Waver CE
by epsilon5

A small project of mine that I completed earlier today. It took about three days to reach its current state, but hopefully it will be enjoyed by the Cemetech community for longer than that. Here's Waver CE!

Inspired by the wave mode in Geometry Dash, Waver CE tasks the player with dodging boxes that randomly appear from the right of the screen. Modifiers also appear, making the slope of your line higher or lower, or even reversing gravity. As you play, the speed of the program increases, inevitably leading to a loss.

The game features several customization features, allowing you to change the color of your player, the background color, and the color of the obstacles. Your colors are all saved, meaning that you don't have to reset them each time you run the program.

Finally, Waver CE includes a few options that can improve your game experience, accessed from the settings menu. You can disable or enable the opening animation and toggle on and off the FPS meter. You can also choose to reset your high score from this menu.

FAQs
Q: When can I download Waver CE?
A: As soon as it is accepted into the archives.

Q: Did this take time away from the development of DR1VE?
A: Not significantly. As mentioned earlier, this was a very quick project. Also, this will probably end up saving me time in the long run, since I figured out how to do several things that will be helpful in the development of DR1VE.

Q: What language is it in?
A: It is written in ICE for the TI 84 Plus CE.

Q: How does it run on the calculator?
A: It runs very well, getting from between 50-55 FPS. However, the gameplay experience will be significantly worse on CEMU, since it tends to run slower and lacks physical keys. This is best played on calc.

Screenshot



That's all. I hope you enjoy Waver CE!

Not a bad simple game! Reminds me of some combination of Tunnel and Flappy Bird.

Thanks, Tari! I appreciate your feedback. If anyone else has something small to be added or a general improvement that should be made, please post it here.

Download Waver CE here:
https://www.cemetech.net/programs/84pce/asm/games/WaverCE.zip

The game text is all flickery. Could you improve that?

Anyway awesome work! It's looking pretty polished; I'll have to give it a try.

Looks very nice, but I might suggest having a screenshot that just shows gameplay instead of a minute of menus and such beforehand.

Mateo: I can’t easily fix the flickery text, since it’s already drawing to a buffer first before displaying on screen. This is as smooth as it’ll get. I guess I could slow down the animation by 30-40%, and that might fix it. Should I do that?

Tr1p1ea- I will add a gameplay screenshot as soon as I get access to CEmu again.

Thanks to everyone for your input.

Of course you can fix the flickering. Just fix your code. There's no need to slow anything down.

Where is the flickering? I assume you mean that of the opening animation.

No, when you play the game you can literally see the bars being drawn over the text in the game. Plus the text keeps shifting because the font isn't monospaced which is super annoying.

I would suggest adding a change color palette button or a randomize all button instead of all of the color selectors you have now. If you have a good few palettes, you can just have the button cycle through them. I find that I'm happier with the color scheme when I have less choices . You could then put the individual color selectors in the settings screen. Just a thought. Keep up the good work! P.S. I haven't actually played it yet, just looked at the screenie

I’ve been on vacation the last week with just my calculator for coding (so no chance to work in C). So, I was working on Waver CE ver. 1.1. Here’s what I had done:

-fixed the flickery text
-added more options in the settings menu, with menu wrapping
-changed up the main menu to add johnbchron’s suggestions

I was working on those suggestions, but after a compilation error, I moved the uncompiled program to RAM and forgot to move it back. The program self-destructed, and I had to reset. This was entirely my fault.

Unfortunately, since the uncompiled program is gone, I can’t do anything until I get home, where a week-old backup is stored on my computer (the version you all have now).

I want to get this out soon, but it’ll take a little longer now. Although in my experience, making these things the second time always is faster and usually the program works better.

Anyway, sorry for my mistake. Just wanted to let you guys know why all these fixes have been late, and why I haven’t been working on DR1VE. Hopefully the slightly belated Waver CE ver.1.1 will make up for it!

Just checked out my backups for Waver CE. My latest backup is from 7/17, or the day before release. All I'll have to do is rewrite the finished screen, and then the things I mentioned earlier. Shouldn't be to hard to do. Stay tuned.

1.1 is eminent...

Does anyone want a Flappybird style game mode added in addition to the current one?

Btw, version 1.1 is about 90% ready now (besides this feature). I’ll post patch notes before I update it in the archives.

I have an idea.
How about a game mode where the colors are hard to distinguish between? Perhaps one where the colors change every so often, or more often proportional to the difficulty?
Flappy Bird mode sounds like a worthwhile game mode to implement.
Looking good so far

A seizure inducing flash mode... interesting. I’ll definitely think about it.

I’d have to put an epilepsy warning in, though.

And the UFO mode would be randomly triggered, like the gravity reversal things (at least that’s my plan for now).

EDIT- A question for you all- do you want me to polish what I have now and release it within the next few days (with 1.2 adding the UFO mode and the other features), or add all the big new features plus the stuff I have now later and in 1.1?

Making progress on the Flappy Bird mode. It now behaves as expected in both the regular and reversed gravity modes, but glitches out sometimes when gravity switches. Unfortunately, I lost my most recent version of Waver CE to yet another RAM reset (I think something weird happened when I ran Garbage Collect, moving the uncompiled version to RAM, and then a test version of the Flappy Bird mode wiped it out). I have a recent backup though, so things should be alright. I only lost the statistics section and the flickery text fix, and it should be a lot easier to make these things the second time Things like this won't happen once I switch to C and stop wasting my time programming everything on-calc. Expect more updates soon!

By the way, since this has been slightly delayed, I'm going to just go ahead and get the Flappy Bird mode implemented before I release 1.1, unless anyone seriously objects to this.

After many setbacks, version 1.1 is about 95% ready (including the brand new Flappy Bird mode). A lot has changed in this update, and I will let you know everything once I finish writing the patch notes and fixing the in-game about section. Here's what I still have to do:

-finish updating the readme 100% complete
-make patch notes 100% complete
-make a quick program that will let you transfer your old high scores and data over to version 1.1 (this will be included in the .zip folder) 100% complete
-fix the ingame about section, since the backup I built this update on had some issues with strings being too long and spacing being off 100% complete
-general preparation for release 100% complete

I really want to release this either later today or tomorrow, so stay tuned. I'll post patch notes and screenshots when they are ready.

EDIT- Patch notes for Waver CE version 1.1:

Gameplay
[added] new Flappy Bird style mode
[added] "Game paused" prompt when you pause the game by pressing [y=]
[improved] general graphics and smoothness with new double-buffered graphics
[improved] added border around modifier lines for added visibility
[fixed] "game text is all flickery" issue. See above.
[fixed] score and FPS meters would sometimes shift during gameplay. See above.
[fixed] FPS issue where the FPS would be displayed as 10000+ FPS at start of gameplay

Main Menu
[added] new palette options, which can be selected from "Change color palette"
[added] "Revert to last" option in the color palette and color finetuning menus. This allows you to revert your colors to that of your last program exit or exit of the settings menu.
[added] new options in settings menu
[improved] "Background color <>", "Player color <>", and "Obstacle color <>" removed from the main menu, consolidated into the "Finetune colors" menu
[improved] "Highscore" section now renamed "Statistics", and allows you to view your highscore, games played, and average score.
[improved] main menu "WAVER" logo now dynamically changes color to match that of the obstacle color. This improves readability.
[improved] in the opening animation, the box under the "WAVER" logo is now that of the player's color. This improves readability, and looks better.
[improved] you can now toggle menu wrapping on/off from the settings menu. When on, if you scroll past the top or bottom of a menu, the cursor will jump to the other side.

General
[added] subprogram WAVERCNV, which converts your WAVERHS save files to the new format
[added] night mode, which improves readability and aesthetic appeal of the menus when the background color is dark. On by default when the background color is black, off by default when the background color is black. Toggle on and off in the settings menu.
[improved] save file appvar is now automatically archived on program exit to protect against RAM clears
[improved] main menu "WAVER" logo is now stored in the WAVERSPR appvar to cut down on main program size
[improved] "New high score!" animation now finishes with black instead of dark green (unless the night mode is on, in which case it finishes with white).
[improved] you can now set the background color to black

EDIT 2- Here are some screenshots.
Gameplay:


Overview:


And again, CEMU is horrible for playing this game (so use a physical calc).

EDIT 3- Waver CE 1.1 has been uploaded to the archives queue and is awaiting review.

The game looks amazing!!, I like the GUI. Good job!!
I was wondering if you could explain how the jumping works??, does it just increase the Y-pos while decrease it?

Waver CE 1.1.1 is now available for download in the archives! Check it out here.

Version 1.1.1 changelog:

Gameplay
[improved] you can now use the up arrow to control your character instead of just the down arrow. This was in 1.0, but I didn't include it in 1.1 for some reason.

General
[improved] WAVERCNV subprogram now asks the user if he/she wants to continue before converting WAVERHS to WAVERDAT. This should protect against accidental running of the program.

Alvajoy- I'll answer your question soon, but it's sort of a long explanation that I don't want to get into right now.