TROGBlog

Very, VERY cool.

 

I love the eyes on the title screen and how they blink at you as well.

The animation sequence when the Wumpus devours you is much more scary than the TI version - I wasn't expecting it.

 

I'm guessing the green bars are the Swamp Pits, and the red bars are the Wumpus blood clues.

 

I noticed that you play the 'Wumpus catches you' animation when you seem to fall into a pit. Is this a placeholder until you have the pit animation done?

 

I love how this is coming out. - Great work

 

Bob

I'm guessing the green bars are the Swamp Pits, and the red bars are the Wumpus blood clues.

Correct.

 

I noticed that you play the 'Wumpus catches you' animation when you seem to fall into a pit. Is this a placeholder until you have the pit animation done?

Also correct. There will be a different animation for the pit death cut scene. I've still got over 1k of ROM to use up.

 

I love how this is coming out. - Great work

Thanks Bob

I find the Ball is sometimes a little hard to see. It might be useful to use a lighter color for the playfield, and also perhaps to use a missile instead of the Ball. This may require flickering the clues at 30Hz, but I would not expect that to be objectionable.

Supercat,

 

The dark color scheme is intentional. It's meant as part of the mood of the game. I may try to move the player into a missle some time in the future, but I won't do it unless I can implement it without flicker or skipped lines.

Love the eyes on the title screen!

 

This does bring up weither or not the red/black of the eyes in the death sequence should be swapped.

The dark color scheme is intentional. It's meant as part of the mood of the game.

 

The zero-level colors are okay as background colors in cases where it wouldn't particularly matter if they were mistaken for black; on some television sets, they very well might be. To be sure, it's possible to turn up the color control to make the colors stand out more, but that would counteract the mood you were trying to create (especially since a grayer brown would probably be more atmospheric than a yellower one, but adjusting the television set controls would make the brown more yellow).

 

I may try to move the player into a missle some time in the future, but I won't do it unless I can implement it without flicker or skipped lines.

 

Well, I for one don't mind 30Hz flicker if it's not applied to large solid areas (Lunar Lander was horrible because the BACKGROUND flickered); having the ship flicker would be no big deal).

 

Without looking into your kernel code, I don't know how easy it would be to change, but I would expect that even without flicker the clues could be provided using one player and missile, leaving a player and missile available to show the player. Not sure how much extra code that would require, though.

My two cents on the color scheme: I find it too dark. It's hard on my eyes and makes it unenjoyable to play for long. IMO.

 

EDIT: Just played the newest binary and Also wanted to modify my comments a little - the tunnels are easy to see but when switching from one screen to the next I frequently lose the ball - if I stop right next to a wall it is almost impossible to find him again. Using a differently-colored missile would help, or make the ball bigger?

I had the same complaint for the Green Shield in Medieval Mayhem. Things looked OK on my end, but were too dark for a number of people.

There seems to be a lot of variation over users' displays. I'm using a high-contrast LCD display, and the playfield appears as a medium brown. It must appear darker on CRTs, or maybe people are just setting their brightness lower. In either case, I changed the background to $F2, so we'll see how that looks on the next release. At some point before making this into a cartridge, I'll thoroughly test it on a TV and real hardware.

 

Supercat, I'm going to hold off on changing the player to a missile. The kernel is currently stable, and there are other things I want to work on first. I have a personal dislike for flicker, even at 30Hz. Must be trauma from playing too much Atari Pacman. The only time I've used flicker in my games is on the 12 character text display of Master of Arcturus, and displaying multiple shots in the shooter games, in which case it's absolutely necessary.

 

vdub_bobby, I can't make the ball bigger without hindering navigation in the tunnels.

 

SpiceWare, to answer your question, the death scene eyes will be changing. I'll be going to black pupils on red eyes, and reshaping the sockets to match the title screen.

 

And again, thanks for the feedback everyone.

This WIP homebrew makes its title all honour as it goes probably unnoticed from most, hidden in the blog

 

Glad I discovered it, looks very promising and is already good fun, despite the simple concept.

I love its atmosphere (great title/cut scenes so far) and also how it succeeds in recreating the simple charme of that stone-age classics.

(Btw, I hope you keep the garish pink on the death scene - makes for a nice shock contrast to the ingame colors)

 

A couple of suggestions:

- the game itself is very silent right now, I believe a few basic sound effects would add nicely to the mood, without detracting from the archaic charme of the game. (For instance some footsteps sound for the player while exploring.)

- it would be very nice to see the warning messages of the original text version integrated in the game. Not only would it be a great reverence to the classic, but increase the atmosphere, IMO.

One way to do this without hampering the flow of the gameplay might be to expand the visual clues for each cave to a short sequence:

First a short sound effect to match the clue (heavy breath for the wumpus, windblow for the draft, flapping for the bat), then a display of the message at the bottom of the screen, finally the colored block clue appearing in the cavern (as in the current version).

With that it might not be so easy anymore to "race" through the caverns as in the current version, but it would increase the exploration feel, IMO.

If that is an issue, one could think of a disable option for a faster game (similar to the TI version's Express mode concept).

 

Looking forward for the next versions of this great little game!

Cheers,

Eric

Hi Eric. I'm glad you're enjoying the game.

 

You're stealing my thunder. All the sound effects that you've mentioned are already in development. I had planned to make a footstep sound, using Haunted House as a model. However, it will be low volume, to keep it from being distracting. I also have considered a collision sound, again similar to Haunted House, but I'm not sure on that, since most of the game is spent colliding into the walls as you slide through the maze.

 

There will be redundant sound clues for each marker. The Wumpus will have a breathing sound, using the dragons in AD&D for the Intellivision as the model. For the pit, I'll use one of two sounds. Either wind (thinking the wind sound from DragonStomper, but lower volume), or a high pitched random dripping sound, if I can pull that off. The bat will use flapping wings, also from AD&D. There will be no visual clues for the bat, just the sound FX. The clue sounds will play constantly, as long as you're in a room that contains the corresponding clue. I'm also considering random spooky ambient sounds that aren't associated with any clue. Hmmmm. Since you're in a cave, echo effects would be nice...

 

The warning messages won't be implemented. I'm starting to run low on ROM, and the text messages wouldn't add enough to warrant the ROM they'd use.

 

I'm also working on a scoring system, something that hasn't been used in previous Wumpus incarnations.

 

My development time is limited right now, but hopefully I'll have another version update this weekend.

 

You're stealing my thunder. All the sound effects that you've mentioned are already in development.

 

Sorry for that But very glad to hear that you have already elaborated plans for audio clues.

They sound to fit nicely with the mood of the game; really like the way this game is developing its own distinct character!

 

The warning messages won't be implemented. I'm starting to run low on ROM, and the text messages wouldn't add enough to warrant the ROM they'd use.

Understand and agree, they would not add to the gameplay, so obviously would be low priority.

But, if you should still have some free ROM somewhere at the end, maybe you could give a second thought at this idea in an improved version?

Instead of having the messages display during the game and at each cave (which I admit would probably also disrupt the gameflow), what about displaying them shortly on a blank screen as a transition to the corresponding death scene? With proper timing this could even increase the effect of the death scene (right now the surprise effect is so fast, that one does not get to fully "enjoy" the animation before having recovered from the shock).

It would also give a devious tongue-in-cheeck aspect to the messages, well in line with the macaber-humourous flair of the game

Just to drop this idea, fully understand your memory concerns and that there are enough more important features to implement first...

 

 

I'm also working on a scoring system, something that hasn't been used in previous Wumpus incarnations.

 

That would be a great addition, would certainly contribute to extend the longevity of an already enjoyable game

Pretty sure you already considered this - any plans to include different maze designs (could feature as levels also) a la Wumpus 2?

 

Sorry for bothering you with easily thought and expressed ideas. Realize that it is a completely different matter to implement them!

 

Keep up the great work! (also enjoy the concept of Battle of Midway a lot, btw)