New game: Cavern Rescue

[scotthuggins]

Hello!

It's been a long (real long) time coming, but I have finished my Vectrex game: Cavern Rescue.  Would you like to help play test it? Preferably on the real machine (if you can) - but if not, it does run fine in the emulators I have tried. It's a fast action shooter / adventure type of game.  I will record a video soon to show the complete game play.

Please let me know with a PM (or post n this thread) and thanks for considering this!


Here's the final version of the game: CavernRescue

[hcmffm]

Hello Scott!

Congratulations to your finishing your first Vectrex game "Cavern Rescue"! I much like providing feedback for Vectrex games. But I guess in case of Cavern Rescue it's more a matter of final testing and finding bugs, right? Nevertheless I could give it a go and try Cavern Rescue on real hardware including a non-buzz Vectrex. I'll send you PM, too.

Best regards, Helmut

[scotthuggins]

Here is the latest version of the game (thanks Brett for letting me store it on your server).

CavernRescue final

Meanwhile, here is a video showing the game in action on a real Veccy: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbC5psFpxVc


The controls:
* Joystick left: rotate ship to the left
* Joystick right: rotate ship to the right
* Button #3: ship thrust
* Button #4: ship fire’s a missile
* Button #2: smart bomb (kills all enemies currently on the screen). One smart bomb per level, per ship life. If you use your smart bomb on the current Cavern, you cannot use another until you lose a ship on the current Cavern or you advance to next Cavern.
* Button #1: pause the game (once paused, joystick will un-pause it)

Gameplay:
For one player only. Use left joystick port.

You control a ship which is placed at the entrance of a Cavern. Your goal is to pick up the flashing “orb” at the middle, the top, or at the bottom of the cavern. Once you pick it up (and get the 500 point boss), you must return the Orb to the flashing exit door. You must do that before your ship runs out of Energy. The Energy is shown in the upper-right of the screen (see attached screen shot). You get bonus points for how much Energy you have left when you return the Orb. You then advance to the next Cavern. There are 9 Caverns and two Challenge Stages. You get a bonus ship after completing Cavern #4.

Note: the enemy ships that are following you cannot kill you if they touch you. The will suck away Energy from you when they touch you and if your Energy goes to zero, you will die. There are three ways to die: you run out of Energy, you collide with the cavern walls, or you get “zapped” by the zappers. Caverns #2 an #3 have force fields you can shoot through to get to the Orb. You have one smart bomb (button #3) to use per Cavern.

The game ends when all player ships in reserve are gone. Hi Score initials are entered for beating the current Hi Score.

[Vorkosigan]

Hi Scott,

after testing your game last night for roundabout an hour, I'm really amazed at how smooth and polished it is.

Also the level of difficulty seems to be absolutely appropriate at least for me, since I was only able to reach cavern 3 in this time with highscores around 7.000 points.

I'm going to play your game further in the next days and will give additional feedback. But, really, that's more playing than testing. 😅

Great work!

Cheers, Marc

[scotthuggins]

Thank you, Marc! Any thoughts on gameplay or anything glitchy or just plain unusual - let me know. PS: there's a simple trick to getting past Cavern #3. Once you figure that out, the other Caverns aren't so tough. Thank you again for play testing it.

[bomberman94]

Hi Scott,

would be happy to test your game - just sent you a PM.

Cheers

Jürgen

[nexus6]

Hi Scott,

i've played some rounds of Cavern Rescue. As Marc said, the game runs smoothly and is well made. At first I was a bit confused when the ship turns around after you grab the orb. Then I realised that it turns towards the exit, which can be an advantage with orbs that are close to a wall. Is there an invisible barrier in front of the Orb in cave 2? After my ship exploded a few times seemingly for no reason, I shot at the spot and was able to pass. If this is intentional, I would change this. Will there be more caves in the finished game? They start repeating from cave 4 onwards. If it's not too elaborate, I'd like to see more caves for long-term motivation. In my opinion, Cavern Rescue is a well-done game that enriches the Vectrex software range.

Kind regards,
Roland

[scotthuggins]

Roland, nice feedback! Thanks for taking the time to write it up and play the game. YES, the "invisible" forcefield thing has been fixed. It worked fine (the effect) on the emulators, but that's one of a few gameplay elements that did not translate (AT ALL!) to the real machine. Brett Wallach (playvectrex.com) offered to let me house cavern rescue rom file on one of his servers...so I will update post #1 with all the fixes that I've made based on feedback.

The force field now weakens as you fire missiles at it...but it stays lit up (no longer invisible). It takes 8 shots to destroy it.

Yea, more caverns would increase the replay value for sure. I am very low on cartridge rom space right now. I *might* be able to create one more simple level, but that would be it. I might expand to 64k (using bank switching) and then, yea, I could add 5-6 more Caverns. But, it would delay the release of it (I plan on doing the box/cart/manual thing). Delaying it for those extra caverns might cause interest to die out. But, yea, you are right. It might be the one thing that pushes it from good to very good.

The ship stopped dead in it's tracks when you grab the Orb was because if you fly very fast into it...your momentum could carry you right into the zappers or the cavern walls. So it was just an idea to put the brakes on so you won't die so easily.

Thanks again for the feedback.

[Malban]

What was that "invisible Force field" - something Vide does not emulate correctly?

Can you tell me more about that - (email is sufficient)

[nexus6]

Ok, lack of storage space is of course an argument. I hadn't even considered the possibility of flying into an orb at full throttle without taking damage. That's a good reason to keep it that way. I'm glad you were able to fix the invisible barrier.

[8-Bit Waves]

Hi Scott,

Thank you for letting me try your game. I played it I think three times and managed to beat it on the last. I do enjoy this type of game. My final high score was 38,275. I was never able to collect all the orbs on the bonus stages.

Here are some of my thoughts.

The controls:

The speed of the ship rotation seems too fast to me. I did eventually get used to it, but in a hectic situation I still found myself rotating too much. Perhaps this is by design.

Gameplay:

The enemy ships were a little hard to get used to at first even though I went in knowing they steal energy and not just instantly destroy you. Maybe an energy stealing animation (like a line from their ship to yours at a certain distance?) would make it more obvious.

By the time I beat it I was getting into it and wanted more. Maybe you can get more levels out of it by using the same three and just moving objects, start point, exit point, enemy spawn, rotating/mirroring the level, etc. around and adding more enemies.


It is a fun game and I am looking forward to the final release. Thanks again for letting me try it out.

[playvectrex]

Hi Scott!

Wow, what a cool game!  I love all of the details everywhere in this game.  The twitchy steering was no match for my SNES d-pad!  Just kidding, I kept getting wrecked on level 3 up around the top turn.  I couldn't get the angle just right to kill the turret on the top left for a long time.  Figured out a strategy but it's still tricky for me.

I got the hang of things in about 10-20 minutes... and then proceeded to go for the gold!  In the end it was 40 minutes of me playing before I beat all 9 levels.  I got 1 away from clearing the bonus after figuring out a strategy I'm sure I could clear that now when I try again.

I found the help screen was too short, only 3 seconds long. I think it should be long enough to read everything out loud 3 times. Or you could enter it from lead screen button 1 for help (or controls), button 4 to play, and button 1 again to exit or time out after a long time back to the main.

High score screen is not super intuitive. Button 1 does change the letter, but button 2 doesn't do anything as far as I can tell. Later I found only the right joystick would advance the letters.  Maybe left/right and up/down to change the letter and some combination of buttons for next/previous... and next 3 times ends it.  I also was leaving it on the last letter to take a picture, and it timed out on me with "BA " instead of the currently selected "BAW", so maybe auto-commit the last character if timeout.

It seems like you might add a proper high score save feature with a table?  You are almost there... and if so, you can have a nice screen people can take a steady picture on.  I found the screens moving too quickly to take pictures of the high scores easily.

Speaking of high score, it uses the system high score save address properly, yay! $CBEB, This allows VEXTREME to save/load your high score automatically.

I found it weird that 1 pauses, but doesn't unpause.  Left or Right unpause.  To me that almost seems like it could be used to game the situation?  You can kind of hold button 1, and then hold left or right to pause/unpause a bunch (like the old school slow motion). It feels weird, but maybe someone could use it to their advantage?  Either way, I'd prefer a pause/unpause with button 1.  You have to enter the pause and wait for button 1 to be released though first or you exit right away.  Just some forced wait time, then button release wait and second forced wait time "button debouncing" for that should take care of it.

Now that I'm feeling more comfortable with the game, I would like to see some more levels as well.  Would be cool if you added some more, or even 1 more for the final game.  Either way this game is super fun!

[scotthuggins]

First of all - you guys are all professional gamers...aren't you all? I've never heard of such talent- here I am thinking the game was way too hard (one person did tell me that)....and yet you (Brett and Nate) are beating it after playing for 30-40 minutes. I'm the programmer and I know where the little "nuances" are but I can only beat it one out of 10 plays.

I want to address everything I have received in private mail from members of this forum as well as in this thread alone. So many great suggestions and 4-5 bugs that I just now finished fixing. Everyone has been such a super help. PS: in post #3, you will see I put a link to the rom file for ANYONE to download right now - no more having me email you all the rom file. I will keep updating the link with new versions of the game as they come along. I will post an update in this thread tomorrow of everything I have fixed and/or tweaked in the gameplay based on each of your suggestions. Nothing has motivated me more than the enthusiasm in this forum. I can say for sure out of all the classic gaming systems, the Veccy has the most rabidly devoted fans of all! I published 3 ColecoVision home brews (thru AtariAge) 17-18 years ago... That console (ColecoVision) has many fans, but not like this console. LOL.

There is one suggestion or question that has come up from 8 different play testers: can you extend it out by adding more levels? Or (and this is the most feasible suggestion) recycle the first three caverns like I am already doing, but tweak them by adding more enemies, change the location of the entrance/exit door, change the location of the orb, maybe change the location of the zappers, etc. THAT is the most "doable" way to add variety in there...and it would add enough variety to make the Caverns (ie: levels) seem unique enough to bring more replay value (at least I think so).

If I were to use bank switching and get 64k crammed into the cart, I could truly add 3-4 (maybe 5) additional (totally different) caverns with more "bosses" or enemies in there. The downfall with that is...I've never done bank switching...and more than that, it'll mean waiting an additional 3-4 months for me to program it. When I was younger, I was able to code very quickly. Not so much these days. Would that really be worth waiting? Thoughts? I know John Dondzilla did a massive amount of that in his Gravitrex game. That game has got it all.

I also am not sure how many bytes I have left in RAM at this point.

Again, tomorrow I will post an updated rom file and address everyone's comments. Thanks so much once again. You guys are awesome and you make this so much more fun.

[Malban]

Hi,

my two cents on the "expansion" of the game.

Do not add another level!

Certainly do the bugfixes and add suggestions from people which you like - but at this stage do not expand the game!

There can always be a "Cavern Rescue II" or "Cavern Rescue expanded" or "Cavern Rescue directors cut" ...

But first finish this so you like it - and if you than have still fun with the Vectrex and have energy left... you can go for a second round.

I have more detailed "insight" into the game (sources) than probably most of the other people testing...

This is your first Vectrex game (sorry to be brutally honest) and it shows in the sources.
[Since nobody wants to change a "running system" more then necessary - there are code section which have been untouched in the last 5 years... and are copy paste from other sources... and barely fit in...]

The game as it is - is not built to be expandable! With every feature and level it will grow in complexity until you will not be able to handle it anymore - and give up. Do not let that happen to you!

You learned so much programming this game, about the vectrex,  about 6809 code, RAM usage and so on.

If you have fun doing further Vectrex stuff - start fresh, with a clean design and a level structure that is designed to "drive" more levels.

The game as it is - plays and feels great, and is what you had in mind all the time.

Don't let those greedy people be spoil sports :-).

Malban

[playvectrex]

Reusing the levels and changing them up is certainly a good option. If you are going to do a printed box vs. clamshell box, you'll have time to work in some more details, but I can certainly understand wanting to be done with a project instead of extending it on and on. Depending on how Cavern Rescue 1 goes, maybe you'll have to make a sequel? I think 64k bank switching is pretty straight forward, the basics of which can be studied in VIDE: vectrex.malban.de/preliminary/9e293717.html RAM typically gets reused in the separate banks. That said though, people can and will wait if you want to add more things. I think it just depends on what you would like to do vs. what you have time and energy for. Doing a box, manual and label will take time in itself though, so don't underestimate that part ;-)

EDIT: Also well said Malban, and good advice