Progress report 7


After releasing the previous preview, work continued and brought the changes listed at the bottom.
Then, the unforeseen happened: a friend came home, we talked about books and I mentioned an Amiga game that, inspired by a book, I had started in 1994 and never finished; the day after, I fired up the game and I could not resist anymore - I ended up remaking the game from scratch. Now that I am done with that game, I resumed the work on a certain book (which actually should have priority over any game). Given that I do not know how long it will keep me busy and that real life might bring major changes in a not so distant future, I thought I had better release a new preview of QUOD INIT EXIT IIo that includes the aforementioned changes.
However, I could not. My Commodore 64 games have been all developed on an AmigaOne XE G4 running AmigaOS 4, and lately that machine (seems to have) died, so for a while it was impossible to continue the development of QUOD INIT EXIT IIo. I have finally adapted the development environment and the game makefiles to the (underpowered) machine I use for all my other projects and got the game to build again (as shown in the video).
Hopefully, a new preview will be out soon(-ish).

CHANGELOG

* Re-added stopping of food/drinks generation after Zampo starves (found a way to do it basically at no cost).
* Saved 234 to 244 bytes (depending on the zone) by reorganizing a bit the memory map once again.
* Saved 257 to 266 bytes (depending on the zone) by moving the zone-complete transition from the zone program to a separate program.
* Made a few minor optimizations.
* Made various other minor improvements.
* Fixed the portals graphics update and a CPU load peak (which might even cause a frame skip) in the FUN PARK zone (a routine used the wrong condition code in a branch, so the portals graphics update was triggered also when it should have not been).
* Fixed turbofart flame at the end of the zone-complete transition (it was shown for 2 frames instead of 1).
* Fixed the handling of collisions against baddies when Zampo is being relocated (if Zampo had been in PIG-OF-STEEL mode, collisions were detected and baddies were killed).
* Fixed the lighting property of a FUN PARK zone tile.
* Worked on the FUN PARK zone map: extended the layout; improved the graphics; fixed an off-by-one constant definition that made Zampo teleport to the wrong place when taking the bottommost portal from its left border.
* Worked on the CLIFFS zone map: made it 16 pixels taller (now it is 2048x944 pixels); extended the underground part.
* Worked on the FORTRESS zone map: made it 16 pixels taller (now it is 2048x896 pixels); extended the underground part; touched it up in a few places.
* Worked on the frontend: restricted the selectable zones to the first one and any other reached previously; made the outro item activate only upon game completion (so, when the game has not been completed, it cannot be selected and only its silhouette is visible); added auto-selection of the joystick item when [UP] or [DOWN] is pressed; added zones numbers in front of the zones names; made it smaller (so it loads faster).
* Worked on the preamble: made it smaller (so it loads faster).
* Worked on the documentation: extended/improved/fixed quickstart guide and manual.
* Worked on EasyFlash features: embedded and used EasyAPI to save the game progress permanently and thus have the frontend enable the zones/outro accordingly; ensured the LED is on/off when the cartridge is / is not in use; added cartridge name.

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