New game - Marine Fox

[SiLic0ne t0aD]

First, thanks for sharing the rom! I just tried it on an actual Vectrex with my VecMulti.

It's a great game, I really like the intro screens and the game play is addictive. I gave it a quick spin but it does get hard pretty quick.. high score of 9156 first time around.

Edit: I don't know if I found a bug or not, might be the same one already mentioned.. usually on a 'cold start up', the screen goes crazy with random lines after the Medusa head appears, then it goes to normal after a few seconds once the game has started. Other times the game appears normal as it should, usually after a reset. It's hit and miss. I was going to post a picture but it was too large.. (ill post it later, through photobucket if I can remember my info)

[hcmffm]

+1 Excellent comments, gliptitude, that I fully second. To me, the triangles look a bit like pieces of cheese so this could be more a cat and mouse game. ;-)

Two additional suggestion:

1. Less step Difficulty curve
Currently, the game gets hard pretty quickly. The difficulty should increase a bit slower. (already mentioned by Mayhem and VectorRunner)

2. Difficulty by Obstacles
Currently, difficulty is achieved by increasing the speed of the sharks. In addition, it might be an idea to introduce obstacles that are on fixed positions. Touching an obstacle would kill the player's jelly fish.
To distinguish the obstacles from the jewels different graphics (naturally) and brightness could be used. (And sure enough you will know after hitting them the first time ;-) ). I think the obstacles would make the good gameplay even more interesting.


PS: Is a Medusa a jelly fish/puddle? Or what is the relationship between the Medusa and the player's jelly fish?

[gliptitude]

^_ the original arcade game does have some fixed position objects that are introduced a few levels into the game. I can't tell if they are obstacles or what their function is. I don't think the player dies when he/she touch s them.

.. And I think "Medusa" is just a given name for the submarine that you control in this game.

[VectorX]

Sept 6, 2015 23:37:19 GMT -5 SiLic0ne t0aD said:

Edit: I don't know if I found a bug or not, might be the same one already mentioned.. usually on a 'cold start up', the screen goes crazy with random lines after the Medusa head appears, then it goes to normal after a few seconds once the game has started.

Yes, it does that with the very first time it starts up. The cause hasn't been found yet.

[mountaingoat]

Sept 7, 2015 15:36:17 GMT -5 mountaingoat said:

Guys, thank you very much for the comments, all great ideas.

A few quick remarks - I like the idea of being able to use both buttons and the joystick to steer the sub. I will most likely add this, there are 4 buttons, currently only 1 is used (for pause).

Maybe the last button could be used for a burst speed increase - this is also a very good idea.

I will have to try one of my old Atari steering controllers to see if I could work that in.

The triangles.... well, I feel the same way, they are too simple. In fact they used to be starfish and the code refers to them as such. The problem was that the game was running at 32 fps and I had to simplify. Since then I optimized quite a bit so maybe the stars can come back again.

I will also think about animating whatever the crystal shape is at the end. Like I said, animation is basically free, it only takes up more ROM space as there are more frames. But once the frames are drawn, it is just a simple index into the list of the frames to display the right one. (The sharks and the Medusa both operate this way as well.)

There is already a trick being done to the triangles - only one half of the them is drawn each refresh. This way I am drawing way less vectors and also they shimmer a little. I am fairly certain that I could not add all of them back on every refresh cycle as that would destroy the fps. (If you hit the pause in the emulator, you will see that only one half of the screen has crystals.)

The way the sharks are drawn is that they start at their tip of their nose. So when they are coming onto the screen they can come in from the edge. However when the starting coordinate of the vector list disappears, so does the whole object. I could technically change the shark image halfway through the screen so now it start at its tail so that it can smoothly leave the screen but this may be more trouble than it is worth.

Both the power-up and the obstacle idea are really good, I will seriously consider putting those in. (Maybe you only get one speed burst per level, unless you get a power up for it.)

Considering I added 16 levels and I myself cannot even come close to completing them, I will think about mellowing out the sharks a little ;-)

Right after the first boot, the "disorganized" vector drawing of the ship and the sharks for a few seconds is a known issue. I must be missing some initialization - that I still keep looking for. Once the system draws them once you should not see the issue again, until of course you power down and back up. If any of you guys have seen this and have an idea what to do about it, please let me know.

[gliptitude]

Thanks for taking our input into consideration mountaingoat. I also appreciate you sharing your process and experience. It is interesting information about the animation.

.. Most Vectrex games that offer buttons for steering use buttons one and two for that, then three for thrust and four for fire. I'm not sure what button would be best for pause, or how you would like people to use it. .. There is a button-only Vectrex controller called Starblast, which could probably only be effectively used if button three was pause. .. There is no real convention for which button to use for pause since few games have it, but button three seems like the one that would enable the other conventions to be conformed to. .. But then again button four is the most likely button to be worn out on an original Vectrex control panel...

.. And another note on driving controllers since you are considering it - I believe all of the Vectrex "spinner" games are programmed to have the driving controller plugged in player two and to still have a normal controller plugged in player one. Those games require the additional buttons and yours may not. But if you stick with that convention it would probably make your game easier to play (in series with other spinner games). Plus you could just have both controllers operable all the time and avoid having to do menus and options screens.

.. Not every Vectrex player has an Atari driving controller but many do and it is a very inexpensive item to acquire. Unlike the paddles, they have sat around their entire life with almost nothing to do. .. Besides the Vectrex hacks, there is a 2600 homebrew of Thrust that uses the driving controller, (in combination with a footpedal controller).

[hcmffm]

I very much like the current discussion and thank you, mountaingoat, for considering the various input and suggestions. :-)

Just a quick note on the shape of the jewels:
I guess jewels drawn as a rhombs/octothorpes would look much better than the current triangles. The rhomb/octothorpe requires four lines, though, which is one line more than the triangle. A shimmering / flickering effect that results from drawing them every second frame and perhaps changing their brightness might make the jewels shimmer and look quite interesting.

[mountaingoat]

I got up early today and had time to work on Fox...

After some testing by my son and myself, I just pushed version 1.2 to to git.

Here are the changes:

* Replaced the triangles with diamond shapes - it was a great idea hcmffm, they look much better. I also added a little bit of animation to them, hopefully not too distracting, just to accent the shimmering.

* Finally fixed the shark reset bug.

* By popular demand, made the early levels easier ;-)

* Moved pause to button 4, because...

* Added buttons 1 and 2 for steering (same as the joystick).

* Added a power-up system starting on level 2. The game will randomly give a potential power-up that Fox has to pick up. It is there only for a limited time.

The power-up can be one of five types (random with almost the same probability):

* Faster Medusa - 1.5 times speed for a while
* Shark shield - no collision with sharks for a while
* Crystal row clear - after picking up the power-up and a very short delay an entire row of crystals is removed where the Medusa is. No points are given for these crystals but can be helpful near the bottom or top.
* Shark slow - sharks are slowed to speed 1 for a while.
* Bonus recharge - the bonus bar is filled to max.

I spent some more time trying to fix the initial diverging vector problem (after boot) but was unable. So that issue remains.

Here is the link again for the download :

github.com/mountaingoate/vectrex/tree/master/games/marinefox/bin

Let me know what you think guys.

I believe that all your suggestions made the game significantly better!

[VectorX]

Sept 12, 2015 7:46:30 GMT -5 mountaingoat said:

The power-up can be one of five types (random with almost the same probability):

Wow, you really went above and beyond with that!

[50tbrd]

Great job. I really like how you took the suggestions and incorporated them in your own way.

The diamonds are much better, the upgrades are great and the difficult has landed in more of a medium for novice players.

[SiLic0ne t0aD]

Great update, I really like this game! I got a lot farther than before.. 17,368 this time.

[hcmffm]

Thank you very much for the great improvements and additions to Marine Fox, mountaingoat! I much appreciate that you take suggestions into account and try to make a good game even better.

Diverging vector problem
I was curious what the graphics would look like on the real Vectrex and loaded Marine Fox onto my VecFlash. The initial start was much of a surprise, now I know what the initial diverging vector problem looks like. I hope you can find the reason for the problem; perhaps another Vectrex developer might help, here (Kristof Tuts comes to my mind).

Difficulty
Difficulty is better, now, but from my point of view Marine Fox should start even a little bit simpler and should ramp up more slowly. (Not sure how old your son is and perhaps I underestimate children, but I think it could be even easier. Or perhaps introduce difficuly level "Easy" because an easier start than it is now might make the game less attractive for adult players).

Appearing sharks
Already, Marine Fox is really a cool game. I see a bit of a problem in the random and all of a sudden appearance of the sharks, because it much emphasises the factor "luck" in the game and not the factor "player skill". I find it hard to get better in this game because you loose a Medusa every now and then. The power-ups are helpful to get around this problem, but only the invincinity and the row clear power up would help. Or perhaps it's jsut my player skills and the fact that I didn't play Marine Fox for longer than 20 minutes. Did anyone get past level 6 or 7?

Anyway, I wonder what can be done to reduce the "luck aspect" in the game. Several possible approaches to the around this "problem":
- In lower levels use one direction for the sharks (always up or always down), only. In higher levels use both directions.
- Never change the direction of the sharks (this way the player can learn that one shark swims up and one shark swims down, for example)
- Use patterns for the appearance of the sharks that the player can learn
- Let the sharks first appear (fade in) and then swim. While appearing the shark would be harmless and the player still can react.


Power ups - Duration
The power ups are also a good addition. Currently, the power-ups remain visible for a comparatively long time and it's pretty easy to pick them up. Perhaps this visibilty time should be reduced. Or even better: Keep it the way it is now and reduce the duration later in the game to make the game harder.

Power ups - Variety
I'm not quite sure, but ATM I think it's too many different power ups. Less power-ups might help the player to play more tactically:

* Faster Medusa - 1.5 times speed for a while
The faster Medusa can be even a disadvantage.

* Shark shield - no collision with sharks for a while
This one is really good and helpful. The player can use this for his/her tactics.

* Crystal row clear - after picking up the power-up and a very short delay an entire row of crystals is removed where the Medusa is. No points are given for these crystals but can be helpful near the bottom or top.
A good idea but not sure whether it's really useful. I have to try it out.

* Shark slow - sharks are slowed to speed 1 for a while.
Probably very helpful in later levels.

* Bonus recharge - the bonus bar is filled to max.
Nice, but for me it didn't make much difference to the end score, I think. My scores were always around 15.000 to 18.000.

Shimmering Jewels - Brightness
The jewels look much better, now. I think the jewels could be a bit less bright so that the Fox and the sharks are visible best.

Shimmering Jewels - Flickering and animation
The flickering of the jewels is very familiar to Vectrex players; the intersting and good part is that only the jewels flicker but not the rest of the graphics. I wonder how the jewel's flickering could look even more like a shimmer and not so much like the Vectrex flickering. Do you vary the brightness of the jewels, already? If yes, perhaps the variation of the brightness should be slower and not per frame.

Jewels - size
Not quite sure, but a little bit smaller jewels might look better.

Speeding up Sharks
Currently, the speed of the sharks per level is always the same. In addition, the sharks could increase speed once the player swims in the swimlane of the shark. This would look as if the sharks try to catch the player. (In lower levels, this speed-up could be minimal whereas in higher levels the speed-up could be very noticable and dangerous for the player)



These are various ideas and thoughts. I've played for 20 minutes, only, so don't count too much on my impression and suggestions. Marine Fox 1.2 is a very good game, again, thank you for this excellent effort, mountaingoat! :-)

EDIT: Just watched the review for Solar Fox (Atari 2600) of Classic Game Room. Mark at his best.

[50tbrd]

Maybe an indicator of where the sharks will appear like in this game Mr Oops! would help if only give the player an extra half second of reaction time.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFxEQ4siKeM

[Rapetou33]

it is a very good game and the improvements are relevant ! Kids and I are having fun with it !

Yet (cf hcmffm and Silicon toad), the erratic vectors problem on beginning the first stage is much more important and randomly than in the previous version (I am using a vecflash)



The whole screen is full of flashing broken vectors during 5 seconds. Sometimes on reset, it only lasts 1 second (cold start ?)
But every (around) 5 resets, the game crashes before the first stage sets up.

Not really a problem as it is notheless fully playable.

Thanks again Mountaingoat for this super game !


Edit : it only appears with a vectrex reset (vecflash) . By continuing the game after loosing, the bug doesn't pop up.

As it may be a Vecflash issue, Multicart owners may test it ? I'll try with  JF Mateos'.

[mountaingoat]

Guys, thank you very much for the comments.

The initial vector problem is really strange, if you guys watch it frame by frame, it even shows up in the emulator. I am thinking it may even be different on individual Vectrex-es. On the box I am testing the development work on, it only happens on the very first start for like 1-1.5 seconds. Does not happen on reset. I am using the most excellent Mateos cartridges btw.

I will definitely debug it more.

For the difficulty increase here are the arrays for the shark speed and shark numbers 1-16 for the different levels:


shark_speed:
db 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5

shark_max:
db 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4


Cannot really add more sharks than 4 as that kills the frame rate.

For where the sharks appear, one thing I could do is use a different seed for only the shark random number and that way they would always follow the same random sequence so one could learn it. I kind of like that they are random though, makes you much more careful. What I do (and I am not very good at this ;-) is when I know that there are more sharks to come, I never go to the top or bottom edges. Once the shark shows up, I go for those crystals.


Decreasing the power-up duration for pickup as the game progresses is a good idea.

For the power-ups, I agree that the speed can be more of a power-down than up :-) Now that the kids and I played it enough, it is fun when you get the speed and we freak out trying to maneuver around the screen. During development I played with even double speed and you can get used to it, the difficulty is that the rate of turn does not change so you have to be more careful with your approaches to crystals. It is nice though to be able to match the speed of faster sharks.

The row clear is very hard to time but on levels where the entire top or bottom row is filled is great.

We got the bonus recharge a couple of times at the very end of later levels and there it is nice, you were already almost out of bonus because of the extra time trying to avoid the faster sharks and then just before you take the last crystal, you bonus is filled.

Here is the array for the maximum number of power-ups per level, nothing for level 1 and can go up to 4 later:


num_powerups:
db 0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4

The flickering of the crystals is mainly there because I can only afford to draw half of them at any refresh. That is also the reason why only the crystals flicker, the sharks, the Medusa and the power-up logo are always drawn.

I will play with the intensity of the crystals, I also feel that now that I upped them from 5F to 7F they may be a bit too bright.

For the sharks going for you - as in faster when you are in their lane - I will see if I can easily to that. Currently all sharks have the same constant speed that only depends on the level (see above).