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Ever since Richard Eric M. Lope has truly given me the GOLDEN opportunity of programming the actual gameplay segments of “Frantic Journey”, here is a list of the many bugs that God Almighty has successfully enabled and encouraged and empowered me to wipe out so far:
• April 10, 2003
• Successfully killed the often discovered “power-up”-bug (the one that took place while the player’s ship gathers power-ups while invincible) at last!
• Added a SECOND Bright Ring Laser on the second option, for double the fun!! ;)
• Added a cool new 2D starfield!
• Implemented both the extend bonuses and the customized key controls (from the “FJ Test Mode”) to the actual gameplay itself!! :D
• Added the collision detection between three (3) of the Loose Option Weapons (Front and Back Ripple, Bright Ring Laser, and Fireball Tracer Shot) and the MANY enemies!!! ^_- !
• April 11, 2003
• Due to some programming limits of QuickBASIC 4.5, I had to remove the Loose Option Weapon “Grenade Spreader” to save some space in the programming of the FJ demo. Sorry. :(
• Added bullet-to-foreground (opaque) collision detection!!! ;D
• Something that you all have
desperately been waiting for:
FINALLY ADDED SOUND AND VOICES TO THE ACTUAL GAMEPLAY OF FJ, COURTESY OF DS4QB2!!!
• April 12-13, 2003
• Added a hot new “Loose Option Weapons indicator” on the bottom-left-hand side of the gameplay screen!
• April 14, 2003
• Added a yellow-to-red “blink” on the player’s ship to give some realism that that ship has just took a hit while NO shield is active! Pretty cool, huh? ;)
• Added an arcade-based continue feature! :D
• Killed a RATHER hard-to-spot “loose option” bug where, when a stage is cleared while *any* options were separated from their own formations, you were forced to play through much of the next stage with no options at all!
• April 15, 2003
• Successfully implemented the “pause” mode and replaced one of Cosmo-X’s timers (mainly in terms only of the invincibility of the player’s ship) with my own custom one — ;) — so that the invincibility time will last even when you take the game off of pause, unlike that other timer which did not make the grade for me at all due to the invincibility time rapidly ticking to the point of it suddenly running out already, even while the game was paused.
• Enabled the player’s ship a very brief moment of invincibility for each power-up gotten (this was done in such games as “Blazing Lazers” and “G-Darius”, and now it’s being done here as well! ^_^ )!
• Added a quick translucent background flash to let the player know that the player’s ship has just crashed into the opaque foreground (only after the invincibility time is up).
• April 16, 2003
• Updated the continue feature.
• April 22, 2003
• I discovered that on the computer in my room, many of the Windows 98 system files *suddenly* got deleted (apparently because of my own carelessness with it). :( Not only that, but I’ve suffered so MANY unwanted shutdowns and errors, and so, I had to format the hard drive, even on re-installing Windows 98. One problem: I ACCIDENTALLY DID NOT back up the FJ source code files (with my bugfixes and updates in it) before I started that format, and thus, it got deleted along with the old stuff. :o ! Was I flat-tempted to jump up and down and be real depressed over it? Most rather absolutely! BUT, did I bow down to any of it at all? MOST UTTERLY NEVER, as I just *had* to lean on the Lord God Almighty to enable me to take back the ground that was lost, rather instead of bawling and squawling about any of that accidental deletion, and so here I went with the recovering!!! ^_-=b !
• April 23-29, 2003
• Successfully restored ALL of the bugfixes and updates that I’ve already mentioned from before April 22, 2003, plus, it’s even better than it ever was. Period. PRAISE THE LORD!!! d=^-^=b !
• May 13-14, 2003
• Positioned the game stat-based variables to actually save them at different points of gameplay so that they will be well-preserved, EVEN in-between programs within this very project!! :D !
• Adjusted the extend bonuses a bit.
• May 16, 2003
• Adjusted the character set in one of the game’s fonts so that that set is *much* easier for the players to read. Definitely. ;-) !
• May 18-19, 2003
• Successfully replaced Cosmo-X’s palette-fading routines with Rellib’s, since I found out that some of the colors DID NOT fade in correctly (which, by the way, took place right before the change was made).
• Customized a new palette for the “Flaming Prominence Stages”, and, added a *convincing* new gamma effect on the flames, AS WELL!!! Have a look!! ^-^ !
• Added a custom horizontal-scrolling seamless tile engine to the “Flaming Prominence Stages”!! (Just plain goes to show what my 12+ years of QuickBASIC programming experience can do, huh? (^-^)// )
• September 30, 2003
• *SUCCESSFULLY* implemented the new “Mode-7”-like effects for Level-1, and I plan to add even more of them, so just hold on tight!!! :D !!
• October 11, 2003
• Implemented a custom explosion system!! Now, when a certain mid-sized enemy is destroyed in this game, they blow up in a MOST satisfying way (as shown within this changing screenshot!)!!! (^-^)v !
• February 26, 2004
• Adjusted the gamma glow of the flames in the “Flaming Prominence Stages”, just to reduce some epilepsy here for the players! ^_^
• April 4, 2004
• Updated and enhanced the “game title”-design at the title screen, thereby making it look *hotter* than ever!! ;-) !
• August 24, 2004
• Added ANOTHER custom explosion system, only this time, it will be reserved for (at least!) bosses exploding, as you will see in this sample screenshot!! This new system involves amazing and very gigantic explosion patterns like those you see on Gradius III (arcade version) and Gate of Thunder and Lords of Thunder as well, by the way! (^-^)v !
• December 6, 2004
• SUCCESSFULLY killed off a *rather rare* bug where, when the player’s ship is destroyed when the scrolling stops at the end of the stage and the explosion moves fast at a hard right going outside of the screen, the ship re-enters at the next stage with NO life-energy bars left. And now, the ship will not advance to the next stage unless it is active and alive, just like it is supposed to be!!! ^_-=b !
• May 12, 2005
• Transferred this ENTIRE project in its entirety over from QuickBASIC to the newer (and *absolutely* hotter!!) FreeBASIC for a total complete makeover/reprogramming! This allows for full uncompromised support on at least Windows 9x/ME/2000/NT/XP — DIRECTLY — without fumbling around with EMS/XMS/DS4QB2 problems and conflicts, you know? ;D !
• Programmed in the new “Mode Select” screen in FreeBASIC, so please take a look!
• The simulated (so far) new ram-rom checks are in place now, just to heighten this experience like never before to make it more like a FULL-BLOWN arcade machine instead of just your regular FreeBASIC game!!! (^_-)v !!
• May 14, 2005
• Successfully got done the custom translucent pixel-only routine as part of the re-coding of this game itself in FB! ^^
• June 2, 2005
• Customized and prepared a new scalable font routine (ala RelLib!) as part of the reprogramming here!!
• June 11, 2005
• Faithfully re-created one of the game’s fonts — only this time, it is gonna be an *extended* character set with custom scaling, italicization (ala RelLib again!), custom gamma effects in 8-bit mode, and custom colors as well!!! (^-^)//
• July 11, 2005
• SUCCESSFULLY balanced the frame-rate to this game (using the *very* awesome FB “Sleep” timer!), so that it should operate properly on at least about all computers from Pentium III up!!! ^_-=b !
• August 2, 2005
• With the pointer order for FreeBASIC now changed a bit (starting at v0.14b that I was using at the time of this very bugfix!), when I first compiled the program there, it gave me the three warning notices,
in which each one of them said:
warning level 0: Suspicious pointer assignment
.....and then later on that day, I attempted to get rid of them on the programming of FJ by just simply replacing this:
offset = image
with this.....
offset = cptr (byte ptr, image)
.....and they TRULY WORKED 100%, *without* any warnings or run-time errors whatsoever. d=^-^=b ! You know what, it took me two (2) compiles to get it all to operate successfully on this!
Thank you so truly much, Richard Eric M. Lope (Relsoft), for providing me this wonderfully awesome fix indeed!!! :D !
And, I *sure* plan to bump up the challenge of this game to at least the level of DoDonPachi (Atlus/Cave; 1997; Arcade), Raiden Fighters Jet (Seibu Kaihatsu; 1998; Arcade), Strikers 1945 III (Psikyo; 1999; Arcade), and Progear (Cave/Capcom; 2001; Arcade) — even to where the intensity of the enemy bullets is gonna be EXTREME at times. Meanwhile, if all goes well here in FB (from the Experience Version on up!), the fully-finished version of FJ will feature:
• At least 13 HUGE LEVELS, each with at least four (4) stages!
• Up to a possible three courses (or more!) to select from to test your sheer guts!!
• Bosses that can *literally* fill the whole screen with shots!!!
• LOADS more secrets and surprises!!! :D !!
• Over FIFTY (50) different and all-original music tracks, all by Adigun Azikiwe Polack himself!!!
• Directly for Windows 9x/ME/2000/NT/XP, *without* the involvement of MS-DOS, ever!!
• Dazzlingly hot and dramatic animé-based cinema sequences as smooth as even the most finest silk!!! ^_- !
• .........AND MORE!!!
I promise. Just stay tuned now as I continue this intense project to help make it the truly best shmup there ever is!!! ^_^=b !
From the words of Adigun Azikiwe Polack, one of the official founders of Aura Flow.
