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Chaotic Grill (BurgerTime remake) in progress


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This is such an amazing remake!

One of the issues I have though is trying to move left and right on the ladders, you basically have to be pixel perfect if you want to move off a ladder. I suggest having more leinency and allowing the player to move a few more pixels from the floor, rather than being on the exact pixel.

  • Like 1
49 minutes ago, splendidnut said:

Thanks for the feedback.  I'll provide you with what I'm working off of for the Main Theme and the Player Death tune for you to playaround with.

 

Currently the music is being played at a constant volume of 6 for both channels with no volume envelope changes... If need be, I can add in the code to allow that.

burgertime.ttt 23.77 kB · 2 downloads burgertime_death7.ttt 13.33 kB · 2 downloads

Thank you for your versions of the tunes! Here are some of mine...

I've amended your burgertime.ttt in order to more closely resemble the one in the arcade. Also, there's a new version of the death tune which I actually created from scratch just before you posted yours. I think it sounds much closer to the original...

Then, another version of the level start and end tunes. The level start tune mostly plays in three parts, so for this new version I took advantage of the fact that the bass only plays short blips to have that channel play 2nd voice at the time the bass doesn't play. I tried the same with the level end tune, but it isn't such a big improvement because great portions of the original are only 2 parts, and the bass doesn't take as many breaks as in the level start tune.

 

I don't think there needs to be a real envelope for the tunes, but the background music should be played at a lower volume setting than the rest in order to have the sound effects stand out.

burgertime V2.ttt Burger Time Chef death.ttt Burger Time Level Start V2.ttt Burger Time Level End V3.ttt

  • Like 2

Here I attempted some of the sound effects... note that they actually should have a falling envelope (like the sound when a burger falls a level). That is, each of the two sounds should start playing on volume 7 (they are also some of the loudest in the arcade) and then gradually decay as they play until they reach volume 1 at the end. The "Squash" sound is actually only 4 frames long, the "Enemy riding" sound lasts about half a second. I hope you can see what's going on in these ones...

Burger Time Enemy squashed.ttt Burger Time Enemy riding.ttt

  • Like 1
On 7/7/2019 at 12:02 PM, Greenknight9000 said:

This is such an amazing remake!

One of the issues I have though is trying to move left and right on the ladders, you basically have to be pixel perfect if you want to move off a ladder. I suggest having more leinency and allowing the player to move a few more pixels from the floor, rather than being on the exact pixel.

 

Thanks!

 

I'll be revisiting the player control issues after I finish working on adding difficulty ramp up.

  • 1 month later...

It's been awhile so... Time for another update!

 

The following are the things I've worked on:

  • Changed start/end music and main theme to match what @Kurt_Woloch provided
  • Added difficulty ramp-up by adding enemy fractional movement... (enemies speed increase with level progression).
  • Fixed player control issues so that when you're near intersections, player will slide toward the intersection you are pressing a direction that is only available at the intersection.
  • Worked on a few graphical glitches and I believe I've eliminated the issue with corrupted graphics/phantom sprite appearing.

There is still more work to be done...

  • Title screen
  • High score table (and SaveKey support)
  • Maybe better flicker managment
  • Maybe more levels
  • Maybe some other cool things...

...but I'm not sure what I'm going to work on next.

 

Please let me know if you find any issues.

 

Enjoy.

 

chaoticGrill-2019-08-17--NTSC.bin

chaoticGrill-2019-08-17--PAL60.bin

  • Like 8
  • Thanks 1
1 hour ago, splendidnut said:

Please let me know if you find any issues.

Sometimes the characters (chef and the enemies) float above the burger pieces for a brief time, and then shift downward.  Also, for some reason the pepper counter cycles through numbers and letters constantly as you are playing.

Excellent update! I was going to comment on the pepper counter too. It seems as if you have unlimited peppers? I don't think I ran out.

 

 

It would be nice if the game would hold on the final screen longer when your game ends. I was going to take a screenshot of my score and the level I was on, but it went away too quickly.

 

  • Like 1

Excellent update, this version already far surpasses the original 2600 one.

 

A few observations I noticed:

 

A small detail but, is it possible to "vibrate" the sprites up and down 1 line as they are going up or down ladders?  I could not put my finger on the movement at first then realized that the arcade and many other versions have the sprites "jiggle" up and down when going up and down ladders to give that sense of movement. I wonder if it would look ok on your version?

 

I would love to see the bad guys be a bit more aggressive on you if possible, however this is just my opinion and highly subjective to each person playing it, but I tend to like hard home versions. If you are implementing 6 enemies then this might be a moot point.

 

I guess if I should ask if there will be selectable difficulty levels similar to the DIP switch on the arcade game that allows the player to start with the original 4 pursuers or the more difficult 6 pursuers (which doesn't happen normally until screen 3). 

 

I was wondering what felt different on the first level and then I realized the pickles were there and not the egg.

You already probably know this but this is just for reference here is the enemy pursuer list from the arcade... it would be great if you can implement this into your version.

 

Arcade Bad Guys on each screen:

Screen 1 - 3 Hot Dogs 1 Egg

Screen 2 - 3 Hot Dogs 1 Egg

Screen 3 - 3 Pickles 2 Hot Dogs 1 Egg

Screen 4 - 2 Pickles 4 Hot Dogs

Screen 5 - 2 Pickles 4 Eggs

Screen 6 and all after - 2 Pickles 2 Eggs 2 Hot Dogs

 

It seems to me that the bonus items may be appearing too frequently; in the arcade manual it says its random, but I would suggest expanding the random number to be something like.. wait between 2 - 59 sec? I would also consider if the item has shown up more than 3 times and picked up, that any future items come out less frequently  like waiting between 30 - 90 sec.  I don't think of any times when I have played the arcade any item  would show up more than 3 or 4 times, but I am willing to accept any other opinion.  

 

I know you have done tons of work on this amazing version however, I wanted to share my observations as BT is one of my favorite arcade games and I am looking forward to your masterpiece!

 

These are just my opinions and I hope they can be useful to you!

 

Keep up the great work!

 

 

Edited by imstarryeyed
fixed grammar
  • Like 3
17 hours ago, NostAlgae37 said:

....  Also, for some reason the pepper counter cycles through numbers and letters constantly as you are playing.

 

17 hours ago, Nathan Strum said:

Excellent update! I was going to comment on the pepper counter too. It seems as if you have unlimited peppers? I don't think I ran out.

 

 

Ooops... looks like I left in some debugging code.  I was using the peppersAvailable variable to debug the new player movement logic.  The shown number is the location type/state of the player (intersection, on ladder, near ladder, on platform, near platform) which will never be zero unless something really bad happens.  So essentially, yes, that would given you infinite peppers :)

 

Easily fixed:

chaoticGrill-2019-08-18--NTSC.bin

chaoticGrill-2019-08-18--PAL60.bin

  • Like 5
22 hours ago, NostAlgae37 said:

Sometimes the characters (chef and the enemies) float above the burger pieces for a brief time, and then shift downward. 

 

That would be a flaw in the sprite flicker management... Can you get me a screenshot showing the positions of all the enemies when this occurs?

21 hours ago, Nathan Strum said:

It would be nice if the game would hold on the final screen longer when your game ends. I was going to take a screenshot of my score and the level I was on, but it went away too quickly.

 

 

I'll can add a "wait for button" check after the chef's death sequence.   Which... I probably could have thrown in with the fix from earlier.  Oh well.  It'll be in the next build.

 

Just played the latest build.  Wonderful work!  This is definitely turning into the better Burger Time choice for the 2600.

 

I spent some time going between this, the official 2600 Burger Time and the arcade game.  While Chaotic Grill's speed is closer to the arcade game's, I think the Mattel game better captures the jittery animation and strict movements for the ladders (that is, if you're not actually in front of a ladder and you push up or down, you will not move).  Chaotic Grill seems much more fluid and forgiving.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though, as the game feels very balanced otherwise and I'm sure some (maybe even me) would prefer playing the game this way. So I don't really have a suggestion one way or the other, just observations.  Either way, this thing is turning out great!  I'm especially impressed with the trick of changing the Q*Bert trick of changing the playfield color multiple times per scan line to draw the burger pieces, and the redesign of Mr. Egg to give his yolk the proper yellow color.

 

Thanks again for this!

  • Like 2
  • 2 weeks later...

We'll be featuring the newest build of Chaotic Grill LIVE on tomorrow's (Wednesday) ZeroPage Homebrew stream on Twitch at 11AM PT | 2PM ET | 6PM GMT! Hope everyone can watch!

 

Twitch Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/

 

Games:
- Dare Devil (2019 WIP Update) by Muddyfunster
- Chaotic Grill (2019 WIP Update) by Philip Blackman aka splendidnut
- Sokoboo (2019 WIP Update) by Andrew Davie
- Dragon's Descent (2018 WIP Update) by Revontuli

 

EDIT: Archive Video of Stream

(SET VIDEO TO 1080P60 FOR FULL QUALITY)

 

Edited by ZeroPage Homebrew
  • Like 4
On 8/17/2019 at 3:43 PM, imstarryeyed said:

Excellent update, this version already far surpasses the original 2600 one.

 

A few observations I noticed:

 

......

 

These are just my opinions and I hope they can be useful to you!

 

Keep up the great work!

 

 

Thanks!

 

I can probably tweak the animation sequences of the sprites on ladders... might need to tweak some of the other animations also.

 

The Bonus item is currently on a timer... and really should be based on the number of pieces piled on the plates on the bottom (ex. a new bonus item should appears only after dropping 3 or 4 pieces on a plate... potentially with an expiration timer)

 

Thank you for mentioning dip-switch settings.  It never crossed my mind that I should look that up to see what was available..

 

I do have plans for adding difficulty selection (easy, medium, hard) which is dependent on getting a menu system going ... as of right now, it seems that the "easy" mode baseline has been established after seeing the discussion in the ZPH thread starting:

 

 

With that said, I've also been tossing around other ideas like tweaking the AI of the enemies so that the hot dog, pickle, and the egg have their own little quirks.

 

The ChaoticGrill game engine only supports 4 enemies on the screen at a time... and I don't think I have the resources (RAM/time) to do more than that.  But I can plan around with making the enemies come back more aggressive (move faster) each time you squash/drop them.
 

Sorry for the delayed response.... I've been semi-busy working on and playing around with writing a display/animation kernel for the titlescreen.

  • Like 4

I believe that the Arcade AI has the Egg/Pickle always take a branching ledge/ladder at the next intersection. They only change direction when the cook is on the opposite side of them or the hit the side of the maze. For example if the Egg was moving right/up, they would not go to the Cookbook just behind the ladder, but would head up/right.  The Hotdog always make sure a beeline to the Cook.

 

  Egg   ||   Cook

====++====

          ||

  • 2 months later...

Just played the new version (the last one I had was back from February 2019), awesome job on it!!! :) Much-improved gameplay and sound, definitely a must have for anyone who owns either a Harmony cart or a Flashback 9 (like I have), now, if someone can give Tempest some much-needed love, do a much-needed improvement of Q*Bert and also a 2600 version of Qix I can be proud to have then I can convince myself to forget about my 5200 and just simply go with my FB9 with 670+ titles on it instead

13 hours ago, BIGHMW said:

 then I can convince myself to forget about my 5200 

We can never be friends.

 

Seriously, though great work on a remake of my favorite game.

  • Like 1
On 8/27/2019 at 8:43 PM, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

We'll be featuring the newest build of Chaotic Grill LIVE on tomorrow's (Wednesday) ZeroPage Homebrew stream on Twitch at 11AM PT | 2PM ET | 6PM GMT! Hope everyone can watch!

 

Twitch Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/

 

Games:
- Dare Devil (2019 WIP Update) by Muddyfunster
- Chaotic Grill (2019 WIP Update) by Philip Blackman aka splendidnut
- Sokoboo (2019 WIP Update) by Andrew Davie
- Dragon's Descent (2018 WIP Update) by Revontuli

 

EDIT: Archive Video of Stream

(SET VIDEO TO 1080P60 FOR FULL QUALITY)

 

The best strategy is to build the burgers from the bottom, not the top.  If you play around with them enough, you can get all of the baddies on top of each other and lead them onto each level of the burger.  Doing it from the top clears the level faster, but with MUCH fewer points.

  • 6 months later...
49 minutes ago, Marcos Moutta said:

Wow, nothing since 2019? What's going on? THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN!

Soon maybe... :)

 

I basically took an unannounced break from it.  And then ended up working on other projects...

 

The game is currently stuck in the "almost complete" state.  It really just needs a few things (better title screen, menu, etc.).   There's also some under-the-covers work that I want to get done (tweaks here and there).  I do have a new title screen in progress that I've worked on occasionally.

 

Finishing this project has been in the back of mind a lot recently.  Being as a few other people have also made references/proddings to this project recently... It might be time to try to finish it up.  :)

  • Like 11
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