28 replies to this topic

[Ben Klammer]

I know this is the Atari forum, but there's a vector game I'd LOVE to see be made on the Vectrex. Hopefully made by someone who likes Homestar Runner, so they can put a good level of love and care in it. It's a flash game called StrongBadZone

http://www.homestarr...com/sbzone.html

And a Homestar Wiki artical on it

http://www.hrwiki.or...i/StrongBadZone

This would be awesome if it were made.

[ACrystal2011]

Never played vectrex, is this what the graphics usually look like (they are cool). Pretty fun little game, maybe someone with some programming skills could port this??

[TrekMD]

Cool. I just got a Vectrex recently and it is a nice system!

[save2600]

StrongBadZone is a bit too simple as a standalone game. Would make a nice addition to a mini-game compilation of sorts though.

[Ben Klammer]

Well, it's simplicity should help get it made, perhaps? Although recreating the voices would be awesmazing. There was an original game for it called Spike that had some weird vocals.

[Megaman Legends]

It's simply fun and it's kind of like the disks of tron but more fun. Megaman APPROVED

[gliptitude]

I've been trying to think of new vectrex game ideas and I was thinking it would be cool to utilize the overlays more comprehensively. Lots of homebrew games pretty much write the overlay aspect off, but the colors are a huge part of what makes some of the old games look so wonderful. I think I saw the Vector Pilot game was an exception with a great colorful overlay. ... But I think it would be cool for a deeper game, with more than one screen configuration and have MULTIPLE overlays, different layouts for different "worlds" in an adventure/quest game. For a quick shooter this would seem a pain in the ass, but for a deeper game i think it would be compelling interaction, possibly provide incentive to the player to reach the next graphic/color scheme for example. ... On another note I think the vectrex games with a third person/perspective/3D playing field look the best, and that should be a priority for an outstanding homebrew game.

[gliptitude]

I'm fantasizing about making a vectrex game prototype and wondering if anyone knows what might be within my ability. What I was thinking was that i could make a non playable visual/audio demonstration (movie), depicting the gameplay. I would want to get it to at least a playable file on a vectrex emulator, but ideally all the way onto a cartridge so I could mess with overlays. Is there potentially a developing environment for just a non-interactive "vectrex movie" that would be a graphic interface rather than actually writing the code?

Edited by gliptitude, Wed Feb 1, 2012 2:41 PM.

[GroovyBee]

Due to the vector display on the Vectrex you'll have to write code to get it to display anything. What computer languages do you know?

[gliptitude]

I don't have any programming experience, and I am aware this makes me unqualified to make a video game. I don't know any programming language. ... That's why I thought making a non-playable movie demo would be useful, help possibly convince a programmer to collaborate with me if I was able to do enough design work and make it look like a compelling enough project, already realized to some extent, for him or her to want to work on it. I'm not sure how practical any of this is, especially with no or low money investment and low prospect of commercial success. I have a friend who might be capable and eventually convinced to do programming work for a game, but I don't see the project going anywhere without a substantial and articulate initial presentation by myself. I thought making attractive images and animations appear on an actual vectrex, behind an overlay, would be ideal.

Edited by gliptitude, Wed Feb 1, 2012 4:59 PM.

[GroovyBee]

The best thing to do is write a specification for the game and hope that a programmer will take up the challenge. It'll need a back story, instructions, level design(s), designs for the player and baddies "sprites", bonus screens etc. You can create mock ups to illustrate your game's concepts.

[GroovyBee]

You might also want to read this thread :-

http://www.atariage....-idea-peddlers/

[gliptitude]

thank you very much for your replies GroovyBee. I do appreciate it. I did just go and read the initial post of "idea peddler" guidelines in that thread you linked, most of which I thought I had already anticipated. I think I mistook this thread as a general forum for vectrex game ideas when it actually was just proposing that StrongBadZone get ported to the vectrex, so maybe not the appropriate place for me to bounce ideas around.

...I'm not ready to convince a programmer of anything. Was just thinking that a great pitch could involve images that display on a real vectrex, since the look of that system's graphics is so distinctive and luminous and ill-represented in drawings or paintings. Especially since my ideas involve the effect of colorful overlays, it would be important for me to demonstrate the real look of that to a programmer (or anyone else i want to help me with it) in order to convince him/her to be excited about the prospect. Maybe what i could do is draw animated frames in photoshop, white lines on a black field of similar proportions and resolution of the vectrex, sequence the frames on the computer for a movie file exported to video, then set up a black and white television the same size, or cropped to be the same size as the vectrex monitor, with some simple hardware to hold my mock-up overlays in front of the video playing on the screen. ... Or maybe if one of these multi-carts have flash memory, I could make some animations with the light pen and the old animation program, with the ability to save numerous sequences for presentation.

Thanks for breaking down what a game "specification" should include. That's useful. I'm getting more curious though, about what motivates programmers. I had imagined that they were creative people who would want to bring a lot of their own ideas and tastes to any project, rather than spend all this time executing someone else's fully realized plan, especially for a game for an antique system like the vectrex, where there could only be a marginal prospect of any commercial success.

[GroovyBee]

For Vectrex mocks I'd say just get the aspect ratio of the screen right and anti-alias the lines. Some experimentation will be needed because you'll need to adjust the line thickness to get the "feel" right. Although overlays add to the look of the game you can probably do without them at the start. Its much more important to get your game idea into something that the Vectrex can actually handle.

Its a sad fact that programmers tend to have very long lists of their own projects to work on. Those projects might be "ports" of games that didn't get released on their machine of choice or original games.

Commercial success doesn't really come into it. Nobody will get rich writing homebrew games. What motivates the programmer is the challenge of actually doing it. Even if you only make a cart for yourself you get to say "I did that". If other people want to play your game thats a bonus . Plus if you make a CIB release you'll almost certainly need the skills of others for artwork, boxes and manuals.

[Ben Klammer]

...that was interesting. Guess no one's making StrongBadZone.

[gliptitude]

Yeah I get it that making screen overlays is not programming, and programming is what determines weather or not it exists at all as a game, and that programming takes enormous amounts of time compared to overlays. That doesn't explain why so many of these prolific homebrew carts lack them though. It would seem essential in achieving that satisfaction of the product in your hand at the end of the road to me. Maybe I'll practice making an original overlay for an existing homebrew game first, or just replicas for vintage games, which seem to be in demand, and if it goes well bargain with people based on that. The package and all the art stuff is not beyond me either.

Can you explain more what you mean by 'getting the game idea into something the vectrex can handle'? ..and how that might differ from what I had otherwise been thinking? My ideas were otherwise directed generally by what has been done before, in terms of scale and speed and number of things going on at once, number of things active at once, apparent level of activeness/interaction etc, degree of variety in levels...

I have definitely noticed just this morning the issue of vector thickness in the feel of a game, with some disappointment, when I played my first homebrew cart. Lines look too thin, not as good as they did in the youtube video, and kind of cheapen an otherwise impressive game.

[ComputerSpaceFan]

Ben Klammer, on Thu Feb 2, 2012 2:36 PM, said:

...that was interesting. Guess no one's making StrongBadZone.

Don't be so sure.....


cspacefan



By the way George here's a suggestion for a future project (as if you don't already have enough on your plate)....
http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic...rex-game-idea/


FURY



cspacefan, I remember seeing that game quite a while back but had forgotten about it. Thanks for the link. Neat game!

[TrekMD]

I like the idea of creating overlays for the homebrew games. That would be neat to have! It is part of the charm of the Vectrex.

[GroovyBee]

gliptitude, on Thu Feb 2, 2012 2:37 PM, said:

Yeah I get it that making screen overlays is not programming, and programming is what determines weather or not it exists at all as a game, and that programming takes enormous amounts of time compared to overlays. That doesn't explain why so many of these prolific homebrew carts lack them though. It would seem essential in achieving that satisfaction of the product in your hand at the end of the road to me. Maybe I'll practice making an original overlay for an existing homebrew game first, or just replicas for vintage games, which seem to be in demand, and if it goes well bargain with people based on that. The package and all the art stuff is not beyond me either.

The main problem with overlays is that they are probably expensive or difficult to get made in small quantities. Homebrew games sell anywhere between 50 and 250 copies depending on title and platform. Hence the reason why I said that homebrew developers don't get rich. When a developer has to get things made upfront e.g. carts, boxes, manuals etc. it could be a financial disaster if the game doesn't sell well and they are left with excess stock. That is the reason why many games are sold on pre-order.

Quote

Can you explain more what you mean by 'getting the game idea into something the vectrex can handle'? ..and how that might differ from what I had otherwise been thinking? My ideas were otherwise directed generally by what has been done before, in terms of scale and speed and number of things going on at once, number of things active at once, apparent level of activeness/interaction etc, degree of variety in levels...

By "handle" I mean that the game fits within the constraints of the machine. When you have low MHz CPUs and a couple of K of RAM the meagre resources have to go a long way. For example, if your game had 50 objects on screen at once then something like the Vectrex probably couldn't handle that (I don't know for sure because I'm not a Vectrex programmer). However, something like the Atari 7800 could. An idea may need revising several times before it becomes workable but you won't know that unless you throw it out there. Be prepared for criticism of your ideas and alternate suggestions when you do.

[Mayhem]

With the Vectrex, it's not really a question of the number of objects, more the number and size of the lines needing to be drawn. That's the bottleneck.

[gliptitude]

does the relative abundance of memory these days (vs. 1983) enable the cartridge to compensate for any of the shortcomings of the console? from what i understand a much 'bigger' cartridge can easily be used today. does that allow for a 'bigger' game?

[gliptitude]

does the relative abundance of memory these days (vs. 1983) enable the cartridge to compensate for any of the shortcomings of the console? from what i understand a much 'bigger' cartridge can easily be used today. does that allow for a 'bigger' game?

[GroovyBee]

gliptitude, on Fri Feb 3, 2012 4:17 AM, said:

does the relative abundance of memory these days (vs. 1983) enable the cartridge to compensate for any of the shortcomings of the console? from what i understand a much 'bigger' cartridge can easily be used today. does that allow for a 'bigger' game?

You can put anything you like on the cartridge. However, if you don't have electronics and PCB CAD package skills its going to be hard (or a steep learning curve). Having said that there are electronics people interested in the Vectrex, so you could just pitch the idea to them. You'd also need support for a new cart design in an emulator otherwise it'll be hard going for programmers. A new PCB might also put the cost of your release up. But if you make several releases (e.g. very active on the scene) and you use the same cart PCB in all your games you can order more parts upfront which will be cheaper in the long run.

[Mayhem]

There have only been two real developments in Vectrex cartridges since the machine was launched, and one of them was introduced by the original programmers way back in 1983. This one in question is on-board RAM, to which Animation has 2k of additional memory to store all the designs you produce. The only homebrew cartridge to use that same board type is Spike's Circus, I'm sure there was a good reason for it but I can't remember the technical reason why offhand.

Secondly, unsurprising, bankswitching. Although the maximum was 32k and no original game got any where near that (I think Dark Tower is 12k and that's the largest "original" game), homebrew writers began to push it. Then John Dondzila made some 64k cartridges as there were so many games on there. Bankswitching works like the 2600, one bank can't see anything in the other bank, so if there's common resources needed, you'll have to store them in both. Aside from Dondzila's multicarts, the only other ones that use 64k that I can think of are Kristoff Tut's two releases Vectrexians and Vector Pilot, and they use the second 32k bank for animated sequences mostly.

[gliptitude]

Thanks for replies all.

With the actual production costs of the game, after the game rom has been produced, overlays and packaging are not overwhelming to me, and it is mainly the cartridge that concerns and mystifies me. I have some access to screen printing equipment and a friend who can at least advise me if not actually collaborate with me, in this type of printing process as well as others. In making an original CIB edition of a vectrex game, say 50 to 200 copies, I would definitely anticipate producing the printed materials myself (rather than contracting a commercial printer), spending a significant amount of my money on the materials. If I participated in the development of a game to the extent that a programmer actually completed the software to a point that we were both satisfied with, and still retained an idea that I could claim some authorship of, I can easily see myself spending $1000 or more on materials required for me to produce 50 to 200 decent overlays and boxes by hand. The craft in producing these things with a consistent result is not completely foreign to me. The large amount of work it would require for me to flesh out the details and commence volume production and test the results, would certainly be justified to me if the game was completely ready for cartridge production. At least one cartridge of the game would have to exist before volume production of the overlays would happen, to spec the design(s) and make sure overlay and game lineup, have proper color density and effect etc, figuring out all the right quantities and processes. Would of course want to know that volume production of the cartridge is doable (with consistent results) before making everything else.

... With cartridges in general I had previously assumed it was a lot different than printing to media, that any game cartridge would require some unique engineering - physically, unless it was really just a flash cart or something. But after seeing John Dondzila's page, that he can put any legally accessed Vectrex software on a Vextrex cartridge, and also after buying two of his advertised carts from him that he apparently makes to order (for a reasonable price), I began to think that the transition from ROM to cartridge was not an incredible hurdle. It was on his site too that I saw that cartridges could vary in size. Personally, I don't care to push the envelope or break any boundaries in terms of technical specs, just want to figure out how to best communicate with the programmer, direct him/her to what has been done before and what is available. Is there a standard or more than one standard of cartridge that is most accessible? What sort of expenses could be involved in the volume production of cartridges? What are the variables in terms of cost? How much of this would have to be custom to a new game? Can this end of things (cartridge production) be simplified by deciding on a particular cartridge/process/service before beginning to program the game? What would that service be and what might it cost?

A couple of friends with different qualifications than myself are interested in working on something like this with me and I'm trying to get better ideas of the potential costs involved, anticipate the scale of the thing, narrow my concepts etc., anticipate whether or not I would require a specialized programmer besides my friend(s), whether or not having multiple programmers in a project like this is a bad idea. ...

Edited by gliptitude, Fri Feb 3, 2012 7:25 PM.