82 replies to this topic

[CyranoJ]

Well, we gave this it's first public showing at AC11 last weekend and thought it's about time to let everyone have a look at what we've been working on.

Here's a link to a very horrible quality video of our new game "Rebooteroids!" for the Atari Jaguar.



More details will appear on the Reboot website soon regarding the development of this game, and I hope to also blog it's progress here on AA.

We hope you like what you see

Enjoy....

[edit] Below is the text SH3 wrote under the vid on youtube

This is a shakycam video of me playing rebooteroids - probably the next full-sized game to be released by Reboot of Jagware.

This build of rebooteroids was shown at the recent AC2011 coding party in France. It is a rotary-controlled (or regular d-pad controlled if you don't own any) 'roids game featuring power-ups & downs, upgradable ships, multiple worlds with unique gfx skins, 1 or 2 players, arcade mode, challenge mode and other goodies on the cart such as CD booter, BJL uploader and save games.

It makes heavy use of the Jaguar's CRY-RMW graphics - lighting effects such as the animated 64x64 light maps surrounding the bullets and the translucent overlapping explosions give the game a visual lift. Background scrolling adds to the fun while the mSg music pounds away. SFX in this build are entirely place-holders.

There are only 2 worlds in this build, more are planned for the release version. As you can see, neither skin is complete yet, but have recycled or non-final gfx for certain objects.

The game will be cart-only. There will be a demo freely available, but a full download will not be possible as the game will not support existing flash devices due to additional features.

Read more at reboot.atari.org soon - and look out for more videos featuring a look through the BMX menu & check AA for CJ's blog updates!

Edited by CyranoJ, Wed Apr 20, 2011 8:07 PM.

[Sauron]

It's not that bad quality, although you don't really get to see the effects in the proper manner.

[Tyrant]

Looking pretty impressive already. I can't wait to see this with additional graphics and powerups in place.

I'm curious as to what kind of "additional features" you can't fit onto a 4mb flash cart though, but I'm sure we'll find out in due course. Also it is lovely to see another Rotary-enabled game under development.

[Clay]

The purchase of a rotary controller now will make a lot more sense for me and I bet a lot of other people. It did not make much sense to spend that kind of money for one game.

Look forward to hearing more info on this new game.

Probably not possible but you know what would be really cool; add your mini games like Downfall and Reactris for a multi game cartridge.

[CyranoJ]

Clay, on Wed Apr 20, 2011 9:33 PM, said:

Probably not possible but you know what would be really cool; add your mini games like Downfall and Reactris for a multi game cartridge.

We have a few ideas along these lines.

[ls650]

It looks very promising.

I have always thought the Jag needed an Asteroids 2000...

[sh3-rg]

CyranoJ, on Wed Apr 20, 2011 7:53 PM, said:

Here's a link to a very horrible quality video of our new game "Rebooteroids!" for the Atari Jaguar.

Well, it is 1080p and fairly steady for a camera vid The video quality on youtube improves slightly after upload as they continue processing, the first version right after upload can be a bit iffy. Anyway, time to invest in a high-end capture device I think.

[CyranoJ]

:-)

It's not shakey enough. And it's quite clear. And the audio isn't in overdrive. It's clearly a terrible Jaguar video

[Sauron]

CyranoJ, on Thu Apr 21, 2011 12:59 AM, said:

It's not shakey enough.

Oh, I'm sure one of us can oblige. *pulls out phone and readies the camera*

[Christos]

CyranoJ, on Thu Apr 21, 2011 12:59 AM, said:

:-)

It's not shakey enough. And it's quite clear. And the audio isn't in overdrive. It's clearly a terrible Jaguar video

And it's from an lcd, no crt refresh rate artifacts.. bah.

[CyranoJ]

Sauron uploaded a longer look at the UI (Front end) of the game - the UI is 100% functional and complete. Check it out

[nonner242]

SWEET!

[save2600]

Now *this* looks awesome! What a pleasant surprise. Looking forward to adding Rebooteroids to my Jag's library

Q: the starfield that's coming at you in the UI, is that now the standard during gameplay? If so, I think that would be an incredible "next gen" effect - totally in the spirit of the good Jag arcade remakes. Hope it's an option at least.

[iwan-iwanowitsch-goratschin]

I love the Vectrex!

[sh3-rg]

save2600, on Thu Apr 21, 2011 1:14 PM, said:

Q: the starfield that's coming at you in the UI, is that now the standard during gameplay? If so, I think that would be an incredible "next gen" effect - totally in the spirit of the good Jag arcade remakes. Hope it's an option at least.

The FE star effect is a standard 3d starfield, think it's got a range of 255 intensity values, from very dark to pure white. If you watch as the menu icons are moved left & right the source of the stars alters accordingly. I think CJ did well with this whole front end BMX interface, he spent quite a while on getting it right and it's paid off I reckon.

As for your question, a 3d starfield wouldn't really work well behind the game as the stars come at you out of the screen, but you & everything else in the game scroll around the screen on a different plane. It would be suitable for some kind of into-the-screen bonus level, so you might get to play over it if we come up with something like that

I think the current star backdrop in-game is a 3x3 screen map (so 9 screens total) that moves equally and opposite to the direction of the player. It can give an odd sensation when you compare the star movement to the asteroids etc., but it looks decent enough (what did look iffy though was when we had multiple layers that moved in multiples of the player ship - that was just too odd!).

[sh3-rg]

iwan-iwanowitsch-goratschin, on Thu Apr 21, 2011 1:21 PM, said:

I love the Vectrex!

I'm hoping my camera video with it's added blurry artifacting (rather than a direct capture) hasn't given a false impression of the retro gfx skin - it's not exactly super silky smooth as real vectors on a Vectrex.

[the.golden.ax]

Looking good!

AX

[save2600]

sh3-rg, on Thu Apr 21, 2011 1:51 PM, said:

As for your question, a 3d starfield wouldn't really work well behind the game as the stars come at you out of the screen, but you & everything else in the game scroll around the screen on a different plane. It would be suitable for some kind of into-the-screen bonus level, so you might get to play over it if we come up with something like that

Are you saying it wouldn't work from a technical programmers POV or your feeling that it just wouldn't look good? Coming at you, or going into the screen... both would give an eery sense of depth to what's normally a 2D game. Watching the starfield coming at you during the front end screen just looked really neat. Since it's not common for this type of game, just thought the concept would be kinda cool in a Jaguar kind of way. A little dizzying maybe, but that didn't stop Downfall's background from being what it is

[remowilliams]

I can't tell you how much fun I've had just 'driving' the ship around with the rotary and not even firing...

[sh3-rg]

save2600, on Thu Apr 21, 2011 2:09 PM, said:

Are you saying it wouldn't work from a technical programmers POV or your feeling that it just wouldn't look good?

Yea, I just thought it wouldn't look right, but you never know, maybe it would look cool. I'm not going to suggest it to CJ though, I'll let him read it here... I've run out of bargaining chips when it comes to adding stuff into games, I gotta keep my head down for a bit

[remowilliams]

sh3-rg, on Thu Apr 21, 2011 2:59 PM, said:

I'll let him read it here... I've run out of bargaining chips when it comes to adding stuff into games, I gotta keep my head down for a bit

suddenly has flashbacks of the menu control scheme 'discussions'...

[CyranoJ]

Thanks for the comments

I've been wanting to show this off for a while, but felt it best to wait until there was something more substantial for anyone to watch. The star field is actually drawn using the CRY illumination table as 'Z' - the 'deeper' in a star is, the lower it's brightness. Works quite well

As SH3 said above, it might make it into a playable screen, but it won't be used on the main game area. We've got other plans for that......

About the menu discussions - the front end menu is fully functional via both the normal jagpad *and* the rotary controller. Twisting left/right to move, and a/c for up and down. I've also mapped 7,8,9,0 as up/down/left/right. # toggles between normal and rotary, current mode displayed top-right.

The "Rotary Trim" option allows you to calibrate your rotary to the game - not all rotaries are the same, and have different numbers of pulses per 360 degree motion. We've tried this with a few, and so far all have happily calibrated to the game. I'm developing with a Chaos Reigns, if anyone is wondering.... SUPERSMOOTH

[Stephen]

Sweet - another game for my rotary

[Tyrant]

CyranoJ, on Thu Apr 21, 2011 5:00 PM, said:

I've also mapped 7,8,9,0 as up/down/left/right.

Surely 2, 4, 6, 8, is more common, then you can have the diagonals (which probably make no sense in a 4-way stick game) on 1, 3, 7 & 9.

Other than that though, sounds and looks like a most awesome game indeed.

Oh and I'm sure you have already allowed the rotary trim to go a long way either side of "normal", but remember that the extremes are pretty extreme.

Hacked 2600 controllers have really poor control (4 cycles / 16 steps I think, may be less) and also only one fire button, so allowing buttons on pad 2 would be cool. At the other extreme JediJeff controllers use optical encoders similar to mice and produce a positively absurd number of inputs per revolution (I would guess 60-150 cycles per revolution).

[CyranoJ]

The button mapping is just for the menu, in game needs a/b/c - so those 1 button rotaries are useless