Early techdemo of ColecoVision naval game

[PkK]

Recently I started to work on a naval combat game for the ColecoVision. It shall try to represent the naval battles of the late 19th and early 20th century.

 

While the game is still far from complete, here is a simple techdemo, that might give a first impression of the game.

 

You currently only controlthe engines and rudder (the ship's artillery is AI controlled, will change in final game).

 

On the right you see the stats of your ship:

 

Hull - When this reaches zero the ship sinks (well for the techdemo, it doesn't, you're unsinkable, only the other ships can sink)

 

Eng. - Engine power. Move the joystick up / down to control this. Damage to the ship can reduce the maximum available engine power.

 

Rud. - Rudder. Move the joystick left / right to control this. Damage to the ship can restrict the available range.

 

Rot. / Ele. Desired rotation and elevation angles for your gun turrets.

 

The three lines below give the state of your gun turrets (Ready - when ready to fire, but can't reach target, Rel. + number when reloading). Lines disappear when the respective turets have been disabled by hits.

 

Shells hitting a ship result in an explosion (red), shells hitting the water give a splash (white).

 

The demo's scenario is the battle of the dogger bank (1915). You control the German flagship Seydlitz (although the different chips classes don't really make much of a difference yet)).

 

Philipp

 

P.S.:

Some Features planned for the final game:

 

- Six historic scenarios (Yalu, Ulsan, Lemnos, Coronel, Falkland, Dogger Bank) and custom scenarios (create custom fleets from 28 ship classes from 7 nations).

- Cooperative multiplayer with one player controlling ship and rudder and the other controlling the artillery.

SK.rom.gz

[Bill Loguidice]

Wonderful idea and concept. What kind of final graphic quality do you think you can achieve?

[PkK]

Wonderful idea and concept. What kind of final graphic quality do you think you can achieve?

 

I'm already encountering the hardware's limitations. CPU, memory and graphics. There's just one color per sprite on the CV, and using background tiles to give ships more detail will probably be too slow. I'll rewrite some more functions in assembler, but I don't expect more than an at most 20% overall speed improvement. Tracking all those flying shells, steering ships, and their AI takes CPU time. For these reasons the game will probably be limited to 9 or 10 ships per scenario and I'll drop the originally planned torpedos.

 

Attached you can find an updated version. I've added a new false-color mode, since it is hard to tell friend and foe apart when using realistic ship colors.

 

The custom scenario setting doesn't work yet, so for now you have just two scenarios to choose from.

 

Philipp

[Bucket]

Fascinating!

 

Just in time, I was thinking of spec'ing out a submarine simulator for the 2600. I think I've worked out a great deal of the gameplay - and as far as visuals go, open sea would be pretty easy to render on the machine.

 

Of course, I'd probably run into many of the problems you have. AI would be virtually nonexistent and scenarios would be pretty limited.

[PkK]

Fascinating!

 

Just in time, I was thinking of spec'ing out a submarine simulator for the 2600. I think I've worked out a great deal of the gameplay - and as far as visuals go, open sea would be pretty easy to render on the machine.

 

Of course, I'd probably run into many of the problems you have. AI would be virtually nonexistent and scenarios would be pretty limited.

 

Well, I managed to put some limited AI into it: Fleet-level AI will order heavily damaged ships to retreat and try to send another ship to protect the retreating ship. Ship level AI tried to steer towards the enemy (or retreat). Targeting AI is not so good, it rarely manages to hit moving targets.

 

Here's another version of the game.

Basic creation of custom scenarios works. You can compose fleets choosing from 30 ship classes (however the ship classes themselves have not yet been fully implemented and thus dont't differ much, except for number of guns and chinese shells failing to explode most of the time).

 

Philipp

SKb.rom.gz

[PkK]

Another update:

 

Now you can toggle between steering mode and artillery mode.

 

Toggle: Second fire button.

 

Steering mode controls: See first post.

 

Artillery mode controls:

 

Gun elevation: Joystick up/down.

Gun direction: Joystick left/right.

Fire: First fire button (holding it will fire continuously).

 

Philipp

[PkK]

Forgot the attachment. Here's the .rom.

SKc.rom.gz