259 replies to this topic

[karri]

matashen, on Fri Aug 15, 2008 12:29 PM, said:

I think its better to go to next Column with the cursor left/rigth and go to row ith up/down select with A(Maybe make a rectangle around the selected cardor col) . Please dont work like mouse thats not funny in games i dont like it. I think you dont should make it with hold the button. Make select an item and by the place you like to lay down presss the button again

Greatings Matthias

Ok. Jumping from one column to the next is definitely faster than waiting for a cursor to move.

If the pallette allows I could use bright colors for the selected cards and dimmer colors for the other cards.

What about using the B-button for turning the next card from the deck and A-button for moving cards?
Then you don't have to move back to the deck to turn the next card and the face-up pile could be active for the A-button by default.

I could then make Opt 1 an undo button and let Pause be the hint button.
Opt 2 is still the music toggle.

Doubleclicks could also be done like:
- A-doubleclick moves a card to the target pile if possible.
- Pause-doubleclick starts the demo-mode (any key stops the demo).
- B-doubleclick opens a menu that allows you to restart the same game or any other game by entering 4 digits 0000-FFFF
--
Karri

[matashen]

karri, on Fri Aug 15, 2008 6:01 AM, said:

matashen, on Fri Aug 15, 2008 12:29 PM, said:

I think its better to go to next Column with the cursor left/rigth and go to row ith up/down select with A(Maybe make a rectangle around the selected cardor col) . Please dont work like mouse thats not funny in games i dont like it. I think you dont should make it with hold the button. Make select an item and by the place you like to lay down presss the button again

Greatings Matthias

Ok. Jumping from one column to the next is definitely faster than waiting for a cursor to move.

If the pallette allows I could use bright colors for the selected cards and dimmer colors for the other cards.

What about using the B-button for turning the next card from the deck and A-button for moving cards?
Then you don't have to move back to the deck to turn the next card and the face-up pile could be active for the A-button by default.

I could then make Opt 1 an undo button and let Pause be the hint button.
Opt 2 is still the music toggle.

Doubleclicks could also be done like:
- A-doubleclick moves a card to the target pile if possible.
- Pause-doubleclick starts the demo-mode (any key stops the demo).
- B-doubleclick opens a menu that allows you to restart the same game or any other game by entering 4 digits 0000-FFFF
--
Karri

Good Ideas, but i think you should open a menu by doubleklick pause and also make the game and/or highscore saving at eeprom. if b is tu turn the next card you should by doubleklick b implement to take the card from the pile.
in the menu you can also implement the start of the demo-mode.

Greatings Matthias

[Songbird]

I would suggest avoiding "double clicks" altogether. The Lynx is not a mouse, and you don't need a general-purpose interface like a Windows GUI. You need a very specific user interface for one game.

If you need a menu to pop up, I would recommend using Pause for that, as it's very common in games for the pause menu to bring up options such as help, hints, music/fx adjustments, and so on. If you want to support an undo option, I think it's OK to make it a bit painful to use (like in a Pause menu) so people don't over use it during a game.

A could be used to select a card, then the joypad moves it. A would then also drop it, and B could be used to unselect the card and return the cursor / card highlight to either where it came from or the draw pile. After a card is successfully placed, or when no card is selected, B or Opt 1 could be used to perform the next card flip.

[karri]

Thanks for the ideas.

I fell for the B - next card, A - grab/drop card approach.

Here is a small lnx file to try out in Handy. It is not yet a full game but more like a test to see if the interfeces work or not.



 cardtest.zip   42.33K   174 downloads

--
Karri

[matashen]

Hello Kerri,

why use Handy - it looks very good on my lynx

send me an Message if you need specific tests on real Hardware.

Greatings Matthias

[ls650]

Oh oh...

Quote

Starting Mednafen 0.6.5
Loading settings from "/home/user/.mednafen/mednafen.cfg"...
Initializing joysticks...
Loading cardtest.zip...

Signal 11 has been caught and dealt with...
Iyeeeeeeeee!!! A segmentation fault has occurred. Have a fluffy day.

[karri]

ls650, on Wed Aug 20, 2008 3:43 AM, said:

Oh oh...

Quote

Starting Mednafen 0.6.5
Loading settings from "/home/user/.mednafen/mednafen.cfg"...
Initializing joysticks...
Loading cardtest.zip...

Signal 11 has been caught and dealt with...
Iyeeeeeeeee!!! A segmentation fault has occurred. Have a fluffy day.

Thanks. Obviously I have to try using Mednafen. It may suffer from the same problems that Handy had a few years ago. I fixed the bugs in Handy but perhaps Mednafen would also benefit from some patches...

--
Karri

[ls650]

That's also an older version of Mednafen; I think they're up to 0.8.? now. I'll try it with a more recent version of Mednafen tomorrow.

[karri]

ls650, on Wed Aug 20, 2008 9:16 AM, said:

That's also an older version of Mednafen; I think they're up to 0.8.? now. I'll try it with a more recent version of Mednafen tomorrow.

The latest Debian version 0.8.9 of Mednafen works ok with my cart code.

--
Karri

[karri]

The klondike works mostly now. The size of the code is quite small. I would still like to polish the cart image a bit before I release it. The question is just in which way should the work go.

Should I offer a second set of cart graphics? I was thinking on a blue suite and a green suite in addition to the traditional red and black.


Don't get me wrong - semicolo created a beautiful deck it works as a dream on the Lynx screen.

------------------------------------------------------
What kind of music should I put on the cart?


I was thinking about piano Boogies and ragtime. The piano sounds good on the Lynx and I like it.

Another genre is guitar music. There are lots of very nice etydes, ballads etc. that could be nice to have in the background.

Any other wishes for background tunes?

------------------------------------------------------
A third topic is how to end the game.


Microsoft had the cascaded waterfalls with cards. Many other implementations have just some text notice.

The code is a port of the kpat card suite so it is GPL'd all the way. Which means that it will be open source and you can easily add other kpat-card games like freecell or spider later. Even two-player games like poker can use the same kpat card engine.

Please share your ideas.

--
Karri

[matashen]

karri, on Wed Oct 8, 2008 11:18 PM, said:

The klondike works mostly now. The size of the code is quite small. I would still like to polish the cart image a bit before I release it. The question is just in which way should the work go.

Should I offer a second set of cart graphics? I was thinking on a blue suite and a green suite in addition to the traditional red and black.
images.jpg

Don't get me wrong - semicolo created a beautiful deck it works as a dream on the Lynx screen.

------------------------------------------------------
What kind of music should I put on the cart?
images2.jpg

I was thinking about piano Boogies and ragtime. The piano sounds good on the Lynx and I like it.

Another genre is guitar music. There are lots of very nice etydes, ballads etc. that could be nice to have in the background.

Any other wishes for background tunes?

------------------------------------------------------
A third topic is how to end the game.
images3.jpg

Microsoft had the cascaded waterfalls with cards. Many other implementations have just some text notice.

The code is a port of the kpat card suite so it is GPL'd all the way. Which means that it will be open source and you can easily add other kpat-card games like freecell or spider later. Even two-player games like poker can use the same kpat card engine.

Please share your ideas.

--
Karri

I think its very important to add highscores - saveing at eeprom.


Greatings Matthias.

[karri]

matashen, on Thu Oct 9, 2008 6:59 PM, said:

I think its very important to add highscores - saveing at eeprom.

How do you define a high score for Klondike? Time? Number of moves?

--
Karri

[matashen]

karri, on Thu Oct 9, 2008 12:08 PM, said:

matashen, on Thu Oct 9, 2008 6:59 PM, said:

I think its very important to add highscores - saveing at eeprom.

How do you define a high score for Klondike? Time? Number of moves?

--
Karri

maybe the kombination of time AND moves
or you make time and moves as seperate tabel.
There are enough Space on an EPROM to make some extra Highscores.

Greatings Matthias

[semicolo]

karri, on Thu Oct 9, 2008 12:18 AM, said:

Should I offer a second set of cart graphics? I was thinking on a blue suite and a green suite in addition to the traditional red and black.

I suppose you're not talking about a simple palette change, but complete new graphics ? If so, you'll need some volunteers to do the job.

karri, on Thu Oct 9, 2008 12:18 AM, said:

I was thinking about piano Boogies and ragtime. The piano sounds good on the Lynx and I like it.

Another genre is guitar music. There are lots of very nice etydes, ballads etc. that could be nice to have in the background.

Any other wishes for background tunes?

I love piano jazz-like tunes.

What about some good old J.S Bach, inventions for example ?

I don't really care for hiscores in card games

You could use the scaling engine to make a random take-off effect of the cards

[matashen]

semicolo, on Fri Oct 10, 2008 10:41 AM, said:

karri, on Thu Oct 9, 2008 12:18 AM, said:

Should I offer a second set of cart graphics? I was thinking on a blue suite and a green suite in addition to the traditional red and black.

I suppose you're not talking about a simple palette change, but complete new graphics ? If so, you'll need some volunteers to do the job.

karri, on Thu Oct 9, 2008 12:18 AM, said:

I was thinking about piano Boogies and ragtime. The piano sounds good on the Lynx and I like it.

Another genre is guitar music. There are lots of very nice etydes, ballads etc. that could be nice to have in the background.

Any other wishes for background tunes?

I love piano jazz-like tunes.

What about some good old J.S Bach, inventions for example ?

I don't really care for hiscores in card games

You could use the scaling engine to make a random take-off effect of the cards

Highscores importent in every game.. why should i play it twice when i can not make better scores like the first play.

Greatings Matthias

[SwedenLynxer]

Background tunes: Piano or any classic music would be perfect. I think any slow tempo music would best suit this type of game.

I also think a EEPROM-cart with the ability to save your high scores would be a big plus. And of course a nice box to go with the cart. Maybe some cool box art and a little paper manual. Please make this one an "official" game release. Just my plead and opinion as a Lynx collector

Edited by SwedenLynxer, Sat Oct 11, 2008 8:10 AM.

[karri]

SwedenLynxer, on Sat Oct 11, 2008 5:08 PM, said:

Background tunes: Piano or any classic music would be perfect. I think any slow tempo music would best suit this type of game.

I also think a EEPROM-cart with the ability to save your high scores would be a big plus. And of course a nice box to go with the cart. Maybe some cool box art and a little paper manual. Please make this one an "official" game release. Just my plead and opinion as a Lynx collector

Thanks for the feedback!

Oops. I cannot make carts. I was thinking to just release this in the style of Yastuna 1 & 2. But of course a box design would be nice to go with the game. The box art and instruction booklet could be released as pdf-files. Then it would have a certain look. As a collectors item this could be understood as a low-budget copy-cat release. Just buy it from the cheapest source

I was also thinking about releasing the image in 3 layouts (512 bytes/block, 1024 bytes/block and 2048 bytes/block). So you can use any kind of EPROM for making the cart.

--
Karri

[bohoki]

it shouldnt be that hard i played solitare all the time on my gamecom while i had it

and it didnt even have color red was grey and black was black they just had a numeral and suit

the little dots for numbers is really a throwback to old west poker time to me

[MrAtari2600]

my two cents onto this:

You know you dont have to follow traditional scoring rules,
you can develop your own saying say, if you move the ace but in a row put up 3 cards into that pile up top you get x2 the normal points

or ideas such as that, why not implement the option ( IF POSSIBLE dont worry) of Traditional & Modern scoring?

Traditional will be like how Microsoft's solitaire is,

Modern would be like adding neat bonuses etc

hoped that idea added something

[karri]

MrAtari2600, on Wed Oct 15, 2008 5:48 PM, said:

my two cents onto this:

You know you dont have to follow traditional scoring rules,
you can develop your own saying say, if you move the ace but in a row put up 3 cards into that pile up top you get x2 the normal points

or ideas such as that, why not implement the option ( IF POSSIBLE dont worry) of Traditional & Modern scoring?

Traditional will be like how Microsoft's solitaire is,

Modern would be like adding neat bonuses etc

hoped that idea added something

I read somewhere about a gambling technique where you buy a deck of cards for 52 dollars. Then you are allowed to play klondike turning every card in the deck only once. For every card you get up you will get 5 dollars.

Perhaps the scoring could be like this?

If you then have to turn the deck to go through it again it could cost you another 52 dollars (points). And on the next run the cards are only worth 3 dollars each. Third run 1 dollars each and after that no more points.

Would this scoring be good?

The maximum possible points would then be 52 * 5 - 52 = 208 points. From this value I could then subtract 1 point for every 20 seconds of playtime.

If you cannot solve the solitare you won't get any points at all.

Should the points be gold coins, stars or just plain points?

If the cart has an EPROM then you could shop for background music in the Lynx Casino shop for the money you have earned

The tunes vary in size between $421 (blue moon) and $13f7 (Mozart piano sonata) bytes for full length music. This depends a bit on the number of instruments used in the tune.

The current cart image is 103189 bytes. It may grow a little because of extra features to be added. But still... The remaining 158955 bytes would allow me to add around 30 - 50 full length tunes to the cart.

Is a music shop a good idea? A tune could cost 100 points. So in theory solving the solitare in 2 minutes 40 seconds (-8 points) in one give (+208 points) gives you two tunes (200 points).
--
Karri

Edited by karri, Wed Oct 15, 2008 11:25 PM.

[per]

karri, on Sun Oct 12, 2008 10:31 PM, said:

I was also thinking about releasing the image in 3 layouts (512 bytes/block, 1024 bytes/block and 2048 bytes/block). So you can use any kind of EPROM for making the cart.

--
Karri

Or Lynxman's FlashCart.

[karri]

per, on Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:50 PM, said:

karri, on Sun Oct 12, 2008 10:31 PM, said:

I was also thinking about releasing the image in 3 layouts (512 bytes/block, 1024 bytes/block and 2048 bytes/block). So you can use any kind of EPROM for making the cart.

--
Karri

Or Lynxman's FlashCart.

Does it have support for an EEPROM? Most games I have written lately keep some kind of data in a 128 byte serial EEPROM. This has almost become the standard way of dealing with saves. On MegaPak vol 1 I even had a complete adventure status with items, rooms and inventory in the EEPROM (oops, now I let info about the hidden game out - shame on me).

Of course I could code klondike so that if the EEPROM is missing you get all the tunes for free and the high score in not saved.
--
Karri

[matashen]

karri, on Fri Oct 17, 2008 4:28 AM, said:

per, on Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:50 PM, said:

karri, on Sun Oct 12, 2008 10:31 PM, said:

I was also thinking about releasing the image in 3 layouts (512 bytes/block, 1024 bytes/block and 2048 bytes/block). So you can use any kind of EPROM for making the cart.

--
Karri

Or Lynxman's FlashCart.

Does it have support for an EEPROM? Most games I have written lately keep some kind of data in a 128 byte serial EEPROM. This has almost become the standard way of dealing with saves. On MegaPak vol 1 I even had a complete adventure status with items, rooms and inventory in the EEPROM (oops, now I let info about the hidden game out - shame on me).

Of course I could code klondike so that if the EEPROM is missing you get all the tunes for free and the high score in not saved.
--
Karri

Yes the Flashcart has support for 93C46 EEPROM. You can also directly read/write it from your PC.

Greatings Matthias

[Godzilla]

solitaire on my n-gage is still one of the games i play most on it. id love to see a good version on the lynx. freecelll is fun too.

[karri]

Any volunteers for the box design?

Why not create a great box design and I add your name in the credits of this solitare game

The manual will be around 8 pages as a pdf file and I hope to have a Lynx-style box artwork in another pdf file that you could print on cardboard and fold to make a box for your collection.



The basic things in this cart is
- 1 player only
- EEPROM for saving high score and music playlists
- Klondike with 1 or 3 cards at a time
- automatic card movement to target piles
- 4 channel background music
- unlimited undo (perhaps)
- Freecell (perhaps)
- Spider (perhaps)

--
Karri