This is my submission for Ludum Dare 51: 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.
- 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-nesproject for writing NES games while waiting for inspiration regarding the theme to strike.
- 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 mazes with different characteristics.