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Game Idea: Crazy Taxi 2600


Ze_ro

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Okay, so I'm not much of a programmer... and I've never programmed anything for the 2600 (yet). However, I have an idea for a game in my head, and it's 3:20 AM (I'm supposed to wake up at 6:00 :sad: ) and I have insomnia, so I thought I'd at least present some of my ideas while they're fresh in my mind. If any of what I describe isn't possible (Or is just incredibly difficult) on the 2600 please let me know. I've been using the system for years, and I've tried to work my idea so that it's not excessively complex:

 

The game would be basically a 2600 port of Crazy Taxi (I'd probably call it something like "Taxi Cab" to avoid lawsuits). It would be an overhead driving game similar in style to Sprintmaster, except that there would be multiple screens comprising a city (Since I assume 4-way scrolling is too much, I imagine Adventure-style screen transitions would probably work. Though I also considered something similar to what Dukes of Hazzard does). I'm not sure how big the city would be, or how complex the streets would be either... I suppose it would depend on space limitations.

 

As for gameplay, I'd want to preserve as much of the fun of Crazy Taxi as possible. To do this, I was thinking of making the cars handling intentionally floaty. That is, when you turn your car, you don't immediately start going the other direction (like in Sprintmaster), but you slide around turns and the like. For example, you'd be driving west, and suddenly turn north without breaking... as soon as you turned though, your car would still travel west for a while before straightening out and going completely north. It seems to me that programming controls like that wouldn't be overly difficult, and would allow stuff like crazy drifts. I hadn't thought of crazy jumps until now, but I suppose throwing ramps around the city (similar to Skateboardin') could be easy enough (Sliding sideways into a ramp would give big tips!). Controls would be via joystick, and most likely handle like Sprintmaster, except that if you're stopped and holding down, you'd automatically go into reverse (I know the original uses a button to shift, but I thought that might make things overly complicated)

 

I was trying to think of how to work the pick-up and drop-off points, and I think that it would work well if you just came to a complete stop on top of a person (Or at least so that they're colliding), that should count as a pick-up. Then you'd have to proceed to a drop-off point which would act in a similar manner (compete stop while colliding with it). One worry here is how to inform the player where to go... I figured an arrow in the corner of the screen would work well, but part of the strategy of Crazy Taxi is knowing the layout of the city so that when a customer says "Pizza Hut", you already know where it is without needing the arrow. Unfortunately, I doubt I'll be able to make anything as recognizable as Pizza Hut or the Fila Store (graphics for all the locations would quickly fill the cart I'd imagine), and just saying "4th st & 10th" or "stop #15" at the bottom of the screen seems lame to me. Maybe I could have a small map of the city pop up with a flashing dot on it or something.

 

I know the sprite limitations are nasty on the 2600, so I'm not sure what else can really be included as far as graphics. Obviously, traffic won't be terribly heavy (one car per screen?). I'd also have to have one or two customers on the screen somewhere too. If worst comes to worse, the customers can be removed if you already picked one up (And then they'll reappear after you've dropped them off)

 

The hard part, in my opinion, would be handling all the scoring and timing. I'd have to find a good way to time fares, and keep track of tips and such. I'd also have to display them on the screen somewhere. With the normal Atari-size score numbers (like in Combat), it might be cramped. I noticed that many Starpath games use very small text, is it difficult to use this? I suppose it would also be easy to only show what's important at certain times (Such as only flashing your total score after you make a drop-off)

 

As for extras in the game, I imagine it would be easy to make multiple drivers with different top speeds/acceleration/handling that could be selected before starting. Showing your rating at the end of the game (like in the original, saying "A Class Liscense") probably wouldn't be too difficult either.

 

So, is there anything I forgot about that should be in there too, or did I include something that would be too much for the 2600 to handle? I think this game could easily be fun even within the limitations of the Atari, and it's one of the few games I've thought of that actually had some originality in it (I mean, it's not similar to other Atari games at least). However, most of these ideas just came to me while trying to get to sleep, so I might have not thought them through very well ;)

 

--Zero

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There was never a direct port of Rally X, maybe there where games similar to it, but I can't think of any. Rally X would actually be a really good game to port to the 2600, you could probably do a pretty faithful 2600 version of it.

 

Also, on the subject of programming languages. If someone knows Basic, learning C won't help them to much with the transition to ASM programming.

 

 

Dan

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I suggest using the driving controller.  If you need a shifter you van use a joystick in the 2nd port, or use the difficulty switches.

Good idea, since there are no other games that use the driving controllers! Adding a shifter to the game might make it more complex than it needs to be, though, especially if you need to use another controller to shift. If use of the shifter was optional that would be nicer. I'm not a fan of using the difficulty switches, though, since they're not generally easy to get to while you're playing a game that requires you to concentrate on the screen. :)

 

..Al

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I suggest using the driving controller.  If you need a shifter you van use a joystick in the 2nd port, or use the difficulty switches.

I was actually thinking about this, and it seemed like a great idea at first, but then a few things came up that made it less appealing:

 

1) In Crazy Taxi, you really need to be able to break and accellerate quickly. Even in the Atari version, I'd want to keep the hectic aspect of the game, and with only one button on the driving controller, it wouldn't be possible without using the second controller, or difficulty switches or whatever. Basically, I need two buttons. Since up and down don't have much meaning in a driving game, either of them can be used for accellerate and brake.

 

2) Less people have the driving controller... though this isn't really much of an issue, since the target audience for a new Atari game is collectors anyways, who will likely have this.

 

3) I don't actually have one myself. For some reason, these never seem to show up in the thrift stores here (and neither does Indy 500). The game is common enough that I don't want to eBay it either.

 

I was also thinking of trying to make it possible to switch control methods with either the game select switch (some game modes use joystick some use driving controller), or difficulty switches. Seems to me that this would work... but it would require extra programming (probably not much). By the way, how hard it is to scan input devices with the 2600? Do you simply read a memory location, and then BIT to figure out what directions are pressed, or at what position the paddle is?

 

Damn... I really should figure out some of this stuff. Maybe I should just print off some Atari programming info and read it on the bus on my way to university (when I should probably be reading my electromagnetics textbook). Given a high interest level, and a fairly high level of ability, is it hard to get started?

 

--Zero

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I was also thinking of trying to make it possible to switch control methods with either the game select switch (some game modes use joystick some use driving controller), or difficulty switches. Seems to me that this would work... but it would require extra programming (probably not much). By the way, how hard it is to scan input devices with the 2600? Do you simply read a memory location, and then BIT to figure out what directions are pressed, or at what position the paddle is?

The advantage of the driving controller over the paddle is that with the paddle you need to dedicate screen kernel time to reading the paddle and this seriously limits what you can do graphically. Reading paddles is a pretty involved process, but it's hard to argue with the results, as paddle games are responsive in ways joystick games could only dream of being.

 

That's why most paddle games have a lot of unused scanlines. Kaboom and Steeplechase are good examples of that. None of the more advanced games that I know of used paddles because they needed every cycle during screen time to update the hardware registers on the fly.

 

With the driving controller you get all of the benefits of the paddles analog control without the CPU overhead, since it's a digital encoder wheel. You just wind up limited to 2 players, vs. 4 players, which wouldn't be a factor in your game.

 

I've heard reports that if you spin the controller too fast you can confuse the reading routines but I think in most cases that won't happen, and maybe if you read the state once at the top of VBLANK and once at the bottom right before the next frame it might be enough to compensate.

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I'm not sure that would work terribly well. Imagine trying to drive a car such that you had to have either the gas pedal or the brake all the way down all the time. Crazy Taxi is one of the few driving games where the break is actually necessary ;)

 

--Zero

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