Lil' Digger 3: It's a Trilogy! by CF207

Lil' Digger 3: It's a Trilogy!

Like many of my previous Ludum Dare submissions, this game is a game for the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (aka the NES).

In Lil' Digger 3, you must guide Dignan through various mazes. In accordance with the theme of LD51 ("Every 10 seconds"), if you don't make it to the exit in time, the world resets and a new maze is generated.

This game uses the VRC7 mapper and includes music composed for the sound expansion chip in the VRC7 mapper. To play, you'll need either an emulator or a flash-cart and audio-modded NES.

Uncompleted Work

I had hoped to add an item that Dignan could acquire which would extend the 10 second timer and prevent regeneration of the maze.
I also wanted to add enemies and some basic weapons.

Unfortunately, neither of these are in place because:

I'm rusty. I haven't written any NES code in several months and I haven't written a complete NES game since LD43.
I prioritized adding music since non of my previous NES games had music.
I refactored my empty-nes project for writing NES games while waiting for inspiration regarding the theme to strike.

Technical Details

This game is written in a combination of C and 6502 assembly language.
Mazes are generated randomly using the Growing Tree algorithm.
The random number generator is a Galois LFSR.
The VRC7 audio expansion is a cost-reduced version of the Yamaha OPL chip used in classic Adlib and Sound Blaster cards.

The Galois generator has a long period, but a lot of the mazes look the same. I'd hoped to investigate a different construction for generating random numbers.

I've implemented the most basic version of the Growing Tree algorithm. It would be interesting to implement some of the selection options disussed in the linked article to generate mazes with different characteristics.

Link	https://github.com/cfrantz/ld51
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/lil-digger-3-its-a-trilogy

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Ale

04. Oct 2022 · 01:26 UTC

Oh shit this is a real NES game, that's super cool! I've wanted to do a PS Vita homebrew game myself for LD, but the last few times I've tried, I ran into time issues since having to work with a custom engine on top of making the game is not easy. I imagine NES development is many times harder than on the supercomputer that is a Vita by comparison, so I'm definitely impressed.

The game itself was short and sweet. I actually like that there's no item to extend the time. Deciding whether to take the risk and run down a path, or wait 10 seconds for the next level change (and hope the path in front of you opens up) is a pretty interesting mechanic. I definitely think it's more fun than simply walking through a linear maze would be.

The music was excellent, and the graphics were too. Overall I had fun with this, so good job!!

Jimbly

04. Oct 2022 · 02:29 UTC

That's pretty cool, nice job on getting an NES game done =). I had tons of trouble on the Ocean, the map generator _kept_ generating a new map where my only path was away from the exit, I'd go 5 seconds down it, not make any progress, come back to where I was, and let it re-generate, and I'd always be just a couple steps from the exit... Does it make the map starting from where the character is and intentionally make it a long way to the exit, or did I just keep getting unlucky? ^_^ I wish the movement was a little smoother, I kept getting stuck on corners.

Music was nice, I didn't realize you could get that kind of sound out of an NES!