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Post by vectrexroli on Sept 1, 2015 10:31:46 GMT -5
I like those animations, really fun game.
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Post by mountaingoat on Sept 1, 2015 19:50:03 GMT -5
Thank you guys.
There was no way I would make it bounded, one of my favorite things about the Vectrex is that you can "go around" the screen.
In MF if you cross the top/bottom edge, you always have to worry as the random generator seems to like spawning a shark right on top of you as you appear on the other edge :-)
Do you guys have some example playing PCM? Like I said it was my learning project so I kept the sounds / music simple.
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Post by binarystar on Sept 2, 2015 7:34:02 GMT -5
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Post by Rapetou33 on Sept 3, 2015 10:15:05 GMT -5
I just tried it today : beautifut drawings, smooth and precise moves ! Great ! Thanks
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Post by Nic Lobo (pucpuc) on Sept 4, 2015 14:00:18 GMT -5
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Post by hcmffm on Sept 4, 2015 17:43:18 GMT -5
A new Vectrex game?! That's great and surprising news! I just had a look at vectrexmad's video of Marine Fox: Very good animation of the sharks, nice "intro" with the mountain goat; well done graphic of the "Medusa". I'm quite impressed by this very first game of you, mountaingoat. And last not least it has a harmless game concept - another game that could be played by children. Sure enough I'll play the the game on the real hardware in the coming days. Thank you very much, mountaingoat, for developing Marine Fox and provding it for free!
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Post by mountaingoat on Sept 4, 2015 18:14:19 GMT -5
Thank you guys. The non-shooting aspect of the game was also by design, I wanted to see if a pacman-like concept could work.
Happy to report that my kids love it and they actually play it.
Right now I am busy with some other projects but I plan on releasing the source code as well - I hope it will be a good tutorial and maybe more people get into Vectrex programming.
I know that the sources that have been released by other authors were very helpful for me.
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Post by VectorX on Sept 4, 2015 19:26:20 GMT -5
The non-shooting aspect of the game was also by design, I wanted to see if a pacman-like concept could work. It probably already works better than Clean Sweep, which was a bit slow and the "infinite" levels killed the game, although that's another topic entirely. I think I'll like this better than Solar Fox, but then I could be a bit biased because I wasn't a huge fan of that game. It was fairly ok and that was about it to me. Being able to wrap around the screen and having enemies travel throughout the playfield (rather than just on the edges for the most part) already seems more appealing. |
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Post by VectorX on Sept 5, 2015 19:34:09 GMT -5
Well, this is quite the different Vectrex title! There are hardly any games at all where you just collect things, like with Clean Sweep. Nice to take a very simple concept and add a few things to it to make it look really nice, such as having one of the very few vector women appear in a Vectrex game, along with the mountain goat. Controls seem wonky at first but then you get used to them. The difficulty level sure ramps up quickly! Nice (but annoying) touch to have only one shark appear onscreen later, making you try to figure out if you should go for certain crystals or not, then one or more sharks appear onscreen at once like they're supposed to (damn devious buttheads!). It was also a nice addition to have illustrations on the downloaded document showing the screen elements. I wasn't expecting that as I was scrolling down. There are a few known bugs: At the very first start of the game, it takes a couple of seconds for the Vectrex to draw the Medusa and the sharks. I must be missing some vector initialization, if you have any ideas, please let me know. This only happens the very first time. Thanks for that; I was wondering what the deal was. I don't know if you're planning on making any substantial changes, but here's a few: 1. I don't know if it's happening on both sides, but there's a bug where I die on the left side of the screen at times when no shark is near. I once had a time when I was exactly parallel to a shark and we were both moving downwards. I thought "no big deal", as I hadn't collided with the shark and we were both going downwards, then after a couple of seconds I died for no reason. 2. There's four buttons with no use during the game. I don't think it'd kill any seals (pun intended  ) to put in a pause feature. 3. Like with the blah arcade game Spiders, you could have the woman do something different with every level or two, like have her wink her other eye, maybe the fox could start winking, have them smile instead, etc. 4. Have some kind of Super Crystal or something appear so you could either shoot a shark or make yourself invincible and colliding with a shark would destroy it. Since you have all these levels as they are without any other way to defend your ship, you wouldn't necessarily have to have it appear a lot as it is and make the game too easy; maybe once on level 5 or 6 and then not again until level 12 or 14 or something (I can't get past level 5 as it is, so I don't think it'd make that huge a difference). And you could have it disappear after a few seconds if we can't grab it, along with having the killed shark reappear after a few seconds as well. Anyway, pretty neat and different for the Vectrex. |
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Post by mountaingoat on Sept 6, 2015 10:45:14 GMT -5
VectorX, thank you VERY MUCH for the comments!
The bug you reported is a pretty serious one. I was able to reproduce it and fix it as well. You could not only get eaten on the left side of the screen but pick up free crystals as well.
Just in case someone cares, here are some details about the bug. The lanes are 25 "pixels" wide in the game. This naturally is not a good number to do some quick div/mod trickery with to see if there are collisions. I tried the game during development with 32 wide lanes but things looked much worse.
So what I have is two arrays - one for crystals and one for sharks - to see potential collisions. They are in essence arrays of 256 and each element tells you which lane there is a potential collision with. (There are two separate arrays so you can adjust the "width" of potential collisions for crystals and sharks independently. Today it is harder to collide with (pick up) a crystal than with a shark.)
This way you just index into the array with Medusa's X coordinate, get a number and only have to check that single lane for collisions for both crystals and sharks. (And naturally you don't have to keep calling Obj_Hit()). It turns out that for the crystals, the same array is used also for the Y coordinate, making it very easy and quick to check collisions.
Anyway, my ability to count to 2 * 128 was lacking and the arrays just were not big enough. So at positions $80, $81 and $82 the game was indexing into some non-collision array area and it just turns out that there were some bytes there so you could collide with a crystal or shark when you were barely visible on the left edge of the screen. It is now fixed and there are no free crystals - or shark food - any more.
(Sorry about the long explanation.)
While I was at it, also added a Pause function on button 1.
I think I will test it a little more and probably upload it to github as version 1.01 so that this ugly bug can go away and you guys can pause the game.
For the rest of the suggestions I like the idea of different animations between the levels and also the timed powerup for say disabling shark collisions. I probably won't hold up 1.01 for it as Pause seems to be very useful.
One more thing, the way the shark "insertion" works is like this: There is a desired max number of sharks - this starts at 2 and will go up.
Every time the sharks are updated, the system checks if we have the desired number of them. If we don't it will pick a random number (0-7) and see if that lane already has a shark. If yes, it will NOT add a shark. (Coincidentally I think this is where the shark reset bug is, I will have to check.)
So it is possible - just by pure luck - that for a while there will be only 1 shark on the screen. As you indicate, it can be stressful as you never know on which lane will the new one pop up. I think it adds a little excitement to the game so I probably will keep it :-)
Btw, it is my own game and since I adjusted the shark numbers and speed a few weeks ago, I cannot make it past level 7 myself so don't feel bad. ;-)
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Post by VectorX on Sept 6, 2015 12:25:51 GMT -5
VectorX, thank you VERY MUCH for the comments! You're welcome. You asked, so I thought I'd fill in some stuff that I saw fit  The bug you reported is a pretty serious one. I was able to reproduce it and fix it as well. Good. Yeah, it's pretty annoying. While I was at it, also added a Pause function on button 1. I think I will test it a little more and probably upload it to github as version 1.01 so that this ugly bug can go away and you guys can pause the game. That's great. The games go by quickly but it can still be annoying if you have to do something and your game will end if you can't do anything about it. For the rest of the suggestions I like the idea of different animations between the levels and also the timed powerup for say disabling shark collisions. I probably won't hold up 1.01 for it as Pause seems to be very useful. That's fine, the added animations isn't a big thing (obviously), I just thought it'd be a possibility as--and like I said before--you made a simple game but added some neat touches to it (such as that) as it was. That was one of the very few things going for Spiders in regards to seeing what the "Space Mona Lisa" would do, since back then she looked practically digitized. So it is possible - just by pure luck - that for a while there will be only 1 shark on the screen. As you indicate, it can be stressful as you never know on which lane will the new one pop up. I think it adds a little excitement to the game so I probably will keep it :-) Yeah, might as well. Anyway, congrats on the game, I definitely like it more than Solar Fox. I must've played it for an hour last night total during a couple of playing sessions' worth. The only game room I ever saw S. Fox at had some kind of pay as you go process (I can't remember exactly how it worked but I think you paid a small fee for an hour's worth of gaming or something), so that meant that every game you played cost very little. I only played a game of S. Fox at a time and then went off and played something else, I never played two games not only in a row, but not the entire time I was there. |
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Post by Mayhem on Sept 6, 2015 14:56:02 GMT -5
Now I've had a chance to try it, looks and plays well Maybe the sharks get faster a little TOO quickly, perhaps reduce the speed increment on the first few levels. Btw how do I download the PDF properly from GitHub? |
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Post by mountaingoat on Sept 6, 2015 15:47:01 GMT -5
Btw how do I download the PDF properly from GitHub? If you click the "Raw" button, it should start a download in your browser. |
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Post by VectorX on Sept 6, 2015 16:34:10 GMT -5
Maybe the sharks get faster a little TOO quickly, perhaps reduce the speed increment on the first few levels. He did that with version 1.1. Guess he'll let us know when it's ready to download |
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Post by gliptitude on Sept 6, 2015 17:29:45 GMT -5
I tested out in emulation today, (still haven't tried on Vectrex). I also tested the 2600 version of Solar Fox (emulation) and watched some videos of the original arcade game.
For me this is already better than the original!
The aquatic environment is really cool. The wrap-around playfield is a great addition and I think helps reinforce the underwater feel of it. The free movement, (not restricted to a grid like the original) also has a similar and excellent effect, and the STEERING control scheme that you have used instead of the original (4 way) directional stick controls really helps take advantage of the precision of a vector display (not limited to 4 or 8 directions).
I do have a couple observations and ideas.
It looks like the sharks have a smaller boundary than the Medusa, as in they appear and vanish further from the edge of the screen than the player does. This might be more apparent to me because my emulator was slow and because emulation shows the edges of the screen more explicitly. I'm not sure if this really effected play significantly, but it might feel a bit different if adjusted?
I think the triangles detract a bit from the look of the game. The sharks and Medusa are really beautiful sprites and I think it would be worthwhile experimenting with the crystal graphics to make them either more benign (visually) or more attractive and contributing positively to the look. Would it be too much to use another vector or two for the crystal sprites? Or even animated? (Ever see the flying saucer in Protector?) .. Again though emulation may be overly affecting my perception here because I notice it is much more clear in the video that the crystals are DIMMER than the player and the sharks.
I would like to see the controls experimented with. Steering is awesome and I much prefer it to joystick directional controls in this game. .. But you don't need a joystick to steer and it might be nice to (optionally) be able to use buttons for this. .. Also both the original and 2600 versions have a speed up button. I don't think that this is totally necessary for your game, but I do think it is fun and makes for a more dynamic experience, and I think you should consider implementing it and see how it feels.
.. And on the same subject, but in a totally different direction .. Did you know that an UNMODIFIED atari driving controller will work on vectrex? Even the plug slides right into the vectrex joy port! The game would have to be specifically programmed to do this, but it has been done before with several Vectrex game "spinner hacks". But your game has an advantage over a majority of those hacks because you don't need the additional buttons of a second controller to complete functionality.
The original game has shooting and you seemed fairly responsive to VectorX's idea for a power-up shooting phase of the game. .. This also could work well with the driving controller. The button on the driving controller could be used for speed-up but then when the player chooses to power-up, the button would switch to shooting for a set period of time.
.. I'm not trying to totally change your game and some of these suggestions i would not have thought to make if you hadn't already responded favorably to the fairly radical idea of adding power ups. But I do think this is an especially awesome prospect for a viable SPINNER SHOOTER. I realize there is currently no shooting, and that even in the original the shooting element is still secondary. But the fact that the Medusa is constantly and automatically moving forward makes this an excellent candidate.
The pause feature is nice but I think it should be sacrificed if it gets in the way of other controls.
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) to put in a pause feature.
