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Tag! You're It!


SeaGtGruff

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This is a little game I started working on to test a split-screen playfield, where two players can move around a maze at the same time, and see where they are, even though they're in different rooms. When they're in the same room, they both show up. It's far from finished, and there's a bug in it that sometimes causes the room numbers to get messed up, which I haven't figured out yet. But it does show that a split-screen maze game is doable.

 

I decided to use the "score" mode, where the left half of the playfield is the color of player0, and the right half of the playfield is the color of player1, because I thought it might help the two players stay more focused on their own side of the screen. Of course, part of the fun is that each player can see what the other player is doing. I thought of making a cooperative game, where the two players have to work together to accomplish some task, or a shooting game where each player tries to find the other and then shoot them first, but I settled on a game of tag.

 

Since this is really just a proof-of-concept game, I don't know how far I'll develop it, but the storyline is that two kids are in a house, and they're playing a game of tag. First one player is "it," and must find and tag the other player, who then becomes "it," etc. Right now the maze is just an 8x8 grid of rooms, rather than a house. After I get more of it put together-- e.g., player1 can't be moved around yet, just player0; and the sprites aren't animated yet-- then I'll change the map to be more like a house, with rooms of various shapes and sizes, hallways, stairs connecting different floors, tables in some of the rooms that the players can run around (to help make it easier to avoid being tagged if you run into a room with only one exit), etc. And there will be some kind of goal, most likely involving a time limit-- e.g., if you can't tag the other player before your time runs out, then the other player wins that round; or maybe the players have a certain amount of time to tag each other back and forth, and whoever is still "it" when the time runs out is the loser for that round, etc.

 

Anyway, here's the demo, such as it is.... By the way, the stairs aren't in the demo yet. I just added them to a temporary build for the purpose of making screenshots to show what they'd look like.

 

Michael

 

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Tag__You__re_It_.bas

Tag__You__re_It_.bas.bin

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Interesting start. Let's see where it goes! :thumbsup:

I wish I could use no_blank_lines with PFheights, so I could get rid of the gaps in the playfield. You can see that I'm setting the playfield rows to different heights to make the north and south walls thinner, and also to get the stairs. I could always make a custom kernel for the game-- and I may end up doing so-- but I believe batari is planning to move the playfield to Superchip RAM (if the Superchip RAM option is selected), and there will be more playfield rows, with shorter pixels, so I could just wait for that version of bB to come out! :)

 

Anyway, I'm glad you like it so far. I think the idea of a split-screen maze game is intriguing (else I wouldn't have started tinkering with this!), and it will be fun to see this in action with two players dashing around the rooms at the same time. I'd thought of switching to a single-room display, with larger graphics, when the two players are in the same room, but decided to keep the split screen, because it would probably be too disorienting to have the room shrink or grow, and have the screen go from split to single to split again, as the players are moving in and out of the rooms.

 

Another game idea I'd considered for this was "Scavenger Hunt," which is a game I'd thought of making many years ago, back in the days when the 2600 was still king of the hill (and 20 or more years before I actually started to learn 2600 programming). But I don't think my original concept of "Scavenger Hunt" involved a split screen (although my memory of those days is kind of hazy, so it could have). It would probably work best with the screen split between the top and bottom halves, as in "Spy vs. Spy." Obviously, it would be a race between two players to be first to find all the items on the list, and I would let the two players try to beat each other up or whatnot, to steal items from each other. :lol: The main reason I didn't try to do "Scavenger Hunt" with this is the lack of enough player sprites. It would really take a custom multi-sprite kernel.

 

Michael

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By the way, I should probably mention that I noticed a bug with PFheights if the first playfield row is set to anything other than 8-- the scan lines per screen gets messed up. I'd seen this before, but never mentioned it, so thought I should point it out now. That's why the first two rows are set to 8 and 11, even though both of them are blank, instead of setting the first row to 19 (as I do for the last row).

 

Michael

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By the way, I should probably mention that I noticed a bug with PFheights if the first playfield row is set to anything other than 8-- the scan lines per screen gets messed up. I'd seen this before, but never mentioned it, so thought I should point it out now. That's why the first two rows are set to 8 and 11, even though both of them are blank, instead of setting the first row to 19 (as I do for the last row).

 

Michael

I just looked into this bug and I found the cause. I'll see what I can do to fix it by the next release.

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I wish I could use no_blank_lines with PFheights, so I could get rid of the gaps in the playfield.

Yeah, I noticed that. I was wondering why no_blank_lines wasn't used, but I figured that there was a reason for that. :)

 

You can see that I'm setting the playfield rows to different heights to make the north and south walls thinner, and also to get the stairs. I could always make a custom kernel for the game-- and I may end up doing so-- but I believe batari is planning to move the playfield to Superchip RAM (if the Superchip RAM option is selected), and there will be more playfield rows, with shorter pixels, so I could just wait for that version of bB to come out! :)

I'm thinking that a custom kernal is probably the simplest way to go. Your screens aren't all that complex (certainly not requiring the bBASIC playfield) meaning that you can remove most of the issues with a quicky kernal. I fear that the alternative of struggling with the bBASIC kernal will simply waste more time and energy than it's worth.

 

I think the idea of a split-screen maze game is intriguing (else I wouldn't have started tinkering with this!), and it will be fun to see this in action with two players dashing around the rooms at the same time.

Indeed. One type of game you might consider is a Capture the Flag scenario. i.e. Both players search the maze for the flag. Once one player acquires it, he tries to make a successful escape. However, the other player will be chasing him, trying to "capture" the flag from him. (You might need some sort of stun weapon that makes a player drop the flag to accomplish this.) The player that successfully escapes wins the game.

 

To make things even more interesting, I recommend that a player only be able to carry the flag OR a weapon, but not both at the same time. That would mean that a player would have to think tactically in order to remove the flag from the playing field sucessfully.

 

Other gameplay options could include powerups like speedup, random teleport (moves the player to a random room to escape), and zip pads (quickly throws the player out of a room in the direction of the pad). There should also be obstacles and special platforms of some sort. For example, there could be doors that open and close at regular intervals, making them excellent but dangerous escape routes. There could also be teleporters that would allow a player to move from one part of the complex to another. (Again, teleporters would help with the strategic element as it would provide multiple paths to a goal.)

 

Just some ideas, anyway. :)

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I'm thinking that a custom kernal is probably the simplest way to go. Your screens aren't all that complex (certainly not requiring the bBASIC playfield) meaning that you can remove most of the issues with a quicky kernal. I fear that the alternative of struggling with the bBASIC kernal will simply waste more time and energy than it's worth.

I've always found it easier to just create my own custom kernel than to try to reverse-engineer and then re-engineer the two canned bB kernels. :) I have the same problem reading other people's code-- I look at it and go, "Um, okay, what in the world is *this* section *here* doing?" (30 minutes later...) "Oh, okay." :)

 

One type of game you might consider is a Capture the Flag scenario. i.e. Both players search the maze for the flag. Once one player acquires it, he tries to make a successful escape. However, the other player will be chasing him, trying to "capture" the flag from him. (You might need some sort of stun weapon that makes a player drop the flag to accomplish this.) The player that successfully escapes wins the game.

 

To make things even more interesting, I recommend that a player only be able to carry the flag OR a weapon, but not both at the same time. That would mean that a player would have to think tactically in order to remove the flag from the playing field sucessfully.

 

Other gameplay options could include powerups like speedup, random teleport (moves the player to a random room to escape), and zip pads (quickly throws the player out of a room in the direction of the pad). There should also be obstacles and special platforms of some sort. For example, there could be doors that open and close at regular intervals, making them excellent but dangerous escape routes. There could also be teleporters that would allow a player to move from one part of the complex to another. (Again, teleporters would help with the strategic element as it would provide multiple paths to a goal.)

 

Just some ideas, anyway. :)

I actually did consider "Capture the Flag," but didn't give it much thought. It *would* be a good one for this type of kernel, though. And "Scavenger Hunt" could work similarly, since hunting for a flag is similar to hunting for an item on a list. I could even call it "Rainy Day Games," and have different games for the two kids to play while stuck inside the house-- Hide and Seek, Tag, Capture the Flag, Scavenger Hunt, Race (who can reach, say, the kitchen the fastest by different routes), etc. I'm thinking that the house would start out fairly small, and get larger as the levels increased.

 

Michael

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