Game in progress : Cavern Challenge

Hi, I'm currently working on another Boulder Dash clone (plus some additions from BomberMan).

Those, like me, who loved this fabulous game from the 80's should appreciate Cavern Challenge as well.

This game is mainly intended to be multiplayer, the goal being to collect more diams than your opponents.

It can be played by up to 4 players on the same computer (in splitted screens) and up to 8 for a network game.

Least but not last : According to me, a huge advantage over all other BD clones : levels are all randomly generated. No more boring to play millions of time the same one !

The version I invite you to try is far from completed but it is playable.

Limitations are :
- Network part 90% implemented but desactivated for the moment.
- No sounds / no music.
- Graphics borrowed from BlitzBoulder.

How to play:
-----------

On the first screen, choose how many players will take place in the game with keys F1-F4.
Then press CONTROL to start the game.

Upon map is generated, you can press F12 to generate a new one.
Press again CONTROL to start the game.
Press ESC to go back from running game, standby screen, title screen and then out of the game.

Controls are as follow:
- Arrow keys:
arrow keys : Control the player.
right control : Fire a bomb.
right shift + direction : Eat contiguous cell without moving.

- qwxc:
Q (A on qwerty keyboard) : Up.
W (Z on qwerty keyboard) : Down.
X : Left.
C : Right.
left control : Fire a bomb.
left shift + direction : Eat contiguous cell without moving.

- numpad 1234:
numpad 4 : Up.
numpad 1 : Down.
numpad 2 : Left.
numpad 3 : Right.
numpad 0 : Fire a bomb.
numpad . + direction : Eat contiguous cell without moving.

- insert/supr/end/nextpage: guess


You can use any plugged joystick as well.


[edit] NEW URL !!!
The archive can be found here : http://perso.wanadoo.fr/chrisgames/CavernChallenge.zip


Comments are welcome.

Hey, I expect this is a windows only file, but these games are always cool and it sounds like you've got some good features planned. I don't think I've ever seen one of these in multiplayer.

Yes, I'd be interesting in checking out your game, as I'm writing an 80s-style arcade game myself... Mine should be done, as I have rewritten the whole project from the ground up. Should be interesting to find out about your game, too, so I'll certainly stay tuned for yours.

This sounds cool. I love boulder dash and always wanted to write one. Can you post a screenshot?

Here there are :

Small graphics, one player :




Split screen, 4 players :




Big graphics, 2 players:

All good stuff.

Is there a way to do big graphics for one player?? I found myself squinting like mad at the small graphics.

Also seemed to be a bit of graphics corruption/flashing when the msg box at end of level displayed over the purple stuff???

Good fun though.

um, not sure if its just me or my computer or whatever, but anything that moved started flahing purple, including the player.

I will soon add the possibility to :
- Switch between big and small gfx size.
- Change screen resolution.
- Network play (only need to ducoment it).
- Use bonus.


Graphics bugs are there since I tried to optimize the drawing routine.
I will work on it also.

Many thanks for your remarks.

I forgot to mention : I changed the URL

It's now : http://perso.wanadoo.fr/chrisgames/CavernChallenge.zip

I like the look of big graphics too, these would be bestfor single player.

Well done!

Have you written it in blitzplus?

Could you make different screen resolutions possible?

It's really small on bigger resolutions!

A comment about random levels: Well in theory this sounds good, but to be honest I like the idea of a level made by a human and tested by a human. I've playe Diablo a lot and can say that random stuff works of course, but I'd have prefered some sort of human "design" behind it.

Maybe a combination of human + random to give it an extra touch.

Hmm, looks a lot like a GBA port to me, or a possible one, or even the DS, yeah... Better hope that Miyamoto-san won't get ideas from your game, it looks like something he would want. Either that, or I'm a little "Nintendo-crazy" this evening...

heh, i went even easier when i started my boulderdash game...i just used the boulderdash gfx...if it ever finish it i'll redo all the gfx.

I love it! Reminds me of shareware games that I used to order 15 yrs ago by mail for 8 bucks.

Keep it coming!

Reminds me of a game called Caverunner on the Amiga, that was pretty fun.

Uhh, hey, this gonna be, like, uhh, similar to Bomberman or something?

Many thanks everybody for all your comments. I feel this game helped to reveal your nostalgia :)

I'm working on a major evolution of the gameplay : instead of dumbly collect all the diams, each player will have to collect only one kind of them (materialized by a number) and avoid at any cost all others !

For each game, all players will have to complete a contract : collect a certain amount of diams (determined by a difficulty level).

Of course, taking bad diams will give you penalty which can make you fail to complete the contract.

Trust me : this really improve a lot the pleasure of playing the game : now I really love it !

In few days I will upload a new release in which you'll find :
- The possibility to change resolution, windowed/full screen and toggle between little and big gfx.
- Now all rocs and diams fall randomly on left or right (in previous release, they tried to fall at left then at right).
- The possibility to specify to which server to connect for a client (I known this was a mandatory feature).
- The new gameplay I spoke about just above.
- Bugfixes I surely forgot.

For this next release I prefered to focus on new features so graphics bug will still be in.

See you.

Done, I'm back with this new release version 0.3.0 featuring all I described above.

Go get it at : http://perso.wanadoo.fr/chrisgames/CavernChallenge.zip

I'm looking forward for you comments.

Hi again, I took over the development in BlitzPlus and started from scratch a new release using BlitzMax 1.20.

In this release it's not possible to release bombs and there is only one life (press F12 when you loose).

Go get it at http://perso.wanadoo.fr/chrisgames/MaxCavernChallenge-0.4.1.zip (linux and windows version included).

Waiting for your comments ...