Space Shooter Demo + Questions

[MausBoy]

I've been working nonstop on a new game for the 2600 called Project Eden, it's a pretty ambitious project but I've learned how to work inside and around the console's limitations.

 

The main idea of the game is to take a city of humans from a dying Earth out into space to find a new home planet. Some levels are side scrolling shooter levels where you have to steer the egg shaped city through asteroid belts, destroy attacking alien vessels, etc. If your ships outer hull is destroyed, your game is over. There are a few power-ups, but nothing special.

 

In these levels you get three weapon types, depending on how long you hold down the joystick button; small torpedos, large laser beams, and huge wave beams. There are a large amount of enemies in various shapes, sizes, and attack patterens, including huge boss ships.

 

You also have to land on alien planets to collect energy and supplies.

These levels play a little like a majorly tamed down Blaster Master, you drive around a rover and get out of it in some spots to explore.

You have a team of four each time you go out, you can switch between them at any time.

If all four die, your game is over.

Once you collect what you needed, you are spared the trip back to the ship, you go right back into space.

Eventually you get to New Eden, for one more collection of supplies to help build your new colony, and a large tedious on-land boss battle that requires the ship, the rover, and an exploration team. Good luck ever getting that far, this game is pretty huge for this system.

 

So anyway now the questions, because the majority of that is finished but nothing is set in stone:

 

What's been done to death in VCS shooters, and what is sorely missing?

 

There isn't room for huge diversity of enemies and power-ups, so what would be a good number of levels? Is it ok to have a large number of levels even if they are all a lot alike, just a little longer and with harder enemies? I noticed Vanguard really dosn't have many.

 

Do you really love or really hate anything that I described about the game so far?

 

Any ideas for things I could add to make the game more interesting?

 

If this makes it to cart, would you be interested?

 

WIP coming soon, that's a promise!

 

PS - All other Maus Games projects are temporarily on-hold, but will be finished this year. Nothing has been abandoned. Everything in Project Eden is doable with what I have to work with, so it will be released when finished, which will be soon at the rate I'm going.

 

edendemo.bin

Edited September 3, 2006 by MausBoy

[CGQuarterly]

Sounds really cool, so to answer your last question, YES I would be interested in a cart!!!!!

 

Chris

[Godzilla]

things i like ,especially when u have a 'team of four' as you describe, is where each of the members does something that the others don't and this requires thought/strategy on the players part to figure what is needed. as far as powerups go, i prefer some iconography that the player conciouslessly collides with which 'sets' the weapon being used, in a frantic shooter i don't want to have to worry about how long im holding the button, i want to shoot and shoot a lot. use gradients. all 2600 games look better with gradients :-) i prefer long, non repeating, environments with ever ramping difficulty (ala river raid, for example.) :-)

 

like yer avatar. have u read the art spiegleman book, maus? I just read the first one, my father bleeds history, and it was awesome.

[neotokeo2001]

I am always interested in new homebrews and hacks on cartridge. Sounds cool!

[+Wonder007]

I'll take a cartridge!!

[MausBoy]

Sorry if anyone thinks I suck because I've jumped the gun on announcing other projects, but I've learned a lot in between and this one is almost complete. Plus like I said none of those are abandoned.

 

Glad to hear there would be some interest in a cart, and thanks Godzilla for the advice that does help. I'll expirement with wearpon variations as powerups tonight. I have not read that book, but thanks for the compliment on my avatar. Also, i'm considering making the 4 members of the team each do a different thing, but really i only have a small number of variables to use and i'm already about out, not sure if that's doable. I'll experiment.

Edited August 22, 2006 by MausBoy

[MausBoy]

Ok, so now there are four weapons, and they are all obtained by powerups, that really hurt me on leftover variables. Those variables can be reused in rover and explorer stages though, so the same goes for them, four power-up weapons.

 

I'm considering specialties for the four explorers. I thought maybe a driver, a medic, an explorer, and a weapons specialist/bodyguard. Any suggestions for other possibilities? It will be hard to balance it so that if any 1-3 die off the remaining can continue on, and making it so that each person's ability dosn't give them a really easy time compared to the ones without it.

 

I was thinking about making it so that if anyone returns to the rover, the medic can heal them, but once the medic is gone people are s.o.l.; the explorer moves faster than the other; if the driver dies the rover moves much slower; and the weapons specialist has a better weapon than others, maybe the rover has limited attack abilities without him too ie can't pick up powerups.

 

I can't really have the weapons guy clearing a path either, I don't have the variables available to make the game memorize which areas have been cleared, enemies always return.

 

This project is definately a disturbing amount of work, I hope it pays off in being fun to play.

[jbanes]

Is this a bBASIC game?

[MausBoy]

Yes.

[jbanes]

Cool! Multisprite, I presume?

[MausBoy]

No, standard kernel, with flicker. There are too many awesome new things in the standard kernel to use the multisprite, and I prefer horizontal levels to vertical. If the msk had all the options of the standard, and could hold more than two sprites on one line at a time with the rest being anywhere, I'd use it.

 

I'm using player1 as the ship/rover/explorer/fired weapons, player0 as enemies/enemy fire, and the ball for some enemies and the powerups. The score has changed to a health bar.

 

So far nothing flickers enough to be annoying, I'm pretty happy with it. Plus I get multicolored sprites and variable height playfield blocks.

[+atari2600land]

Cool! Another game for the Batari BASIC archive! When will a WIP version get posted?

Edited August 23, 2006 by atari2600land

[MausBoy]

I'm not sure how long it will take for a bin, I still have so much work to do. This has the potential to end up being a 16k game, so you can imagine how much fun it is to muck around the source everytime I add something.

 

It's a double-edged sword creating a game I really enjoy; I keep going to test a level/area then playing it forever.

 

So far the only system limitation that has annoyed me is the tiny # of sprites. With too much flicker and fast-moving weapon fire, shots pass right through enemies. So I've had to concentrate on enemy AI and make it a real challenge to destroy each one, instead of a screen full of stupid enemies.

 

Feedback on this or answers to my questions anyone, please?

[+atari2600land]

Can we all see a screenshot?

[vdub_bobby]

I'm not sure how long it will take for a bin, I still have so much work to do. This has the potential to end up being a 16k game, so you can imagine how much fun it is to muck around the source everytime I add something.

 

It's a double-edged sword creating a game I really enjoy; I keep going to test a level/area then playing it forever.

 

So far the only system limitation that has annoyed me is the tiny # of sprites. With too much flicker and fast-moving weapon fire, shots pass right through enemies. So I've had to concentrate on enemy AI and make it a real challenge to destroy each one, instead of a screen full of stupid enemies.

 

Feedback on this or answers to my questions anyone, please?

It is very time-intensive, but you could do software collision detection rather than relying on the hardware registers.

[MausBoy]

I thought about using software collision detection, and I wasn't worried about the time/work, but it takes up just too much space and too many variables that I need for other things. I admit though that one on-screen enemy at a time kinda blows, I might cave.

 

a2600l - My work station and my internet connection are in two seperate places now, but yes; I will dig out a floppy and post screenshots this week. There is nothing impressive about the graphics though.

[jbanes]

I thought about using software collision detection, and I wasn't worried about the time/work, but it takes up just too much space and too many variables that I need for other things.

Have you considered using the temp variables? Then you could compute each corner and test without wasting any of your allocated variables. Since you only need the values temporarily anyway, it makes sense.

[MausBoy]

Yes I had, and there are also the AUX variables, but then I need variables to store each on-screen enemies x/y's, the x/y's of their weapon fire, whether or not their weapon has been fired, how many hits their shield can still take, etc.

It's something I've spent a lot of time on, and I haven't found any good solution because;

Even if I dump some features for the sake of having a lot going on with enemies, that creates a ton of nasty flicker, yuck. Considering that the enemy ships have decent AI, do their best to avoid your weapon fire, give chase, can cloak/put up shields, etc - and considering that the space shooter part is just one of many aspects of gameplay - I think one enemy at a time is ok. I wish I had some examples of 2600 space shooters that people have enjoyed or hated, and why.

 

If during WIP playtesting everyone decides I'm way off, I'll just flicker the hell out of enemy ships, and slow down weapon fire for 3 frames when x-pos line up.

[MausBoy]

Well here is a little demo bin. This shows the intro "cinema sequence" heh, a preview of how your ship manuevers in space, some of the enemy ships, and the game over screen.

 

Most elements are missing, including shields and cloaking, enemy AI, cheat codes, powerups, easter eggs, etc. I don't want to give everything away until it's a fully playable game.

 

But now you can kind of see what the space levels look like and get used to the controls. Also, the weapon is stuck on the most powerful one, so don't get used to how nice and big your missiles are; that powerup is pretty hard to catch.

 

Feedback is very welcome. And don't tell me it's ugly, I already said the graphics are nasty.

edendemo.bin

Edited September 2, 2006 by MausBoy

[Dragnerok X]

....Feedback is very welcome. And don't tell me it's ugly, I already said the graphics are nasty.

 

Nice game . I'd have to say the graphics are actually pretty nicely rendered and I like the detail you put in on a few of the ships. Add in some gameplay and you've got a pretty nice game.

 

--Dragnerok X

[+atari2600land]

Since when does Batari Basic handle two colors on the same line for a player sprite (Earth from space, for example).

[MausBoy]

It still dosn't, I had to overlap player0 and player1 for that effect.

You can also do it by overlaping two flickering sprites. I've gotten used to 30hz flicker all over again, so that can be done nicely with two sprites left over for other things imo. I'm still avoiding 20hz and 15hz at all costs though.

[MausBoy]

....Feedback is very welcome. And don't tell me it's ugly, I already said the graphics are nasty.

 

Nice game . I'd have to say the graphics are actually pretty nicely rendered and I like the detail you put in on a few of the ships. Add in some gameplay and you've got a pretty nice game.

 

--Dragnerok X

 

Thanks, I appreciate that. Glad you like the ships. That's a small sampling, and there are tons of surface enemies too, I've kind of gone overboard with this project. I noticed I left in the AI on two of the ships, so you can kind of get an idea of how some of them move, but it's still a different fight when cloaking and shields are in place, plus in the game not every ship takes the same number of hits to destroy.

I also removed the Pause Screen evidently; It shows the target planet, and the distance remaining.

 

I even stuck the Konami code into this game I won't tell how it's implemented though, I'm sure someone will figure it out quick enough.

Edited September 2, 2006 by MausBoy

[+atari2600land]

Very nice game. Wonderful graphics, and it's not ugly. I wish I could make a game as pretty as this.

[haroldoop]

I must say, the demo looks pretty impressive.