset.
...
It would honestly just be fun messing about with the assets (if I had access to them) and see what I can come up with.

Good news! There's a palette of 256 colors available, and each one is 12 bits, 4 each for red green and blue. You're going to have a lot of fun with the X16.

[pixel_shade]

Good news! There's a palette of 256 colors available, and each one is 12 bits, 4 each for red green and blue. You're going to have a lot of fun with the X16.

I mean, the graphics of the CommanderX16 feels kind of limitless for a pixel artist to be honest, I often get overwhelmed if I have more than 16-32 colors to use. And I'm used to work with 12-bit base palettes due to work on the Amiga. 8-Bit guy mentioned in his latest video (the one about Planet X16) that due to the 128KB of videoRAM and him wanting to make use of a bitmap layer for a UI, he was left with 16 colors for the tile-set and 16 colors for the sprites. And when I looked at the video of what he had done, it actually looks quite good and I have to commend him for experimenting with this stuff on his own. But I could also see areas in which I could probably massively increase the perceived amount of colors for the game. Primarily using hue shifts and color theory, to make the game come much closer to the detail found on the VGA assets.

[fonic]

Very nice! Getting DUNE II vibes here... Love the fact that there is no fog of war.

Hopefully, there'll be a version 2.0 that addresses the most prominent shortcomings (builders getting stuck in buildings, missing rectangle select using mouse cursor, tooltips for building/unit production, improved path finding algorithm, viewport indicator in minimap).

Well done, David!

[kamnet]

Having never played any of the previous games, I decided to jump right into here!

I really dig the game. I'm not coordinated enough (yet) to make use of the hotkeys, so my mouse is staying quite busy. I'm barely making it, but a win is a win! I've got a strategy developed that's helped me shorten a game on Normal mod from 45 mins to just under 30. Figuring out the missiles was a pain, but once you know, you know, and that's fun to just let 'em have it and then send in the light tanks to clean up.

And then I try Hard mode... anybody have any luck on Hard level? My strategy for defeating Protoids in Normal is not working in Hard, and everything I've tried for the last hour hours just isn't good enough, fast enough or just enough before what meager force I am able to build is wiped out. I've been at it for four hours!