ABBUC Software Contest 2007

[Irgendwer]

(about ECKN...)

By the way when you 100% read the help file the game re-inits wrong, and the guy on the left is garbaged (and so is the music)

 

Can you confirm this also happens when playing the version I provided here? I have the suspicion that ABBUC may suppressed my AUTORUN.SYS

which contains necessary init code for the game. Starting the game by running 'LOADER.COM' like mentioned here in an other post isn't

sufficient!

 

CU

Irgendwer

[MEtalGuy66]

I'm disappointed and my initial fears are justified. Not from a coding point of view but in terms of gameplay.

 

How can you be disapointed with something that you got for free?

 

In my oppinion, the only people here that have any right to be "disapointed" are those who contributed to the production of the games. Everyone else should be damn happy to get these new games/apps because I think we can all agree that they are FAR above the quality level of the average "ameteur user's" development abilities. They may not be exactly the way you hoped they would be, but I wouldnt call ANY of the a "disapointment."

[Marius]

Can you confirm this also happens when playing the version I provided here? I have the suspicion that ABBUC may suppressed my AUTORUN.SYS

which contains necessary init code for the game. Starting the game by running 'LOADER.COM' like mentioned here in an other post isn't

sufficient!

 

CU

Irgendwer

 

Hi!

 

Today I am going to try that. I'll let you know how i'm doing. That problem I described above occurs also sometimes after playing and having the highscore. Strange eh? So I'll test your new versions very well, and let you know how it is going.

 

Marius

 

p.s. could you tell: the changing of the colored tiles... is that 100% random, or is your software trying to make it hard on the player? I'm trying to develop some kind of strategy to make as much full playfield changes (you've made it ECKN!) in one game. My max. score is about 7000+ points now (5 min. game). It is SO MUCH fun!

[patjomki]

If someone else is reading this thread he might think that Crownland is crap which it isn't. It still got my Kudos.

 

I agree. Its an amazing game!

...

Many thanks to all the great atari programmers out there. Keep up the great work!!!

 

That's exactly what I think. And I like the full version of crownland a lot, e.g. there are beautiful painted levels with sprites that let me smile. In fact the game (and some of the other contributions like Eckn or Mule Wars) let me spend several hours in front of my trusty old XL (yes, the real one not an emulator) which I haven't done for ages.

 

Great work! Thanks to everyone who contributed to the competition.

 

Regards,

 

patjomki

[TMR]

Same for Yoomp. The game world is 2D, it's only presented with a perspective. Yoomp is NOT in the real 3D category like Rescue of Fractalus is.

 

Pffff.....

The Tiles in Yoomp are perspectively correct zoomed in 360° around the viewers eye. How much more 3D do you want to see on an 8 bit from the early 80's ?

 

Since you're the one saying that Trailblazer isn't 3D in the way that Fractalus and so forth are, we're working by your definition here; Yoomp isn't 3D in the same way Trailblazer isn't.

Edited October 30, 2007 by TMR

[Chrodegang]

Pffff.....

The Tiles in Yoomp are perspectively correct zoomed in 360° around the viewers eye. How much more 3D do you want to see on an 8 bit from the early 80's ?

 

What Fröhn actually means (correct me if I am wrong) is that there is no real 3D calculation although the result looks 3D: a 2D (sub)plane is projected onto a 3D cylinder just by 'bending' a bunch of 'rows' of the 2D plane onto circles which have different diameters. This is some sort of 2D coordinate transformation.

Edited October 30, 2007 by Chrodegang

[Xebec's Demise]

Anyhow - it's not worth to put any more work into this 5th place - sorry.

 

Irgendwer, I thought ECKN was an awesome piece of work. It is extremely polished and well embellished. I especially liked the fonts you used for the credits, titles, etc. And I found the Joystick interface to be very responsive and adequate to control the game.

 

I'm sorry that it didnt place in the top 3 because I can definitely appreciate the amount of work you must have put into it.

 

In fact, I'm almost sure that the other games which placed higher did so because of GENRE, and not necessarily because of superior quality.

 

I was thinking the same thing when I read your post, Irgendwer. Popular opinion is often superficial, that's why when it comes to competitive events, often judges or technical experts are used instead.

 

It would be interesting to have another vote one year from now before the next contest, just to see how well each entry held up over time.

[Xebec's Demise]

She said, and she has a point, Yoomp has a very original game-concept, a complete NEW game, which everybody is curious about, because it is not familiar with something we've already seen.

 

Crownland looks cool, and has everything a nice and good game has, but it is not original. It is a Mario-land clone, so it makes the atari owners happy we have finally a real Mario-land-like-clone, but it is not that original.

 

I think she has a point.

 

Indeed she does have point. You just look at Yoomp and it makes you say, "what the heck is that, never seen a game like that!"

 

Besides that, the voting was very close! 421 to 400, that only a 5% margin! It could have gone either way on a different day.

[Xebec's Demise]

But Trailblazer has nothing to do with 3D. It is done in the "ego" perspective, but that is not the "primary" definition for 3D....

Same for Yoomp. The game world is 2D, it's only presented with a perspective. Yoomp is NOT in the real 3D category like Rescue of Fractalus is.

 

Yes, but it's still innovative and original, most everyone has seen the other tile-based games, but Yoomp presented enough of a difference and was done well enough that it made a real impact.

 

Sometimes the simplest change or alteration can make a huge difference - like chipping the corners off of a square block and ending up with a wheel; one drags the other really rolls! Yoomp is like this, they took an often used tiled gameplay and made it totally tubular.

 

[Xebec's Demise]

What about Albert putting the news about the result / games on the front page? even if they are just PALs at the moment?

 

I agree, these games are good enough to make the frontpage news. I'm sending him a PM now.

 

[Heaven/TQA]

Eru, will you release the source code as well to the public? i guess the tunnel routines are the one (sort of) used by Jaskier in Back2Life 2?

[Irgendwer]

So I'll test your new versions very well, and let you know how it is going.

 

It's not a new version. It is exactly the same archive I sent to ABBUC.

 

p.s. could you tell: the changing of the colored tiles... is that 100% random, or is your software trying to make it hard on the player? I'm trying to develop some kind of strategy to make as much full playfield changes (you've made it ECKN!) in one game. My max. score is about 7000+ points now (5 min. game). It is SO MUCH fun!

 

7000+ points is a very good score. And yes, this is the intended strategy to follow. I have changed the scoring scheme

compared to 'Znax' in this way: Big areas get much more points.

In 'Znax' a 4x4 area will only quadruple the points of the 2x2 area (for each stone the same count of points).

The ECKN score formular is MINDIMENSION*MINDIMENSION*MAXDIMENSION - so the 2x2 area brings 8 points

and the 4x4 area 64 points - a lot more.

 

The stone color is purely random, no tricks! This was one of the challenges: I wrote a routine which has to calculate if the

board is 'stale': no more moves left. Yes, this can also happen before the time runs out! But until now I never run in this

condition while using the good old atari random generator. I just test it with artificial boards.

The challange was, that in worse case my well written optimized C routine took about 10 seconds to find out that there

is no move left: Unacceptable after an area turn. So I rewrote the hole thing in assembler and squeezed every cycle out of

the processor: 1.3 seconds in worse case. But like said before: In my tests (and my wife and I tested ECKN a lot) was allways

a move left which also drastically decreases the calculation time. So the turnover of the stones is not only eye candy but

also conceals this calculation time.

 

Just another 'feature': You can Exi state that she is bored by selecting tiny areas over and over again.

 

CU

Irgendwer

Edited October 30, 2007 by Irgendwer

[www.atarimania.com]

How can you be disapointed with something that you got for free?

 

In my oppinion, the only people here that have any right to be "disapointed" are those who contributed to the production of the games. Everyone else should be damn happy to get these new games/apps because I think we can all agree that they are FAR above the quality level of the average "ameteur user's" development abilities. They may not be exactly the way you hoped they would be, but I wouldnt call ANY of the a "disapointment."

It's all relative... I may be disappointed but that doesn't mean I don't find the game truly excellent! Yoomp! is really incredible as well and Eckn is a very nice addition to the genre.

 

I just feel there's still a lot of untapped potential in the platform and think there's room for even more ambitious projects with deeper gameplay. I'd love to see games (or just conversions!) similar to some of the full-price programs that can be found on all other 8-bits (stuff that appeared in the 1988-92 era for the most part).

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

Edited October 30, 2007 by www.atarimania.com

[Xebec's Demise]

The stone color is purly random, no tricks! This was one of the challenges: I wrote a routine which has to calculate if the

board is 'stale': no more moves left. Yes, this can also happen before the time runs out! But until now I never run in this

condition while using the good old atari random generator. I just test it with artificial boards.

The challange was, that in worse case my well written optimized C routine took about 10 seconds to find out that there

is no move left: Unacceptable after an area turn. So I rewrote the hole thing in assembler and squeezed every cycle out of

the processor: 1.3 seconds in worse case. But like said before: In my tests (and my wife and I tested ECKN a lot) was allways

a move left which also drastically decreases the calculation time. So the turnover of the stones is not also eye candy but

also conceals this calculation time.

 

Just another 'feature': You can Exi state that she is bored by selecting tiny areas over and over again.

 

CU

Irgendwer

 

I appreciate programing tricks like that, divert the player's attention while something else is done, in order to make the gameplay seamless.

 

How does the Atari random generator work anyway? Is it actually better than our modern PCs in that it really is random using ambient noise or something?

Edited October 30, 2007 by Xebec's Demise

[Albert]

What about Albert putting the news about the result / games on the front page? even if they are just PALs at the moment?

 

I agree, these games are good enough to make the frontpage news. I'm sending him a PM now.

 

I'll do that, these games look incredible! I'd love to try these games--are they all available? I saw the link to the Yoomp! page..

 

..Al

[Gury]

http://www.atari8.info/index.php?lang=en

http://atari.fandal.cz/index.php

[Albert]

http://www.atari8.info/index.php?lang=en

http://atari.fandal.cz/index.php

Thanks for the links, those are helpful.

 

..Al

[emkay]

Since you're the one saying that Trailblazer isn't 3D in the way that Fractalus and so forth are, we're working by your definition here; Yoomp isn't 3D in the same way Trailblazer isn't.

 

My definition? Well, in the way you see "my definition" all new games on the PC are not 3D, because they only use zooming Tiles, depending on x, y and z coordinates instead of real 3D calculations as used in RoF.

 

I wonder, how someone barely can compare Trailblazer with Yoomp. Nothing against trailblazer , it's a fun game, but there is no "real Z movement" . The "real" X and Y handling of the tiles in Yoomp makes the the viewer believe to move inside it, like you "feel" with PC games from today.

 

Hello? You see a "circle" object handled in depth .... not some raster and/or sprite trick... and it looks "serious" even to people who are not involved with any 8-bit scene.

[Chrodegang]

Too much Scotch, emkay?

[twh/f2]

I also think that Yoomp! is a great contribution to the Atari XL/XE platform. I placed the production on Pouet just to see what other non-Atari (demo scene) people think about it. The reactions are great so far!

 

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=32999

 

Furthermore I do believe that with titles like Yoomp! the XL/XE becomes publicly more visible than with a good Mario/Giana clone as this is nothing special for the C64 / CPC / Spectrum crowd.

 

grtx,

\twh

[cas]

For me Crownland and Yoomp were on the same level (9 points out of 10) , with Mule Wars and SpeedUp following, until the last week before the voting. What made me give 10 out of 10 point for Yoomp (and 9 of 10 for Corwnland) was the perfect presentation on the Internet. The best I have ever seen for an A8 game in the last years.

 

I must also say that Mule Wars, Eckn, SpeedUp are also very good programs that would have been on place 1 or two in other years. the competition was too strong this year for these games. All this games have their strong points and will be played over the next years during A8 gatherings.

 

The tools sumbitted were solid programming works, but nothing unique, but still very usable. Unfortunately Tools have a hard standing vs. games in the software competition, as most A8 users are still gamers that cannot appreciate a good tool the same way a programmer can.

 

I have great respect for all people that contributed to the competition this year.

 

I'm already looking forward to the 2008 competition.....

 

Carsten

Edited October 30, 2007 by cas

[TMR]

Hello? You see a "circle" object handled in depth .... not some raster and/or sprite trick...

 

It's a move list trick.

 

Yes, it looks good but it's nowhere near as complex as you're trying to make it sound, there's no "circle object" being handled there for a start.

Edited October 30, 2007 by TMR

[Heaven/TQA]

yup. TMR is right. the "3d-2d-Transformation" is done via precalculated lists and for speed I assume Eru has "hardcoded" the transformation directly into display code. so the transformation is done in realtime by definition but not in realtime... but this is a philosophical question...

 

so Buck Rogers is a 3d game as well and Pole Position...

[emkay]

Hello? You see a "circle" object handled in depth .... not some raster and/or sprite trick...

 

It's a move list trick.

 

Yes, it looks good but it's nowhere near as complex as you're trying to make it sound, there's no "circle object" being handled there for a start.

 

The "move list trick" .... could you tell me what you mean exactly with it?

 

Actually, the ATARI has to handle the graphics "fully" . The "tube" isn't repetitive enough for re using screen elements.

The tiles are zooming from "far" to "near" ... even colour cycling isn't used. And it runs with 64K, so pre buffering of a full level-tube isn't possible.

[Fröhn]

The "move list trick" .... could you tell me what you mean exactly with it?

It's the trick used to produce all those tunnels, bump mappings etc. It's called movelist because on Amiga/PC you only need one MOVE/MOV opcode for each pixel. Btw, it can also be used to produce a Trailblazer transformation (which proves the equivalence of Trailblazer transform and tunnel transform I mentioned earlier).