Master of Arcturus Public Beta Test

[TROGDOR]

Hi all,

 

I've just finished my first Atari 2600 development project, "Master of Arcturus" (previously "War of the Worlds").

 

I'll be submitting this game to the 2004 Minigame Comp, but first I'd like to get some feedback from the user community.

 

Attached is a zip file containing the 4K bin, and a .pdf instruction manual.

 

Please read the instruction manual before playing the game. The user interface for this game is more complicated than most Atari games, and if you don't read the manual, you'll have to climb the learning curve on your own. I tried to make the controls intuitive and easy to use. The manual still needs work, but there is enough info in there to understand the basics of the game.

 

I have an Atari box with a Supercharger, but I can't find the power adapter. Let me know if you try it out on the original hardware. The ROM is Supercharger compatible.

 

I'll post some screen shots soon.

 

Happy Gaming,

TROGDOR

 

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail58.html

war_of_the_worlds_v046.zip

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Looks very cool, though I didn't have the time to test it on real hardware yet.

 

One simple but very important suggestion from a PAL user:

Please change the number of scanlines from 261 to 262 (or any other even number), else PAL TVs won't display any colors, making the game impossible to play for us.

 

Thanks!

[TROGDOR]

One simple but very important suggestion from a PAL user:

Please change the number of scanlines from 261 to 262 (or any other even number), else PAL TVs won't display any colors, making the game impossible to play for us.

 

Sure, I'll see what I can do on this. Is there a utility I can use to count scanlines, or am I stuck counting cycles? What's a good method for testing PAL compatability?

 

Below I'm including a touched up screen shot of the game. The text is a composite of 2 screen shots, since it uses dual frames to display the 12 characters.

 

TROGDOR

[Nukey Shay]

Show scanline count: use the -n switch in Z26

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

 

Show scanline count: use the -n switch in Z26

 

Or try ALT+9 while the game is running.

 

Greetings,

Manuel

[Nukey Shay]

BTW the minus key cycles through the NTSC, PAL and SECAM palettes while the program is being emulated. NTSC should use no more than 262 scanlines to avoid screen rolling.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

BTW: z26 can simulate PAL color loss (-o).

 

I use this as a default parameter during development, because it also makes variable scanline counts more obvious.

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

 

Just had some time to play this and I'm really impressed. Very, very cool game and it's a lot of fun to play!

 

A few suggestions:

 

- The text display shifts by 1 scanline, once the # of ships you send goes above 99.

 

- I think it'd look better if the bottom half would also have the black background

 

- Once there are 255 ships on a planet, it should stop at 255 when launching a fleet. (I think numbers should generally not roll over, not even on the level selection on the main screen)

 

- Maybe it was possible to pack _all_ ships at once into a fleet by moving the stick right instead of up?

 

- And 0 when moving it left? When you accidentally picked the wrong target, you could easily *not* send a fleet then...

 

Again, great game!

 

Greetings,

Manuel

[Thomas Jentzsch]

- The text display shifts by 1 scanline, once the # of ships you send goes above 99.

Yup, I noticed this too, probably a problem with a setup routine lasting a bit too long.

 

- I think it'd look better if the bottom half would also have the black background

Here I disagree (or at least there should be a separator between the two screen parts instead)

 

- Once there are 255 ships on a planet, it should stop at 255 when launching a fleet. (I think numbers should generally not roll over, not even on the level selection on the main screen)

 

- Maybe it was possible to pack _all_ ships at once into a fleet by moving the stick right instead of up?  

 

- And 0 when moving it left? When you accidentally picked the wrong target, you could easily *not* send a fleet then...

Good suggestions.

[4ever2600]

Just a dumb question, but this game has nothing to do with the HG Wells classic, War of the Worlds right? If not, how about "War of the Planets"... I keep confusing it with the hack of Defender based on the HG Wells Classic...

 

Cool game btw...

 

And why'd they name the burgertime clone Beef Drop instead of Hamburger Time or something close...?

 

Ohh the things you think about with alot of spare time...

[Aaron]

Hey, I really like this. There's more strategy involved than would be apparent at first glance. Aside from what's been said already though, I don't have too many suggestions, besides the obvious things that would eat up more rom space...

 

Also, nice manual - It's the history erase button! What's it do? Maybe something good, maybe something bad... I guess we'll never know.

[Nukey Shay]

And why'd they name the burgertime clone Beef Drop instead of Hamburger Time or something close...?

 

To distance itself from a copyrighted name. The suggestions for the name were in the "prototype" (April Fool's) thread...before Ken settled on Beef Drop.

http://atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=47232

[TROGDOR]

Wow, my very own sticky!

 

Thanks for the positive feedback guys. It means a lot coming from the homebrew gurus. Also thanks for the Z26 advice. I may have to take drastic measures and actually read the Z26 manual.

 

I passed the enhancement suggestions on to our QA department, and they gave it the green light. Attached below is version 0.47 of War of the Worlds. Here are the enhancements:

1. The game now consistently uses 262 scanlines for PAL compatibility.

 

2. The text display no longer shifts when displaying numbers greater than 99. This was because of a divide by 100 code branch.

 

3. All text display is now evenly separated by 8 scanlines. This applies to the World Status Display, and the Fleet Status Display. I'll clean up the Title Screen and Incoming Messages if time and ROM allows.

 

4. I removed lower and upper wrap-around on the ship launch selection. I'm keeping lower and upper wrapping on the Level selection, because I usually play level 64, and it's just 2 down taps away. :wink:

 

5. Pressing left on the joystick resets ship selection to zero. Pressing right on the joystick sets the ship selection to all ships.

 

6. The Manual has been updated to reflect the interface changes. I also added a section called "Performance Evaluation", which discusses scoring.

I'm still working through some ideas on how to spiff up the borders and background of the Galactic World Display and Text Terminal.

 

Just a dumb question, but this game has nothing to do with the HG Wells classic, War of the Worlds right? If not, how about "War of the Planets"... I keep confusing it with the hack of Defender based on the HG Wells Classic...

 

I didn't have much choice on the title. Paramount Pictures approached me 6 months ago, requesting development of a game called "War of the Worlds". They gave me a 7 figure advance to cover develoment costs. The game was not well received when I showed them the alpha release. They kept ranting on about something called an "Xbox", and threatening to pull my funding. Xbox? Is that an add-on module for the 2600?

 

Seriously, I put a lot of thought into the title of the game. Before I wrote the first line of code for the game, the working title was set at "War of the Worlds." As for it having nothing to do with the original War of the Worlds, I disagree. It's an epic battle between two interplanetary civilizations, competing for total domination.

 

I had considered other titles:

 

Battle Beyond the Stars (This movie was so painful, it deserves it's own 2600 game.)

Battle of the Planets

Master of Arcturus (This was my second choice.)

 

I was aware of the Defender hack out there, but I'm not impressed by graphics hacks. I felt that such a classic title deserved a more involved development effort.

 

On a completely unrelated topic, has anyone seen a random alien message yet? There are several messages embedded in the game.

 

TROGDOR

war_of_the_worlds_v047.zip

[MacbthPSW]

Battle of the Planets

Then you would have had a whole other group of fans (late 70s anime/cartoon types) wondering about your game, me included!

 

You know, we really do need a "Battle of the Planets" 2600 game - hmmm...

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

 

Wow, my very own sticky!  

 

All you need to do is include the magic words "public beta" or "release candidate" and then pray that I catch 'em

 

BTW: Instead of doing binary to decimal conversions, have you considered using BCD coded numbers instead? Then you could also allow fleets up to 999 ships. And I guess it might save lots of bytes and cycles.

 

Thanks for the update, I'll try it tonight!

 

Greetings,

Manuel

[Thomas Jentzsch]

All you need to do is include the magic words "public beta" or "release candidate" and then pray that I catch 'em

Minigame, 3rd try now also hides a "public beta release candidate".

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I passed the enhancement suggestions on to our QA department, and they gave it the green light.  Attached below is version 0.47 of War of the Worlds.  Here are the enhancements:...

Thanks the interface is much better now and I can see the (different) colors on my PAL TV too.

 

A few more suggestions:

1. When pressing RESET the selected level shoud not be resetted.

2. Could you slightly increase the brightness difference between explored and unexplored planets? It's hardly noticable on my LCD.

3. Maybe you could add some (optional?) random element to the fights. Currently it's IMO a bit too mathematical. E.g. you could increase or decrease the defense/assault rating by up to +/-1/8th.

4. Maybe the industry on a planet could have some influence on the ratings. E.g. a high industry will increase the defense rating. And attacking from a high industry planet will increase the assault rating.

5. Maybe the size of a planet (only your own or all explored) could somehow (very roughly) reflect the size of the fleet?

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

 

4. Maybe the industry on a planet could have some influence on the ratings. E.g. a high industry will increase the defense rating. And attacking from a high industry planet will increase the assault rating.

 

Hm... I think high industry planets already have enough advantages over the other planets. Maybe better add some moral/ethical level? The guys from the "Barbarian" planet would fight better than the ones from the "Ghandi" planet...

 

 

5. Maybe the size of a planet (only your own or all explored) could somehow (very roughly) reflect the size of the fleet?

 

But planets normally don't change their size...

 

BTW: A random thought I had: Couldn't a Sentinel port would work with gameplay mechanics like that?

 

Greetings,

Manuel

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Hm... I think high industry planets already have enough advantages over the other planets.

True, but this would add some extra strategy to the game.

 

But planets normally don't change their size...

They also don't flash and change their color, don't they?

 

BTW: A random thought I had: Couldn't a Sentinel port would work with gameplay mechanics like that?

"The Sentinel" or what?

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

 

BTW: A random thought I had: Couldn't a Sentinel port would work with gameplay mechanics like that?

"The Sentinel" or what?

 

Yup, the Geoff Crammond game.

 

Greetings,

Manuel

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Yup, the Geoff Crammond game.

Yes, somehow it would work, but probably not too well.

[chrisbid]

i havent tried this, but is this game "inspired" by the Macintosh classic Spaceware Ho!

[TROGDOR]

1. When pressing RESET the selected level shoud not be resetted.

 

2. Could you slightly increase the brightness difference between explored and unexplored planets? It's hardly noticable on my LCD.

 

Agreed. These aren't too hard to implement. I haven't seen the brightness problem on my Dell Axim PDA LCD display. Are you running NTSC or PAL mode?

 

3. Maybe you could add some (optional?) random element to the fights. Currently it's IMO a bit too mathematical. E.g. you could increase or decrease the defense/assault rating by up to +/-1/8th.

 

I have a personal peeve against strategy games with random elements in the combat. Did you every play a game of Risk against the computer and have 20 armies defending Australia, and watch the computer blast through them with his 5 armies because he got a series of lucky dice rolls? Grrrrrrrr. At the absolute most, I may add a random +1 bump on combat rating per stardate, and see how that affects the game.

 

Regarding all the other suggestions for War of the Worlds, they are interesting, but remember this is a 4K ROM with only 128 bytes of RAM to spare. If I attach any new attributes to the ships, that's an extra 16 RAM bytes consumed, which is one eighth of my total RAM! (8 bytes for the ships on each world, plus 8 bytes for each of the fleet slots.)

 

Here's what the current RAM usage looks like:

 

24 bytes for the indexed text display buffer

3 X 8 = 24 bytes for world data (X location, industry, ships, ownership)

3 X 8 = 24 bytes for fleet data (ships, destination, ETA)

12 bytes reserved for the stack (allows for 6 nested subroutines.)

4 bytes for the random number buffer

~24 more bytes for misc (GUI states, joystick states, temp vars, level, sound queue, etc.)

 

112 bytes consumed.

 

So I've got about 16 bytes left.

 

I've also got about 400 bytes of ROM left, if I optimize the code a bit more.

 

BTW: Instead of doing binary to decimal conversions, have you considered using BCD coded numbers instead? Then you could also allow fleets up to 999 ships. And I guess it might save lots of bytes and cycles.  

 

Yep. The 4-digit stardate display uses 2 BCD bytes.

 

But, using BCD will only allow 99 ships in one byte. I could expand it to 2 bytes, which would take the ship limit all the way up to 9999 , but that has far reaching consequences on system resources. First, it would eat the remaining 16 bytes of RAM in the worlds and fleets datastructures. Then it would complicate the numerous calculations done on the ships, requiring multibyte addition and subtraction with carry.

 

Consider the combat rating calculation for a fleet. It's easy to divide by four in binary. Just LSR LSR. In BCD, it would require dozens of lines of code and hundreds of cycles to divide by four. It would be relatively easy to divide by 5, though. X4 bit shift the high byte into the low byte, and you've divided by 10. Then, multibyte add the number to itself, and you've got a divide by 5. But still a lot more complicated than just 2 LSRs.

 

I think the game would be more amusing if I could horde up 5000 ships into one fleet, so I'll look into this for a possible v2.0. But it won't happen by Sunday.

 

The current code has a very fast BCD converter. It uses looped subtraction to figure out the 100s digit, and then a table lookup to convert 0-99 binary to 0-99 BCD. Granted, the lookup table burns 100 bytes of ROM, but it runs in 6 cycles. :wink:

 

i havent tried this, but is this game "inspired" by the Macintosh classic Spaceware Ho!

 

No, not really. I played dozens of games of Spaceward Ho! back in the early 90's. But I wasn't thinking about that game when I wrote War of the Worlds. There are many similar strategic 3X (eXplore, eXpand, eXterminate) games out there:

 

Reach for the Stars

Spaceward Ho!

Master of Orion

 

but all these games are turn based. War of the Worlds is real time. There were at least a couple old games for the Macintosh that predated Spaceward Ho! that were similar to my game. They were very simple, with just industry and ship counts, and they were played in real time. But it's been so long that I don't remember their names.

 

My primary inspiration for this game was an online multiplayer game called Intergalactics. I'm not sure if the game servers are still running, but the game was very fun and addictive.

 

TROGDOR

[Aaron]

3. Maybe you could add some (optional?) random element to the fights. Currently it's IMO a bit too mathematical. E.g. you could increase or decrease the defense/assault rating by up to +/-1/8th.

I have a personal peeve against strategy games with random elements in the combat. Did you every play a game of Risk against the computer and have 20 armies defending Australia, and watch the computer blast through them with his 5 armies because he got a series of lucky dice rolls? Grrrrrrrr. At the absolute most, I may add a random +1 bump on combat rating per stardate, and see how that affects the game.

I'll agree that too much randomness is annoying, but I tend to think battles between fleets of equal size should have a chance of going either way. The random +1 bump would probably work...... though maybe you could base the probability of it on some condition. Fighting on your home world could get a better chance, for example.

 

Regarding all the other suggestions for War of the Worlds, they are interesting, but remember this is a 4K ROM with only 128 bytes of RAM to spare.  If I attach any new attributes to the ships, that's an extra 16 RAM bytes consumed, which is one eighth of my total RAM!  (8 bytes for the ships on each world, plus 8 bytes for each of the fleet slots.)

You could do extra attributes just for each home world, or you could make the first fleet special somehow and give it more attributes... I can't think of a good justification for that right now though.

 

You could also use a byte or two to pick a random world and give it some special property, e.g. "there be dragons here".

 

Of course I'm well aware that very little of this would fit in 400 bytes of rom...

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Are you running NTSC or PAL mode?

Emulator mode.

 

I have a personal peeve against strategy games with random elements in the combat.  Did you every play a game of Risk against the computer and have 20 armies defending Australia, and watch the computer blast through them with his 5 armies because he got a series of lucky dice rolls?  Grrrrrrrr.  

Quite understandable, that's why I suggested only a little random element, e.g. a force of 50 attacking ships can sometimes beat 55 defending ships. Makes the game a little less predicatable.

 

Regarding all the other suggestions for War of the Worlds, they are interesting, but remember this is a 4K ROM with only 128 bytes of RAM to spare.  If I attach any new attributes to the ships, that's an extra 16 RAM bytes consumed, which is one eighth of my total RAM!  (8 bytes for the ships on each world, plus 8 bytes for each of the fleet slots.)

Well, most of the attributes are already there. The defending ships "know" the industry of their world already, so you don't need any additional bytes there.

 

I don't know about the attacking fleet, does "remember" it where it comes from? Probably not, right? So, which bytes are in the fleet slots? Maybe you could find 3 unused bits there.

 

3 X 8 = 24 bytes for fleet data (ships, destination, ETA)

Ok, looks like there might be a few unused bits (destination, ETA maybe).

 

BTW: Instead of doing binary to decimal conversions, have you considered using BCD coded numbers instead? Then you could also allow fleets up to 999 ships. And I guess it might save lots of bytes and cycles.

 

Yep. The 4-digit stardate display uses 2 BCD bytes.

 

But, using BCD will only allow 99 ships in one byte.  I could expand it to 2 bytes, which would take the ship limit all the way up to 9999 , but that has far reaching consequences on system resources.  First, it would eat the remaining 16 bytes of RAM in the worlds and fleets datastructures.

How about using 12 bits for the ships (999) and using the remaining 4 bits for something different (e.g. industry)?

 

Then it would complicate the numerous calculations done on the ships, requiring multibyte addition and subtraction with carry.

That wouldn't be too bad, e.g. you could write general add and sub subroutines. And they easily would work for BCD math too.

 

Something like

Add16_BCD:

 sed

Add16:
; a=low byte, y=high byte, x=variable index

 clc

 adc $00,x

 sta $00,x

 tya 

 adc $01,x

 sta $01,x

 cld

 rts

I think the game would be more amusing if I could horde up 5000 ships into one fleet, so I'll look into this for a possible v2.0.  But it won't happen by Sunday.  

True, make sure that you meet the deadline.