[Done] Tyre Trax

[+Muddyfunster]

Tyre Trax

 

This is a clock racer where the player has to complete the course in the shortest possible time. Still a bunch of things to add (like an in game reset switch function..).

 

I have no idea how this plays on real hardware as I don't have a Harmany Cart to test as as I'm using the DPC+ kernal, it doesn't work on my Uno_Cart.

 

Inspiration.

 

I always used to love games like Barnstorming and Grandprix by Activision where it's you vs the clock. This game is inspired by those and also by the unique art style of classic Activation with the gradient sky etc.

 

I ride on my mountain bike a lot near where I live in the UK and we have a lot of canals. The idea for this game came when I was out riding along the tow path, having to avoid crazy old ladies with their yappy dogs, fishermen, rocks, etc. I thought it would make a great Atari game.

 

Playing

 

Right now there are 8 game modes are present to try out.

 

Tournament

Game 1 : Summertime - nice and simple, learn to play (15 obstacles)

Game 2 : Sunset - bit more challenging with more obstacles. (20 obstacles)

Game 3 : Winter - hard, (25 obstacles) - rocks start a bit closer as visibility is lower !

Game 4: Night Time : more stuff, lower visibility, (30 obstacles)

 

Freeplay / Random (30 obstacles)

 

Game 5: as game 1 with random obstacle generation

Game 6 :as game 2 with random obstacle generation

Game 7 :as game 3 with random obstacle generation

Game 8 :as game 4 with random obstacle generation

 

Difficulty Switches (only work on modes 5 to 8 )

Left : B = Easy mode (obstacles appear further away) - A= Hard mode (Obstacles appear closer- less time to react)

Right B= Easy obstacles (all combinations appear) : A - Tough obstacles (only hard combos appear).

 

 

Controls

 

 

Fire or Reset to start after selecting your game.

Fire to accelerate

Release Fire to coast and slow gradually

Left for brakes to slow down quickly

 

If you hit an obstacle you get slowed down to a crawl (costing you time)

 

You need a fast time to win the gold cup!

 

Can you find the EasterEgg?

 

ToDo

 

not much,

 

Updates & changes

 

1st Sept : build 24 attached, night mode added (Game 4)

 

2nd Sept : Build 30e attached, some spooky stuff going on in game 4, Inspired by some of PacMan Red's sprites in the free sprite thread.

Other game modes have some new graphics, some are still placeholders. go in the water, you can press reset, end of lap, you can press reset, reset enabled in game loop, (not on title screen - damn you, repetition restrainer.).

 

3rd Sept : Build 37b attached, general refinements to the code, ran out of space in bank 3 necessitating a bit of a re-org, more refinements on graphics. player no longer stops dead when hitting an obstacle, instead the player slows to a crawl (otherwise you may never finish a course if you chose not to accelerate again..). moving obstacle code in but not active.

 

5th Sept: Build 45. Fixed some bugs on positioning, added a new sequence if you go in the water, flashing removed if course completed, flashing removed on initially hitting water. spent 3 hours figuring out why the cloud sprites had dropped their colours (gap between colour code and "end" on one sprite...).

 

6th Sept: Build 55. Reset from anywhere, use fire to start on game over and win screens. implemented SpiceWares sound driver, placeholder sounds used for now. Can now use joystick to game select.

 

9th Sept: Build 64c : Implemented a countdown to start, rather than just throwing the player in as soon as the game resets. added a little win tune. various tweaks and polishes. Win screen now rates your time, Gold, Silver, Bronze and ... Turd... Fixed a bug that allowed bypassing of obstacles.

 

15th Sept : Build 68 : Tweaks to some colours, added numerals on win screen, animations continue after course is complete.

 

15th Sept pt2 Build 75b2: getting close to feature complete, spent time reclaiming variables and using bits for more tasks. Added an Easter Egg to the game, more colour tweaks, on the 3-2-1 GO countdown, if you chose to, you can press fire to skip.

 

20th Sept Build 80_BETA1 : so a few more weird bugs squished (the one where the passing obstacle sound, would play on the titlescreen only after completing game 1 really did my head in!). Some balance tweaks on vertical movement speed. There are a few final things I want to try before locking the code and moving on to PAL60 conversion.

 

8th October : build 84 BETA 2: PAL60 version is done. only thing I'm trying to finish off now is Atari Vox support. (Big thanks to KarlG for help and guidance on that). Short version is I kinda got it working as a test, at the expense of stripping out a bunch of things to make the driver calls in the same bank. To have the stuff I removed in the game and AV support means a complete code re-org. Joy.

 

PAL60 Version has a different title screen to the NTSC version so they can be identified easily. New screengrabs added

 

12th October : Build 100 Final RC1 - few more little tweaks here and there, adjusted the timing gates on the win model to be ever so slightly more forgiving on silver and bronze medal results. New PAL60 title page (example below). tweaked one or 2 PAL60 colours.

 

17th October : fixed a glitch on the title screen with a couple of rogue pixels due to the size declared in the asm file not matching the the graphics file used (row count)

 

21st October : fixed some colour blends that had resurfaced from an old version, added a black separator line to the score.

 

22nd October : added in 4 new game modes and difficulty switch functions.

 

24th October : alternative controls version added for testing, fire to accelerate, release fire to gradually slow, left to brake. Dificulty switches reversed back to the normal way around (B easy, A Hard).

 

27th October : New version added (201d), full details HERE : Selectable controls, new obstacle patterns, revised collision detection, fighting scanline count.

 

28th October : Scanline / Overcycle fight is mostly won. Decided to remove the control selector and stick with one type. Some more code efficiencies.

 

10th November : Last update until my Harmony cart arrives. Still some over cycle issues and until I can test on real hardware I have no idea if my changes are working., This version has some changes on the bike with some indication of when you are moving up and down and also you move out on acceleration and back on deceleration.

 

6th December: So my Harmony cart arrived and showed me that my game would crash consistently on real hardware. Problem tracked down after lots of helpful suggestions from the community (thanks KarlG, Lewis, Lila, CoolCrab and the rest for chipping in with suggestions and offers to help). Short version is, it's fixed! latest build attached. Back to tuning and tweaking.

 

14th December : Added a few more optimisations with the help of Iesposta (thanks!), added a splash animation when hitting the water, remodeled a few graphics, especially focusing on the trees, fixed (again) some odd colour clashes on the P60 version, tested the win timings and balanced the gold silver bronze awards a little on all modes, new splash sound added when hitting the water. Splash screen added using KarlG's code, the game is basically done .New screen grabs attached . 2 bytes of graphics bank rom left!

 

24th January 2019 :V290 FINAL : after some fiddling about and a major code re-organisation, I was able to shoehorn in a title tune with help from mksmith and some great sounds from JetRush1. Vid below.

 

17th Feb 2019 : while figuring out the details behind a physical release, i've slowed the music down a touch and tweaked the sound effect when passing an obstacle. V295F in the vid below

 

 

tyre_trax_ntsc_v273.bin

tyre_trax_p60_v273.bin

Edited September 29, 2019 by Muddyfunster

[+TrekMD]

Wow, this looks fantastic!

[+Karl G]

Beautiful graphics! I'm looking forward to trying this one out.

[Lewis2907]

Nice game. I like the different animation of the duck, clouds and water effect. Is it possible to make the mountains scroll left or right based up the length and position of the player? Thanks.

[+Random Terrain]

Thanks for not making the player have to jerk the joystick back and forth or rapidly press the fire button. The player can have fun without getting a repetitive stress injury.

[+Karl G]

I haven't tried it on hardware yet, but it plays well under Stella. I'll try it on hardware when I'm in the same city as my Atari again. It is awesome visually, and serves as a good showcase for the graphics capabilities of the DPC+ kernel. A couple of comments:

 

• I'm not fond of the flickering/screen shaking effect when one crosses the goal or goes into the water.
• There seems to be a bug where going into the water switches the game back into game 1 regardless of which game mode is selected.
• A greater variety of obstacles, including some moving ones would make the game more fun, IMO.

[Albert]

As an avid mountain biker, I definitely need to give this a shot later today.

 

..Al

[+Muddyfunster]

 

I haven't tried it on hardware yet, but it plays well under Stella. I'll try it on hardware when I'm in the same city as my Atari again. It is awesome visually, and serves as a good showcase for the graphics capabilities of the DPC+ kernel. A couple of comments:

 

• I'm not fond of the flickering/screen shaking effect when one crosses the goal or goes into the water.
• There seems to be a bug where going into the water switches the game back into game 1 regardless of which game mode is selected.
• A greater variety of obstacles, including some moving ones would make the game more fun, IMO.

 

Thanks for the feedback and kind words all

 

KarlG -

 

Agree on the screen shake / end routine. That's high on my list of things to polish up. I think a short "win" tune might work.

 

Bug added to the list of things to squish

 

more obstacles are definitely coming.

[KevinMos3]

What the crap!?! That's a great looking game!

 

I love the graphics, especially the water effects. I really look forward to seeing what you do with this.

[7800fan]

Looks like something made by Activision with that water reflection. Looking forward to finished version!! (subbed)

[KevinMos3]

Do you have any plan to add jumping, like adding ramps or something? It looks like jumps could be added without having to ever place the player higher on the screen than he's currently allowed to go (moderate jumps that would allow him to go as high as the waterline -- just below the drowning line -- would be fun).

[MemberAtarian]

I really like the backgrounds, so detailed and rapid! In your case, I would make the stones (what those are ) maching the colors of the background at the beginning, and making it more and more darkes as you get close, so it would be like a fog of war. A wall would be great so you wouldn't fall into the water and I think you should die as you run into the stones too fast, with a fall animation. Jumping would be great, as mentioned above.

 

+Add reset after you finished the lap.

 

Uno cart won't work with DPC+, but it can handle 64K.

Edited September 2, 2018 by MemberAtarian

[nitrofurano]

how can we play it on Javatari? i tried http://javatari.org/?ROM=http://atariage.com/forums/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_id=591537

[Lewis2907]

Javatari has a hard time supporting DPC games. I have tried in the past. Also the AFP (Atari Flashback Portable) struggles with DPC games. I think the way to play is real hardware, cell phone emulator and computer emulators, thanks.

[+Muddyfunster]

Update to the Binary in the first post. v30e available.

 

Some spooky happenings over in game 4 (sprites inspired by some of the PMR stuff in the free sprite thread). Some other tweaks and changes.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Hi Muddyfunster, the graphics on your game are amazing, such rich colours!

 

We're going to feature your game on ZeroPage Homebrew on our next livestream on Wednesday September 5! The show starts at 2PM PT/5PM ET and I can't wait to show it off to our audience.

 

Hope you can make it, if not, you can watch it in our YouTube archives the next day. :-)

 

Twitch: https://twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew

YouTube: https://youtube.com/zeropagehomebrew

[+Muddyfunster]

Hi Muddyfunster, the graphics on your game are amazing, such rich colours!

 

We're going to feature your game on ZeroPage Homebrew on our next livestream on Wednesday September 5! The show starts at 2PM PT/5PM ET and I can't wait to show it off to our audience.

 

Hope you can make it, if not, you can watch it in our YouTube archives the next day. :-)

 

Twitch: https://twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew

YouTube: https://youtube.com/zeropagehomebrew

ok, sounds great I'm in the UK so +5 from ET so I should have no problem catching the stream.

 

I'll likely update the binary a bunch of times between no and Weds.

[+Random Terrain]

I wish I was only 5 hours from E.T. I'd visit him all of the time!

[AtariLeaf]

Beautiful looking game. I'm keeping an eye on the progress of this for sure. Congrats on a fantastic start

[ultima]

Wow looks like an activision game. Haven't had a chance to play yet sounds like fun sorta like excitebike vcs.

[+Muddyfunster]

I wish I was only 5 hours from E.T. I'd visit him all of the time!

I had to read that a couple of times before I got it.

[+Muddyfunster]

updated v37 binary attached to first post as well as some updated screenshots.

[Lewis2907]

Cool game. I thought each level would advance based upon time. Glad you have the option so far to select the level you want to play. Advance would a possible game concept. Then maybe a muddy, rain, and ice level where controls are tighter or loose based upon the environment.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

I've been playing the game a little to check out the new version and was able to get perfect scores on the first three levels (full throttle, no stopping) but the fourth level is a hellscape of fast reflexes and memorization!! I'll get it eventually. When I first played level 1 I thought that the game was too easy, by level 3 I was changing my mind and by level 4 I was sure that the game was not too easy!

 

Some suggestions:

- Ability to press the button to take you back to the main menu when you die.

- Have the main menu remember which race level you're on when you reset the game, otherwise you have to constantly select the level each time you retry.

- Have the levels selectable (left/right) with the joystick on the main menu

 

Great stuff, looking forward to playing it on the livestream tomorrow!

Edited September 4, 2018 by cimmerian

[+Muddyfunster]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, some really good suggestions.

 

i've been working more on "weaving" obstacles that don't come in a straight line to up the difficult a bit as well as the "game over" screen.

 

fire button restart + joystick menu navigation are on the list to add.

 

i'm keeping the first post in the thread updated so please check back regularly.,

 

@ Cimmerian, ill be adding a new build later so please check for that before you stream!

 

Thanks.

Edited September 4, 2018 by Muddyfunster