Commander X16

I decided to post a video update to YouTube discussing the latest things I've added to the game. It now has selectable difficulty. I am not going to push an update to the software library at this time, though, because I want to get the difficulty selection to be visible on the screen - but thanks to you guys here in the community, I decided that this would be a good feature to add, even though the original was just "you get what you get and you don't throw a fit."

P.S. - I -know- my mic sucks. I'll get a better one if I decide to keep making narrated videos on YT.

Request For Feedback:

I'm considering two different possible screen layouts for the title screen, showing the difficulty selection. In either case, the currently-selected level number is flashing to indicate that it's selected. Furthermore, there's a hidden 5th difficulty level "Dark Souls" - When Dark Souls is chosen on the existing layout (the full menu version) - Dark Souls slides up from the bottom, and it slides back off-screen if you select something else. In my mock-up version, it wouldn't bother doing that - I'd just make none of the numbers flash, but "Dark Souls" would be shown below as the difficulty level.

 

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  Which one looks better to you?
  


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  Does either / both / neither version give you the intuitive cue that pressing keyboard 1-4 is how to select difficulty?
  


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  In whatever case, pressing select on the controller will cycle through the difficulties as if you had pressed a key (skipping Dark Souls unless you do the "unlock" input)
  


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  Would this interface add confusion in the sense that pressing ANYTHING else is what starts the game?
  

The full-menu version is what's currently implemented, but I'm not completely happy with it, so I decided to do a mock-up of what my other idea is, and get feedback from the community as to which is more eye appealing and/or makes intuitive sense as to what you're expected to do.

Bear in mind that this all has to be done with sprites / graphics, as the one and only tilemap is devoted to the scrolling pipes/ground, and it would require implementing a raster IRQ to bring an area of writable text display up - so adding things like "press ANYTHING to begin" is not a simple task....

 

 

I like the latter one, where all the difficulty levels' descriptions are laid out for the user, instead of having to choose one to see its description.

Prefer B with difficulty levels labelled over A

I also prefer B.

Since the consensus seems to be the full menu, and that’s how it’s currently built anyway, I’m going to stick with that.

only 2 items of polish remain:

- fade in / fade out routine

- animated sparkles on the award medals

In what language do you write this?

On 6/7/2021 at 5:56 AM, svenvandevelde said:

In what language do you write this?

I wrote it in C.

2 hours ago, ZeroByte said:

I wrote it in C.

Nice work @ZeroByte. It is fun.