In the original "Chiller", there was a level called "The Ghetto" and I wanted to do a "call-back" to this, so I spent this morning starting the design for a level that I'm calling "The Apartments". Using the word ghetto these days would seem a little non-politically correct.
When I say starting the design, it ended up being an almost complete design for the level, save some modifications that will probably need to be made to platform spacings, mushroom locations and some other embellishments (once I've thought of them).
The original brief to myself (i.e. what I dreamt up 5 minutes before pixelling commenced) stated that the window ledges were to act as the platforms and there was to be a couple of different coloured buildings for contrast on screen. Drawing the the fence, brick and window chars took no time at all and I had a basic layout within half and hour. However, it did look a bit plain with an all black background, even with my star, moon and cloud chars drawn in.
Then I had a brainwave, well as about as wavy as my ageing brain gets these days. Make the sky a different colour to previous levels and since this game is supposed to be set at dusk/night, dark blue made sense. I copied and reverse some existing chars (clouds, stars) to set on the night sky and then, as another "call-back" to the games of yore, used black chars to pixel in some silhouette skyscrapers in the background. What old games inspired this? Think "Ocean Software" and "Robocop". Consider this level, therefore, my "love letter" to those Ocean games that gave me hours of pleasure as a young teen.
Here is the level as it exists at the moment in "ChillED", my screen editor.
My Grandson did give it an initial thumbs up when I showed him this afternoon and wanted to "play" it straight away, but I still need to export the screen and colour RAM data and add it to my level data "includes" file. And then code the level set-up. That will be another day.
On a side note, after giving the initial level 3 design the thumbs up, my Grandson asked to play a few games on my C64mini, so we transferred the latest build of game over as well for a quick test. Chiller 2 seems to be C64mini compatible so far as well! ;)
Next diary entry...
