Roku Developer Program

[marcelo_cabral]

After finishing the port of Prince of Persia I decided to make a simpler platform game, using what I learned with the other project. So, in one week, working a few hours at night and two Saturdays I could finish the basic funcionality of Lode Runner, another classic from the 80's. 

There are four selectable options of sprites, the original Apple II, the Commodore 64, IBM-DOS CGA and Atari 8 bits. I also added three different level sets: the Classic (150 levels), Championship (50 levels) and Professional (150 levels).

The guards AI is not the original, I implemented a simple one, just to validate the animations. Will work next on it, the code and upcoming improments are available at:

https://github.com/lvcabral/Lode-Runner-Roku

As soon as I have the final version of the guards behaviour will create a private channel, for now checkout the preview video:
[youtube:3t9c89j6]jSCojR435eQ[/youtube:3t9c89j6]

[Komag]

Great work! Have you played Candy Bear? It's a Lode Runner inspired Roku game with a few different mechanics.

[marcelo_cabral]

"Komag" wrote:
Great work! Have you played Candy Bear? It's a Lode Runner inspired Roku game with a few different mechanics.

I didn't know about Candy Bear, just checked, but I'm an 80's guy, I do prefer to chase gold while running from bad robots, than be a bear collecting candies and afraid of ...well... bunnies 😉

[Komag]

Agreed!

[EnTerr]

YouTube seems broken today, videos take forever to start and then stutter and stop. At first thought it was me but see bitching on reddit.

@marcelo.cabral - oh man! You are doing such exceptional work reviving PoP and LR, is there any chance you can get them "published" for the Roku masses? I don't know what the legal status is, can these be considered abandonware or "licensed" from some dead-souls pool?

[marcelo_cabral]

"EnTerr" wrote:
@marcelo.cabral - oh man! You are doing such exceptional work reviving PoP and LR, is there any chance you can get them "published" for the Roku masses? I don't know what the legal status is, can these be considered abandonware or "licensed" from some dead-souls pool?

Both games are "live", they have current licensed owners, but there are several remakes on the wild and at open source repositories, and these seems to be not a problem for them, unless you start to get money for it. 
I'm not sure what would happen if I publish them as a free channel in Roku, because of the use of licensed material, but I don't want to be involved in any litigation for something I do for fun, in the other hand I would love to have more people enjoying and playing with my work.

I could "re-skin, re-name" and release it but the magic of nostalgia would be gone 🙂
Maybe I would come up with some other idea 🙂 for something nostalgic but original at the same time.

[marcelo_cabral]

I just created a private channel, enjoy: https://my.roku.com/add/LodeRunnerPreview

[Komag]

Great job, I'm impressed!

- I'm getting some slowdown at times (on a Roku 3), especially after final ladder appears
- Sometimes it seems to hard to attach to a ladder to go up or down, maybe just me though
- Would be nice if menus worked with horizontal remote as soon as that option is chosen
- Also, why not have * cheat to give an extra life, and << and >> permanently skip levels?
- Would be really nice to see Graphics preview instead of testing each version in-game

[marcelo_cabral]

<< Can't delete, so removed the content of duplicate post >>

[marcelo_cabral]

"Komag" wrote:
Great job, I'm impressed!

- I'm getting some slowdown at times (on a Roku 3), especially after final ladder appears
- Sometimes it seems to hard to attach to a ladder to go up or down, maybe just me though
- Would be nice if menus worked with horizontal remote as soon as that option is chosen
- Also, why not have * cheat to give an extra life, and << and >> permanently skip levels?
- Would be really nice to see Graphics preview instead of testing each version in-game

My answers:
- I'm testing in a Roku 3 as well, couldn't notice that, will double check. (are you using the pvt channel or the original code? I published a second release)
-That's true also in the original game 🙂 but Roku remote precision does not help either.
-Will try that.
-I'm planning to reorganize the keys and use << >> to dig in vertical mode, and have A and B as the cheat (just adding life/level no back)
-I'm planning to use DrawLevel() to create thumbnails for the "Select Level" feature I'm implementing (use it also when selecting the level set)