40 replies to this topic

[jrok]

This is a very early build of a project I've been working on for a couple of months now.

CHARGE!

- Defend your castles from firebreathing dragons!
- Watch out for sneaky enemy knights!
- Save the, uh, princess! (not implemented)
- Defeat the evil wizard, uh, Korj! (maybe)

How to Play:

• Use the joystick to gallop your knight around the kingdom. Press the fire button to fire a magic arrow directly up.
  
  
• The HUD at the bottom of the screen shows your total number of lives and a bar representing your current knight's hit points. Once the bar depletes entirely, your knight dies and a new one is spawned at the nearest surviving castle. Located above your score is a small "radar" readout that shows the positions of your knight, your remaining castles and the enemy dragons.
  
• In addition to tracking the dragons on the radar, a number will appear on either side of the screen when the dragon is less then eight screen-lengths away. You can make note of the dragons speed and altitude using this number to better plan your attack runs. Some dragons are faster and more aggressive than others, and some will require multiple hits to kill.
  
  
• Enemy Knights roam the kingdom, and will attempt to kill you with their lances. Evil magic prevents you from gauging how far away they are, but you can estimate their vertical position by noting the purple "lance" icon on the left or right of the screen. To slay a knight, try to collide with them as close to dead center as possible. Be careful! If you miss, the knight will wound you and you will bounce in the opposite direction.
  
  
• To slay a dragon, try to time your arrows so that they will hit the dragon in passing. Each time a dragon is killed, a new one descends and resumes attacking your knight and your castles. Each castle can take several direct hits of dragonfire before it is destroyed, and will gradually darken to show how much damage it has taken. You begin the game with four castles and three knights. If all of your knights are destroyed, the game is over. If all of your castles are destroyed and your current knight is killed, the game is over.

This game is still at a very early stage, but I do plan on completing it. Any criticisms, suggestions or bug reports are welcome.

Cheers!
Jarod.

Archived version:
 Charge.zip   5.46K   51 downloads

Latest version:
 Charge_rev1.zip   5.93K   77 downloads

Edited by jrok, Sat Jul 11, 2009 10:32 AM.

[nonner242]

SWEET!
Keep it up!

[gambler172]

Hi Jrok
Looks great......Cannot wait to see more.
gretings Walter

[vdub_bobby]

Screenshots and description are very cool! Haven't checked out ROM yet, though...

EDIT: Played ROM.

Very difficult and kinda glitchy, though. Shows lots of promise!

Edited by vdub_bobby, Thu Jul 9, 2009 12:28 PM.

[Nathan Strum]

Nice work so far.

[yuppicide]

I've already sung my praise to him or maybe in the bAtari Basic forum thread about the game.

This is the best bB game I've seen come out yet and it'll be the one that if you didn't tell anyone it was made in bB I don't think they would know.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

That's is very promising, though at first it reminds a bit at games like Defender and Chopper Command. But the gameplay is much different. Some polishing sure is necessary.

A visual indicator for lining up with the enemy knight would be nice. Maybe just a different color of your knight or the opponent.

How about multiple dragons at a time? But then there should be some kind of extra benefit from killing a dragon. Like some delay until a new one spawns.

Add rounds like in Missile Command. After a certain ammount of dragons killed, your castles become revived (this adds some strategy depth) and the next, harder round starts. Scoring could be like in Missile Command too. Including bonus knights or castles.

Also utilizing the up and down joystick might add some extra gameplay. E.g. obstacles you have to jump over or you have to duck from.

And a delay after Game Over, so that you do not accidentially start a new game immediately.

[TrekMD]

This looks very nice so far. Thanks for sharing!

[mos6507]

You'd never know this was batari basic. Very promising. I can see ways for this to go in an Oystron direction as far as blending gameplay aspects from different games into something that feels original.

There are a ton of things that could be added to this game for depth. For instance, the castle doesn't do anything yet. Maybe you could include the ability to move your knight into the castles (or cave or other icon) and have a whole other wave underground. And you could add powerups, obstacles to trip over (thin Moon Patrol or Steeplechase).

[yuppicide]

Thomas Jentzsch, on Fri Jul 10, 2009 3:29 AM, said:

That's is very promising, though at first it reminds a bit at games like Defender and Chopper Command. But the gameplay is much different. Some polishing sure is necessary.

Reminds me a bit of "Battlezone" also.

Quote

Like some delay until a new one spawns.

Yes really need a new dragon spawn delay.

Quote

Add rounds like in Missile Command. After a certain ammount of dragons killed, your castles become revived (this adds some strategy depth) and the next, harder round starts. Scoring could be like in Missile Command too. Including bonus knights or castles.

Good idea. Same way in Atlantis. A quick breather.

[jrok]

Just a small revision build:

• Stabilized Dragon vertical movement and ramped down difficulty, as per vdubbobby's suggestion. Hopefully, this fixes some of the glitchiness and makes the game more playable.
  
• Added a rudimentary "round" system, as per Thomas's suggestion. Players must defeat a set number of dragons per round (I still need expand this to apply bonus tallys for extra knights and castle repair/rebuild).
  
• When a knight dies, the world scrolls to the nearest intact castle and a new knight spawns there.
  
• The game no longer ends instantly when the last castle is destroyed. However, since a new knight must respawn at a castle, "sudden death" mode is invoked when all castles are destroyed: If the player has no castle left at which to respawn when his knight is killed, the game ends.
  
• The demo ends after player beats the "boss" dragon (EDT: Actually this seemed a bit unfair, so now the boss loops)

.

The attached build still has some bugs, but there is much more stability and it is beatable (I mean if I can beat it, I am positive some of you gunslingers can ). I hope to add more dragons and more depth to the mechanics of the next build, as per some of the great suggestions here (and from some of my favorite Atari programmers, too - Wow! )

Cheers,
Jarod.

 Charge_rev1.zip   5.93K   65 downloads

Edited by jrok, Sat Jul 11, 2009 9:06 AM.

[yuppicide]

Loving the new version. Things I like and dislike about it:

Dislikes:
- Dragon only moves right? There's a castle to the left of him, but he insists on going right? Is he preset to randomly go to a castle or does he just go right until he finds one? I would say he should either go to the nearest castle or randomly goes to a certain one, but can randomly change his mind if he wants.
- Title screen is two different shades of gray.. is this a mistake? Right two letters are different color.

Likes:

- Game plays a lot smoother now.
- Dragon is better. He is slower or doesn't shoot as fast or both. Makes me able to better go after him and time my shots to kill him without losing health.
- Being that the game play is easier it gives me more enjoyment and makes me get a higher score. I think I got to level 3 or 4.

Would like to see:

- Easter Egg of "Shower Scene" where you get to do the princess. LOL! It'd be like the C64 game "Sex Games" but for the 2600.

Wow.. this game would make a great "Dragon Fire II" if it were allowed to use that title.

Edited by yuppicide, Sat Jul 11, 2009 1:37 AM.

[jrok]

yuppicide, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 3:37 AM, said:

- Dragon only moves right? There's a castle to the left of him, but he insists on going right? Is he preset to randomly go to a castle or does he just go right until he finds one? I would say he should either go to the nearest castle or randomly goes to a certain one, but can randomly change his mind if he wants.

This was a bug. I squashed it this morning and updated the file above. Thanks for the report.

There's also still a glitch whevever the dragon wraps the world edge, and an odd thing happening during the dragon respawn function, but so far I've had no luck solving them.

[sandmountainslim]

I am NOT too good at the game but do like it

this is the best I can do

[yuppicide]

I am around your score as well, but I think you have me beat.

sandmountainslim, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 10:35 AM, said:

I am NOT too good at the game but do like it

this is the best I can do

[yuppicide]

I am confused as to what file I need to download.

There's a REV1 in the first post, then REV1 a little farther down.

Should keep them in one place, or name the other one REV2 with the new changes.

I must have downloaded the wrong one.. the dragon still goes right, but I did notice him going left on a few occasions, but not very often. He moved around similar to one of those bird things in Demon Attack.

I kind of found a bug.. I think what happened is I shot the dragon right as he killed me. I respawned back to life with the dragon over my head and he died.

Can I ask how your dragon spawning works? Like after you kill him what happens.. does he randomly respawn somewhere after a random amount of time? I notice sometimes he respawns right away, sometimes not. A lot of times he respawns very close to me, sometimes not.

jrok, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 10:03 AM, said:

yuppicide, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 3:37 AM, said:

- Dragon only moves right? There's a castle to the left of him, but he insists on going right? Is he preset to randomly go to a castle or does he just go right until he finds one? I would say he should either go to the nearest castle or randomly goes to a certain one, but can randomly change his mind if he wants.

This was a bug. I squashed it this morning and updated the file above. Thanks for the report.

There's also still a glitch whevever the dragon wraps the world edge, and an odd thing happening during the dragon respawn function, but so far I've had no luck solving them.

[yuppicide]

I am confused as to what file I need to download.

There's a REV1 in the first post, then REV1 a little farther down.

Should keep them in one place, or name the other one REV2 with the new changes.

I must have downloaded the wrong one.. the dragon still goes right, but I did notice him going left on a few occasions, but not very often. He moved around similar to one of those bird things in Demon Attack.

I kind of found a bug.. I think what happened is I shot the dragon right as he killed me. I respawned back to life with the dragon over my head and he died.

Can I ask how your dragon spawning works? Like after you kill him what happens.. does he randomly respawn somewhere after a random amount of time? I notice sometimes he respawns right away, sometimes not. A lot of times he respawns very close to me, sometimes not.

jrok, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 10:03 AM, said:

yuppicide, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 3:37 AM, said:

- Dragon only moves right? There's a castle to the left of him, but he insists on going right? Is he preset to randomly go to a castle or does he just go right until he finds one? I would say he should either go to the nearest castle or randomly goes to a certain one, but can randomly change his mind if he wants.

This was a bug. I squashed it this morning and updated the file above. Thanks for the report.

There's also still a glitch whevever the dragon wraps the world edge, and an odd thing happening during the dragon respawn function, but so far I've had no luck solving them.

[jrok]

yuppicide, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 11:39 AM, said:

I am confused as to what file I need to download.

There's a REV1 in the first post, then REV1 a little farther down.

Should keep them in one place, or name the other one REV2 with the new changes.

Sorry! You're right, I forgot to update the version in my first post (I just corrected this). It was just a minor bugfix, really just two lines of code, so I wouldn't want to call it a new version. Charge_rev1.bin is now the latest in both posts, and the dragon should be changing directions fairly frequently.

yuppicide, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 11:39 AM, said:

I kind of found a bug.. I think what happened is I shot the dragon right as he killed me. I respawned back to life with the dragon over my head and he died.

Confirmed. I'll attempt a fix for the next build. Thanks.

yuppicide, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 11:39 AM, said:

Can I ask how your dragon spawning works? Like after you kill him what happens.. does he randomly respawn somewhere after a random amount of time? I notice sometimes he respawns right away, sometimes not. A lot of times he respawns very close to me, sometimes not.

Yes, its a random respawn location. At first I attempted to use SeaGTGruff's get_rand(a, b) function, but it was taking a little long to execute. For now I settled on batari's native "rand" to produce a value between 0 and 255, then respawn the dragon at one of ten locations if the value returned is under 152. If the value is over 152, then the program waits for a frame and selects a new rand value the next time around. The dragon is only started when a valid map location is selected.

NewDragonLocation
  r = rand

  if r >= 0 && r < 32 then dragon1x = spawnpoint1
  if r >= 16 && r < 32 then dragon1x = spawnpoint2
  if r >= 32 && r < 48 then dragon1x = spawnpoint3
  if r >= 48 && r < 56 then dragon1x = spawnpoint4
  if r >= 56 && r < 72 then dragon1x = spawnpoint5
  if r >= 72 && r < 88 then dragon1x = spawnpoint6
  if r >= 88 && r < 104 then dragon1x = spawnpoint7
  if r >= 104 && r < 120 then dragon1x = spawnpoint8
  if r >= 120 && r < 136 then dragon1x = spawnpoint9
  if r >= 136 && r < 152 then dragon1x = spawnpoint10

  if r >=152 then dragon1x = offscreen : goto SkipStartDragon

StartDragon
  (...set next dragon variables from enemy data table)

SkipStartDragon

It seems like there should be a more graceful way of doing this, but timing is a concern and I am already pushing a lot of things into the vertical blank.

Edited by jrok, Sat Jul 11, 2009 10:22 AM.

[jrok]

sandmountainslim, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 10:35 AM, said:

I am NOT too good at the game but do like it

this is the best I can do

Thanks! That's not a bad score. One way to beef it up is to kill those pesky knights.

Did you photograph this screen on a CRT by any chance? I am sort of curious how the game looks on real hardware.

[sandmountainslim]

jrok, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 11:21 AM, said:

Did you photograph this screen on a CRT by any chance? I am sort of curious how the game looks on real hardware.

No sorry, I just snapped a pic from my computer screen after playing on Stella.
Wp

[GroovyBee]

jrok, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 5:21 PM, said:

Did you photograph this screen on a CRT by any chance? I am sort of curious how the game looks on real hardware.

With my CC2 and F4 bankswitching on PAL I get vertical black and white stripes.

[jrok]

GroovyBee, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 1:54 PM, said:

jrok, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 5:21 PM, said:

Did you photograph this screen on a CRT by any chance? I am sort of curious how the game looks on real hardware.

With my CC2 and F4 bankswitching on PAL I get vertical black and white stripes.

It should be F6.

[GroovyBee]

jrok, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 8:55 PM, said:

It should be F6.

Thanks for that. It now starts but rolls on my PAL system, no surprise about that tho.

[jrok]

GroovyBee, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 4:26 PM, said:

jrok, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 8:55 PM, said:

It should be F6.

Thanks for that. It now starts but rolls on my PAL system, no surprise about that tho.

Does this version roll?

 Charge_rev1_PAL.zip   5.94K   48 downloads

[GroovyBee]

jrok, on Sat Jul 11, 2009 9:45 PM, said:

Does this version roll?

Nope. Colours are out tho. Grass is blue, sky is pink, knight on first level is red, border around the radar is green on title page and white while playing. Other than that it looks good.