Vectrex Programming at German University 2018

[Peer]

Helmut and andyi,

thanks and applause to you both for the time, the energy and the enthusiasm you are putting into this! It couldn't get any better. This is a perfect example of how alpha and beta release cycles work in game development. I am very happy that this is part of this year's Vectrex programming course. This is exactly the kind of experience I had hoped to be able to offer the students. Teaching such a thing just in theory in a classroom can never compare to going through all this in practise on a real life project.

The same kind of thanks of course also goes to volcanus and to cNp, and to all others who have participated and provided feedback and thoughts here on the forum. You are all helping to make this course so much more than just a mere programming class. I am very grateful for that!

Cheers,

Peer

[andyi]

Greetings Mission Command,

thank you for the kind words!

And also many thanks to you for spending that much time and effort into this course! I think I speak for all of us, when I say, that it was definitely worth it and everybody had a blast, while simultaneously learning huge amounts of new things.


@ Helmut
I just implemented a few of your suggestions, you can get the new version here:
github.com/andybitter/asteroid-cowboy/releases/tag/v0.2-beta

I also changed something that could lead to preventing the crashes. Would be great, if you or anyone else could try it out!

- Andy -

[swagger]

Thank you very much for the feedback to my game

First of all: The version I uploaded has still many flaws and I am grateful for your help to find the biggest problems to change later.
Currently we have exams, which is why I cannot work on the project right now, but I will start again after the exams are finished.

cNp
I feel like implementing two buttons for shooting each side would make the game too easy and enable the player to camp in one place and just spam the shooting buttons even more.
Your idea with the bigger ground plates might be interesting, since it makes the player being more aware of where the beans hit the ground and forcing him to take down specific beans. I think I will give this a try and see how it plays out.
Thank you for the little drawing of the bird's sprite, I was thinking about ways to draw pyoro more bird-like and your version looks very promising
Overall I want to change the sprites of the game, make the beans more bean-like and change pyoro's appearance. Also better animations are planned.

hcmffm
I see the problems you are stating and I am aware of these problems. Currently I just use falling-velocities of 1, 2 or 3 each cycle, with a fixed scaling factor. This makes the beans' falling velocity very restrictive. I plan to implement slower falling beans to make it more appealing for the player to not just spam the shooting button, but instead wait for good opportunities to shoot.
Actually the "original game" works like this, having the player move very slowly and have very slow beans, where you have to ensure to always get multiple beans at once to reach a higher difficulty sooner. With higher difficulties, pyoro's moving speed, as well as the number of beans and their speed, increases.
With the current spawning mechanism, this is not possible yet, which is why I have to rework this too.

For testing the games framerate, I had to make the game quickly reach a very high pace, so I can see how the game behaves with many beans drawn and several collision detections. Since I know now, how far I can push, I am able to adjust the game's flow. Lowering the games speed should already make it more playable.

The "stand in one corner and spam the shoot-button"-problem also existed in the original game. I am not sure how the tackle this problem, but I think about making pyoros hitbox a little bit bigger, so you can also be hit by beans that are not EXACTLY over your head, but still seem to hit pyoro visually.

One specific feature of the original, which I haven't implemented yet, is a bean which resets the whole ground and destroys all other beans after being shot down. This made the extremely high speed of the later stages of the game still manageable since you had to focus on shooting the special bean while surviving the rain of random other beans.

・Swagger

[hcmffm]

Peer :
Thank you for your accolade, Peer. Last year, Malban and I also provided feedback and behind the scenes developers put effort into making changes - sometimes without even being noticed by anyone. This year's direct communication in both directions offers more possibilities and ensures a better understanding and more fun on both sides, I think.

---

andyi :
Thank you for providing a new beta version of Asteroid Cowboys. First, some feedback to your comments above:

Jun 30, 2018 4:16:33 GMT -5 andyi said:

Rope Shifting - offscreen - I wasn't able to reproduce this one, could you make a video or some screenshots showing that error please?

I just tried out on ParaJVE and to my surprise there is no such thing as rope shifting. Is this a phenomenon only on the real console? Is the rope shifting an intended feature or a bug? I'll upload a video which shows the rope shifting and the off-screen rope.

Jun 30, 2018 4:16:33 GMT -5 andyi said:

Bug: Occassional crashesUnfortunately this wasn't part of the update, since I still couldn't track down the exact parts of code leading to the crash. Probably this will take a few more weeks to be fixed.

Tracking down those random bugs can be very hard. I've tried to reproduce the problem and from what I can see it occurs when an asteroid hits a diagonal rope section. But that's half a guess.

Jun 30, 2018 4:16:33 GMT -5 andyi said:

Sector changes as text - I will definitely adapt the less technical "LONGER LASSO" message, but with the rest I thought it's better to let the player explore the changes, since they are more obvious than the increased lasso length.

Thanks for changing the lasso text to "LASSO GOT LONGER". A reason for the messages is to make the player see that the game not just get's faster but that changes happen on purpose. These changes will keep the player interested. But a message every three sectors is also fine.

Jun 30, 2018 4:16:33 GMT -5 andyi said:

Melody: Variations
Nice idea, will give it a try!
EDIT: Variation 4 sounds a little bit strange or at least strange with the lengths I used, so i had to drop it, but the other ones are fine!

Thank you for this addition and trial. The melody variations sound a bit odd and little wrong to me. I'll listen, again, and perhaps will let my wife listen, too.

Fixed cursor, shorter invulnerability time, and "PRESS BUTTON" all look good to me. From my point of view these changes are improvements.

Some new comments:

"PRESS BUTTON 1"
Currently, at the end of the game it says "PRESS BUTTON 1".
Suggestion: This could be changed to "PRESS BUTTON" and all buttons could be supported - similar to the title screen.

Difficulty of sector 9
ATM, sector 9 seems to be very hard or even impossible. Have you tried this sector yourself? I'm not sure how difficulty continues, perhaps you could reduce difficulty of this level a bit to reduce the big difference in difficulty between level 8 and 9. BTW: My mentioning sector and highscore is not for showing off it's just to give you an idea how far players get. Feedback from other players (e.g. fellow students) would be also helpful to set the game's difficulty right.

---

swagger :
Thank you very much for registering here and your long reply and explanation, swagger . I didn't know that Pyoro is a mini game on the Nintendo. I've just watched a video on YouTube (e.g. Warioware Pyoro) and saw what the gameplay is supposed to be. A slower tongue ("laser") and a short pause after the super seed (which kills everything) will really make a change to the game.

---

volcanus , andyi , swagger , and other students:
Good luck for your exams! Please take your time with implementing and providing new versions - no need to rush or hurry.

[swagger]

hcmffm

Nice, you looked it up
To be precise, there are to pyoro games: Pyoro and Pyoro 2
The big difference in both is the scoring and shooting system:
In Pyoro you have an elastic tongue and you earn more points when shooting (eating) beans higher up.
In Pyoro 2 you have a laser type shot and the score depends on how many beans you are able to shoot with one shot.
While I was a little bit uncomfortable with the gameplay of Pyoro, I really liked Pyoro 2 and had a crazy highscore.
But since my Nintendo DS died, I was not able to play the game anymore, so I decided to remake it on the vectrex to be able to play again.

[Peer]

And once more greetings to everyone!

Here is yet another alpha release candidate: Thirsty Astronaut is now available and ready for testing

Cheers,
Peer

[Peer]

And greetings again,

a beta release candidate of project Floor is Lava is now available. Here is the change log:

Update Notes:
- Changed the shapes of almost every platform type to a more random one
- Shapes match to vertical scrolling now
- Changed player shape and added some new animation for walking and jumping
- Introduced a new platform type "pendulum", which is oscillating between the left and right border instead of floating through
- Fixed a bug where the player is immediately jumping after the game starts
- You can choose between 3 game types now, allowing a greater variety of starting difficulties
- For the second difficulty, the game of thrones theme is used as background music

A new demo video has also been uploaded to the project page.

Cheers.

Peer

Edit: The Game of Thrones theme sounds great! Note, this is played using the original BIOS sound routines and the BIOS sound format.

[volcanus]

Peer

Thank you for announcing the beta release of Floor Is Lava and posting the changelog.

-----

hcmffm

I considered a lot of your suggestions and it worked out really well!
So, let me thank you once more for the time you spend in investigating my game.

-----

In my view, there are still some open points to do:
- The intensity of the platforms in the background should be a bit lower
- Maybe a new player animation for jumping (which makes clearer that the player is jumping forward instead of upward)
- Adjusting the difficulty of game 3
- Game is dropping below 50 Hz when there are too many double or fragile platforms
- New start music

I highly appreciate upcoming suggestions to improve the game even more, so feel free to play the beta!

- Volcanus -

[hcmffm]

Great to see new alpha and beta releases! That means a lot to test and review these days. I'll see what I can do during the next two days before my two weeks holidays in Netherlands.

_____

TREASURE DIVER

Next review is for Treasure Diver, developed by Falrahch.

GENERAL NOTES
The game play of Treasure diver reminds a bit of Big Blue but is still far away from it. You control a submarine and dive vertically for treasures. It's a 2D vertical scrolling game. In the current alpha version one level can be played.

WHAT I LIKE
+ Scrolling game
+ Game music with echo(?)
+ Nice overlay graphic

· BUGS

Long tone
When reaching the the surface, again, a specific note is played for a too long time. (Not quite a bug but doesn't sound too nice).

· SUGGESTIONS

Underwater athmosphere
Currently, the game (without overlay) doesn't feel much like underwater.
Sugestion: Perhaps add some things that make the game feel more like underwater: Some ideas:
- Occassional bubbles
- Streams that push the submarine to a side.
- Sonar sound (music could pause every now and then. Then, the sonar sound could be played for a while.)
- Mines could be changed into something like a dangerous octopous

Submarine control
Currently, the submarine can be easily controlled and first level is pretty easy to pass.
Suggestion:
- The submarine's control could react more slowly (a bit like a heavy ship): It could take a short while to accelerate and deaccelerate.

Scrolling speed
Currently, the game scrolling is comparatively fast.
Suggestion: I think it would feel much more "underwater" if the game would be slower. Plus controlling the submarine should be made more difficult (see previous item).

(Special) Wall is death
Currently, when hitting a wall nothing happens.
Suggestion: Hitting a wall could mean death to the submarine. This way the game would become more difficult and more challenging. E.g. there could be narrow paths / gates that are difficult to pass.
Alternatively, there could be different types of walls/bricks: Normal ones that do not harm your ship and special ones that do harm your ship.

Printing of new bricks
Currently, new bricks appear at the bottom all of a sudden. The bricks do not appear step by step.
Suggestion: Not quite sure how this can be improved. Perhaps new bricks/objects could appear gradually using brightness. Or bricks could grow vertically till they have their full vertical and then scroll.

Vertical area of submarine
Currently, the submarine can be moved to both bottom and top of the screen. At the bottom the submarine is very close to the area where new bricks appear.
Suggestion: Vertical area of submarine could be more limited.

Blocky graphics
Currently, the walls consisting of several blocks look very "blocky" and don't look too appealing.
Suggestion: Perhaps there could be different types of blocks in the map that allow for a both simple but better looking drawing (see example below).



Grapling hook not needed
Currently, the the first level can be solved without using the grapling hook at all (actually I didn't notice that there is a grapling hook until I had a look at the initial sketch of the game).
Suggestion: The grapling hook should be needed to solve the game:
- Items could only be picked up using the grapling hook and not hitting them with the submarine.

In-sprite animation
Currently, the objects (shark, submarine, ...) look a bit static.
Suggestion: There could be some in-sprite animation, e.g. the submarine could have some blinking lights, the shark could open/close its mouth, ...

Different Brightnesses
Currently, it looks as if same brightness is used for everything.
Suggestion: Important objects like the submarine, sharks or the mines could be brighter while walls/blocks could be less bright.

- o -

[hcmffm]

THIRSTY ASTRONAUT

Review below is for Thirsty Astronaut, developed by Steffen Keller (Firemedic).

GENERAL NOTES
Thirsty astronaut reminds me of Frogger or Freeway. This version and the story behind it seems to be pretty unique to me. The current alpha version seems pretty complete to me and can be played well. (I made it up to level bar #6).

WHAT I LIKE
+ Music (short varying themes which are fun to listen to)
+ Sound and graphic between two levels
+ Sound and animation when dying
+ Bonus life when overcompleting a level
+ Increasing difficulty
+ Special font for number of beers/lives


· BUGS

None found (they are hidden too well)

· SUGGESTIONS

As written above, Thirsty Astronaut looks pretty complete to me and it's fun to play. For an alpha version Thirsty Astronaut is pretty mature.

___
Minor issues from here on:

Diamond counters
Currently, there are two counters for the diamonds: One that displayes the number of required diamonds and one which displays the collected diamonds.
Suggestion: Diamond counter could be simplified by just displaying the number of diamonds still needed till the door opens. Right of the diamond counter a diamond could be displayed. This way, the display for diamonds would look and work the same way as the display for remaining lives.
EDIT: I just read in the manual that you get an extra life whenever you collect more diamonds than required. This means that my suggested diamond counter doesn't really work, here.
EDIT 2: Perhaps the suggested diamond counter could be still used while making the concept of the extra life clearer: Once you have collected enough diamonds to open the door, diamonds with a slightly different graphic could appear. Once the player collects such a special diamond he'll/she'll get an extra life at the end of the level plus the diamond shape changes back to normal shape.

Slower Diamonds
Currently, diamonds speed at pretty high speed. These diamonds are hard to reach which forces you to wait till a diamond with appropriate speed appears.
Suggestion: Max. speed of diamonds should be a bit lower.

Rocket man: Flame and sound
Currently, the rocket man moves around without any animation and sound.
Suggestion: There could be some in-sprite animation and some sound, e.g. there could be some flame appearing at his back whenever the rocket man moves. And there could be some sound like a thrust (thrust sound of Minestorm).

Larger Space ships
Currently, the space ships are pretty small compared to the astronaut.
Suggestion: The small and detailed graphics of the space ships looks nice, perhaps the space ships could be increased a bit in size without loosing too much of this detailed look.

Space ship graphics
Currently, the graphics of one space ship looks quite different to the other graphics.
Suggestion: Change the graphics of this one space ship to make the spaceships look more consistent.

"PRESS BUTTON 4"
Currently, at the end of the game it says "PRESS BUTTON 4".
Suggestion: This could be changed to "PRESS BUTTON" and all buttons could be supported.

- o -

[hcmffm]

Tomorrow night I'll pack things and Friday morning I'm off for holidays for two weeks. So probably my last feedback for the next 2.5 weeks.
___

volcanus :

Thank you very much, Volcanus, for providing a new beta version of Floor is Lava and considering my ideas! Now, the perspective works out quite well and playing is quite some fun, I think. The non-rectangular platforms are cool and gives a good impression of jumping on floes of lava or ice. Better don't fall into the lava...

Already, in your list of "open things" you have recognized and mentioned things that might be improved. You've written "Game 3" needs fine-tuning. May I ask how many platforms a level has? My current personal limit is around platform 40. ATM, I think the game could have be a bit easier so that you can play longer and use more skills than just timing. But that's just my impression and it also depends on the number of platforms a level has. (Instead of several games I'd prefer if there was one game with really lots of platforms.)

Below please find some more ideas - except level design all of them are minor issues. Please note that the more mature the game gets the harder it's to tell beforehand whether these changes are improvements or not.

Level design
An important thing is the level design. I guess most effort and thoughts should be put into this. Currently, the various platform types are introduced very quickly. After 40 platforms you have seen 4-5 platform types, already.
Suggestion:
- Platform types could be introduced a bit slower, i.e. more platforms of a specific type could be used before introducing the next type. Each new type might be mixed with the non-moving platforms and later with all already known types.
- Level design could have sections which require...
...fast jumping
...precise jumping
...walking
...precise timing.
...all the above.

Drowning in lava
Currently, when missing a platform the player falls down.
Suggestion: The platforms float on the lava ("Floor is lava"). So when missing a platform the player should sink into the lava. Though, I'm not quite sure how this sinking can be shown in an animation and the imagination of the player sinking into the lava sounds quite cruel to me.

Permanent Music
I much like the background melody. Though it requires a lot of CPU time and limits the possilities in the game. Also, when playing for a longer time it might get a bit annoying. Treasure diver has a good balance of silence and short melodies, I think.
Suggestion: Perhaps the melody could be split into some parts. When reaching a specific platform, a part of the melody could played. Ideally, these specific platforms are non-moving platforms so that the player can take a short rest if he/she wants.

Random shape platforms
Currently, there are platform types with specific shape/look and specific behaviour. Game starts with platform shapes "non-moving" and therefore all platforms look the same which looks a bit unnatural.
Suggestion: It's good to have platform types because they allow the player for anticipating the behaviour of the platforms. Instead of just one shape per platform type there could be two shapes per platform type to avoid a too repeating look.

Walking on platforms
Currently, during the first 40 platforms there are no situations that requires walking. I'm not quite sure whether walking will be needed in platforms > 40. ATM, playing the first 40 platforms is just a matter of timing the next jump and then steering towards the next platform.
Suggestion: Walking on platforms should be used from the very beginning. This will make the game more varying, interesting, and challenging.

Smaller volcano
Currently, it's a bit hard to see that you actually approach the volcano. (Perhaps you can see better if you play longer).
Suggestion: At the beginning of the game the volcano might be smaller and then grow in (a bit) larger steps.

3D impression
Currently, the platforms have different brightnesses to indicate depth.
Suggestion: In addition to brigthness the platforms might vary slightly in size (Note: sample below is a too big growth in size, I guess). I guess the zooming of the Vectrex cannot be used and a simple and performant zooming migth be very hard to implement. Ratio of effort/game improvement might not be too appealing so it's probably better to focus on other things.

[Peer]

Helmut, many thanks for all the work and the energy you are putting into testing, reviews and feedback. Please enjoy your well deserved vacation and have a good time!

Cheers,

Peer

[falrahch]

Jul 9, 2018 17:48:01 GMT -5 hcmffm said:

Great to see new alpha and beta releases! That means a lot to test and review these days. I'll see what I can do during the next two days before my two weeks holidays in Netherlands.

_____

TREASURE DIVER

Next review is for Treasure Diver, developed by Falrahch.

GENERAL NOTES
The game play of Treasure diver reminds a bit of Big Blue but is still far away from it. You control a submarine and dive vertically for treasures. It's a 2D vertical scrolling game. In the current alpha version one level can be played.

WHAT I LIKE
+ Scrolling game
+ Game music with echo(?)
+ Nice overlay graphic

· BUGS

Long tone
When reaching the the surface, again, a specific note is played for a too long time. (Not quite a bug but doesn't sound too nice).

· SUGGESTIONS

Underwater athmosphere
Currently, the game (without overlay) doesn't feel much like underwater.
Sugestion: Perhaps add some things that make the game feel more like underwater: Some ideas:
- Occassional bubbles
- Streams that push the submarine to a side.
- Sonar sound (music could pause every now and then. Then, the sonar sound could be played for a while.)
- Mines could be changed into something like a dangerous octopous

Submarine control
Currently, the submarine can be easily controlled and first level is pretty easy to pass.
Suggestion:
- The submarine's control could react more slowly (a bit like a heavy ship): It could take a short while to accelerate and deaccelerate.

Scrolling speed
Currently, the game scrolling is comparatively fast.
Suggestion: I think it would feel much more "underwater" if the game would be slower. Plus controlling the submarine should be made more difficult (see previous item).

(Special) Wall is death
Currently, when hitting a wall nothing happens.
Suggestion: Hitting a wall could mean death to the submarine. This way the game would become more difficult and more challenging. E.g. there could be narrow paths / gates that are difficult to pass.
Alternatively, there could be different types of walls/bricks: Normal ones that do not harm your ship and special ones that do harm your ship.

Printing of new bricks
Currently, new bricks appear at the bottom all of a sudden. The bricks do not appear step by step.
Suggestion: Not quite sure how this can be improved. Perhaps new bricks/objects could appear gradually using brightness. Or bricks could grow vertically till they have their full vertical and then scroll.

Vertical area of submarine
Currently, the submarine can be moved to both bottom and top of the screen. At the bottom the submarine is very close to the area where new bricks appear.
Suggestion: Vertical area of submarine could be more limited.

Blocky graphics
Currently, the walls consisting of several blocks look very "blocky" and don't look too appealing.
Suggestion: Perhaps there could be different types of blocks in the map that allow for a both simple but better looking drawing (see example below).



Grapling hook not needed
Currently, the the first level can be solved without using the grapling hook at all (actually I didn't notice that there is a grapling hook until I had a look at the initial sketch of the game).
Suggestion: The grapling hook should be needed to solve the game:
- Items could only be picked up using the grapling hook and not hitting them with the submarine.

In-sprite animation
Currently, the objects (shark, submarine, ...) look a bit static.
Suggestion: There could be some in-sprite animation, e.g. the submarine could have some blinking lights, the shark could open/close its mouth, ...

Different Brightnesses
Currently, it looks as if same brightness is used for everything.
Suggestion: Important objects like the submarine, sharks or the mines could be brighter while walls/blocks could be less bright.

- o -

Thank you so much for all the time you invest in those reviews. It's insanely awesome.

I read all your thoughts a few days ago and was very grateful for the suggestions.
However I ended working on it. I have other things I need to tend to.

What I changed since the Alpha is:

    - The grappling hook now has the use I wanted. With it you can fight off the sharks.

    - The sharks now actually kill you.

    - The brigthness now varies.

    - The vertical space has been adjusted.

    - The long tone bug is fixed.

And a few words to your other suggestions:

I always wanted to put in animations. However I was low on free cycles/frames so I skipped it to implement the core funtionalities first. At the end I'm only a few cycles too high but as I told you I stopped working for now. Maybe there will be a time when I will come back to it but that won't be in the next few weeks.
The "submarine" is actually a person. The drawing represents an old diving helmet as it is shown in the top of the overlay.
I also have an original I got my ideas from and I loved it the way it is. Hence I left the speed and the blocky graphics as they were.

But again I am extremely thankful for all the effort you put into this review.

Kind regards,
Falrahch

[Peer]

Greetings everyone,

as usual, let me start by apologizing for the long period of silence. After the closing of the semester in July, I have been busy conducting exams and grading papers, so no time for any Vectrex related stuff, and afterwards I have been on my annual vacation with my family.

I am back now, and meanwhile all students have handed in their final project deliveries. I am quite happy with the overall results, and I have now updated all the project web pages and the gallery page.

Have fun browsing the pages and trying out the games!

Cheers,
Peer

[Peer]

A few days ago I got a surprise email form Brazil. Leonardo Biagi created a great box design for Keyboard Hero and sent it to me. He was also kind enough to give his permission for uploading this to the Keyboard Hero project web page. Have a look

Many thanks, Leonardo!