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Chaotic Grill (BurgerTime remake) in progress


splendidnut

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If you really want to see bugs come out of the wood work, try level 4 (the one that has the 8 piece tall burgers).... which I've been working on today to try and fix. Seems I'm starting to run out of available processing time... I might need to migrate the game logic to C and start really using the ARM chip.

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Yeah they rode them down, but stayed on the top bun and didn't reappear back into the game.

 

That would be a missing feature. Currently the enemies are only stunned when they ride a burger. Then when they stop being stunned, they continue on their merry way, except if they're on a burger pile... then they don't know where to go.

 

Currently I'm unsure of the rules that govern whether an enemy is stunned or killed when riding a burger. Anyone have any insight into this?

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I believe that in the arcade, the enemy ride the burger down, temporarily disappear offering 500 points, then respawn exactly where they disappeared on top of the burger piece they rode. If the burger is far from a platform, they simply walk back to a platform and continue on their merry way. Only crushing them makes them respawn elsewhere on the board.

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I've played the arcade version of Burger TIme for a long time and have learned to anticipate the enemy's moves... yes, I think what Xybot67 says is correct. However, they will first walk left or right until they reach the end of "their" burger and then go up towards the next platform.

 

As for the movement on intersections, there is one big rule... if an enemy reaches an intersection, it will generally check if any angle it takes (not continuing straight) will take them towards the player. If so, they will take the turn. For instance, if they come down a ladder and there's a platform on the right, they will take the turn if the player is to the right of their ladder. If the player is to the left, they will take the platform to the left if there is one, otherwise they will continue straight. As far as I've seen, all enemies follow this pattern.

 

However, there seems to be inconsistencies in what they do if they line up with the player, especially horizontally. Which means that if they are on the same platform as the player, they will sometimes stay on the platform, even through an intersection, but sometimes they will still take the ladder up or down. I haven't found out what triggers this inconsistency. It might depend on which enemy or which round it is, which platform they are on or even if the player pushes down or up or if the chef is on a bun waiting for the enemy to step on it (this just happened to me). However, there seems to be no such inconsistency vertically, i.e. if the player is on the same ladder as the enemy coming towards him, they will always stay on that ladder if they can.

 

That's the behavior in the arcade, but I found some differences to that in various ports. For instance, in the Flash version of Burger Time all enemies take all intersections available if they line up with the player either horizontally or vertically. And in the MSX version, Mr. Hotdog prefers to take platforms leading to the player vs. ladders and only take a ladder if the player is in the opposite direction of where he just came from, while Mr. Pickle prefers ladders over platforms, and Mr. Egg follows the player roughly like in the arcade. On the TI-99 version, only one level instead of two is added to the fall of each ingredient for each enemy riding it, and if the enemies ride all the way down to the completed burger, they will walk to the far right before going up again. The C-64 version by Interceptor's Micros doesn't let the enemies ride the ingredients at all, and in some versions they get killed by a ride, or only get killed if they fall to the bottom.

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I believe that in the arcade, the enemy ride the burger down, temporarily disappear offering 500 points, then respawn exactly where they disappeared on top of the burger piece they rode. If the burger is far from a platform, they simply walk back to a platform and continue on their merry way. Only crushing them makes them respawn elsewhere on the board.

 

Ah, that makes sense... I was originally thinking there was some condition (like number of enemies on burger piece) which determined whether they were killed or not when riding the burger pieces. But it makes way more sense that they die and re-spawn in the exact same spot.

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I've played the arcade version of Burger TIme for a long time and have learned to anticipate the enemy's moves... yes, I think what Xybot67 says is correct. However, they will first walk left or right until they reach the end of "their" burger and then go up towards the next platform.

 

Alrighty, so for enemies that land on the plate piles, they need to move to the edge of the burger before moving toward the nearest platform. Is there a limit to how far they can travel up? Such as in level 4, it seems quite a distance if only one or two pieces are on the plate. I would almost think that would cause a position reset when they re-spawn,

 

 

As for the movement on intersections, there is one big rule... if an enemy reaches an intersection, it will generally check if any angle it takes (not continuing straight) will take them towards the player. If so, they will take the turn. For instance, if they come down a ladder and there's a platform on the right, they will take the turn if the player is to the right of their ladder. If the player is to the left, they will take the platform to the left if there is one, otherwise they will continue straight. As far as I've seen, all enemies follow this pattern.

 

However, there seems to be inconsistencies in what they do if they line up with the player, especially horizontally. Which means that if they are on the same platform as the player, they will sometimes stay on the platform, even through an intersection, but sometimes they will still take the ladder up or down. I haven't found out what triggers this inconsistency. It might depend on which enemy or which round it is, which platform they are on or even if the player pushes down or up or if the chef is on a bun waiting for the enemy to step on it (this just happened to me). However, there seems to be no such inconsistency vertically, i.e. if the player is on the same ladder as the enemy coming towards him, they will always stay on that ladder if they can.

 

That's the behavior in the arcade, but I found some differences to that in various ports. For instance, in the Flash version of Burger Time all enemies take all intersections available if they line up with the player either horizontally or vertically. And in the MSX version, Mr. Hotdog prefers to take platforms leading to the player vs. ladders and only take a ladder if the player is in the opposite direction of where he just came from, while Mr. Pickle prefers ladders over platforms, and Mr. Egg follows the player roughly like in the arcade. On the TI-99 version, only one level instead of two is added to the fall of each ingredient for each enemy riding it, and if the enemies ride all the way down to the completed burger, they will walk to the far right before going up again. The C-64 version by Interceptor's Micros doesn't let the enemies ride the ingredients at all, and in some versions they get killed by a ride, or only get killed if they fall to the bottom.

 

Thanks for the insight!

 

It sounds like I need to be quite flexible with my enemy AI to allow the different combinations of forcing turns or allow direct pursuit. I just played around with the first level in the arcade game, and it seems very inconsistent:

  • For the most part, enemies were forced to turn at intersections.
  • On ladders with a direct line of sight, they pursued directly. (both Mr HotDog and Mr Egg)
  • On occasion, Mr Hotdog seemed to purse directly when on the same platform... but not all the time.

So I guess the big question is do I given the enemies relatively consistent pursuit patterns? Possibly one style per character type? Do I add random hiccups? Do I change the patterns based on levels?

 

There are lots of different ways to go about this... Thoughts anyone? :)

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Well, I would propose coding the simplest thing possible, which would be having the enemies always continue their line towards the player if lining up, consistent for all enemies in all cases, and then focusing on getting the other game elements right. Inconsistencies in the enemy AI can be tweaked later, I think, if necessary.

 

When falling down with a bun, I would let the enemies continue in the left/right direction they were going before the fall until they reach the end of their burger, then going up until hitting the first platform, no matter how long the way up is.

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Guessing that people are scrambling to prep project for viewing at PRGE...

 

Hmmm... Although it fits in with the theme of the game, I don't think "scrambling" is a good word to describe what's going on development-wise. If I was working hastily, you would have probably seen more updates by now. So far, every time I've accomplished a few things, I've made it a point to post an update. This allows everyone, including me, to know the progress that's been made. I'd like to think things are way more organized now then when I first started. :)

 

 

Just wondering how the progress is going? So close to having the Burgertime the 2600 deserved. :)

 

Not much progress has been made. I took a few days to work on an idea I had for flicker management, which didn't end up working. Then, this past weekend, I started reorganizing some of the code. I needed to split the burger logic and the player/enemy logic into separate banks. For the past few weeks, they've shared a 4k bank which was getting close to being filled. It would have been relatively quick except for the fact that DASM has no understanding of code banks and was giving me a bunch of obscure errors that took WAY too long to figure out. In the end, I discovered I had missed copying a single line when moving code around. After I could finally build again, mysterious game play issues cropped up which took another large chunk of time to figure out what was going on. In the end, I had moved a function and didn't realize in was no longer in the same bank as the table of data it was accessing. (AND yes, I am aware that, in a way, this counters my thoughts of being more organized now :) )

 

All these issues could have been avoided if either (A) DASM had better error messages, or (B) I had a better understanding of how to use DASM to its fullest potential.

 

On the plus side, NostAlgae37 has finished all the animations and I spent last Friday night plugging in the data. Since one of those was the animation sequence for player death, I've added in the collision detection necessary to cause player death which seems to be working quite nicely.

 

I'd like to get one more thing accomplished before I post another BIN for download.

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Thank goodness my part of the project is done already, I wouldn't want to be responsible for keeping the surging hordes waiting. :P

 

Yes, I've been meaning to write you a nice thank you note... But I might as well do it publicly.

 

Thank you so much for contributing your time and skill to develop the sprites and animations. It's been a nice motivating factor having someone else help out on this project in such a big way.

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Hmmm... Although it fits in with the theme of the game, I don't think "scrambling" is a good word to describe what's going on development-wise. If I was working hastily, you would have probably seen more updates by now. So far, every time I've accomplished a few things, I've made it a point to post an update. This allows everyone, including me, to know the progress that's been made. I'd like to think things are way more organized now then when I first started. :)

 

Ah, ok. Makes sense. I did not intend scrambling in a pejorative sense. Sorry!

 

You have in fact been doing a great job communicating what's going on, and this has been a great project to watch develop from the sidelines. I can't tell whether it is organized, but the progress is clear!

 

My coding never made it past pascal in the early 80s so I am always amazed by the work that you guys do, as well as what can be done on the 2600.

 

Having said that, I will go back to cheerleading.

 

Go team!

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Food for the savages... another update:

  • Attempted to fix the issue when too many burger pieces are in motion... Level 4 seems to be working better, wasn't able to fully test yet.
  • Chef can be killed
  • Chef can beat the level and move on to the next one (may be a bit buggy... Level 1 seems to work)
  • Scoreboard temporarily replaced with WIP tag

Please let me know of any bugs that you might find.

 

Enjoy.

chaoticGrill-2018-10-04.bin

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Food for the savages... another update:

  • Attempted to fix the issue when too many burger pieces are in motion... Level 4 seems to be working better, wasn't able to fully test yet.
  • Chef can be killed
  • Chef can beat the level and move on to the next one (may be a bit buggy... Level 1 seems to work)
  • Scoreboard temporarily replaced with WIP tag

Please let me know of any bugs that you might find.

 

Enjoy.

 

It's about time BurgerTime got a proper 2600 port! :-D

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Good job! As a veteran Burger Time player, here are the things that occured to me when playing your latest version:

- The background music is missing (OK, maybe the 2600 wouldn't be able to do a good job at it anyway)

- The pepper is missing (obviously)

- Screens 5 and 6 are missing completely

- In screens 3 and 4, the chef's starting position is wrong... it should spawn at the bottom of the screen, not at the top

- There was a bug in screen 4 where a green burger part was stuck on its platform and didn't fall when I tried to get it loose.At the same time, multiple enemies were running left and right in the air between two platforms. However, after placing all parts below it, the level was won.

- The enemy AI is still wonky at times, quite often they just stop in their tracks and don't know where to go. You can trigger this by being at the same scanline as an enemy, which quite often will stun that enemy (out of whatever reason).

- The flickering is pretty bad. Does it have to be THAT bad? Or is that because the players are also getting used to display the burger parts?

- The winning animation doesn't look quite right... in the original version, the chef raises and lowers its arms completely.

 

Sorry for being so critical with your game...

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I don't think the flickering is that bad, myself. IMHO, it's better than the flickering on the official release.

There's still issues, but so far it's looking beautiful. I don't know if it's me, but it seems that I have trouble getting on and off the ladders. It's like you have to be pixel perfect. IMHO, it should have a bit more leeway.

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Amazingly enough the burger parts are drawn exclusively with the playfield and I never would have guessed that by looking! The colours and movement as the burger parts fall don't give away that little secret at all.

 

The chef is drawn with P0 only and is drawn at a constant 30Hz

The enemies are drawn with P0 & P1 and seem to be drawn at 20Hz, 30Hz and once I even saw one drawn at 40Hz (3 out of 4 frames)

 

The enemies don't vary much in their frequency no matter if they share the same vertical screen space as other characters or not. With the right flicker management the character flicker could be reduced to zero (60Hz) when they don't occupy the same vertical space. For a very similar style of character size and screen layout Mappy by Champ Games should be looked at for it's incredible flicker management.

Amazing job splendidnut, this game is getting way better each iteration and going to be amazing when it's completed!

 

 

- The flickering is pretty bad. Does it have to be THAT bad? Or is that because the players are also getting used to display the burger parts?

 

Edited by cimmerian
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