_The Doctor__ Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 (edited) part of using the machinery of life is learning all the different ways things must be operated... not all things are under the control of a unified system and can never be in real life. It's part of the charm of the game! pick a column move up down.... or do you want to pick a row and move left right are you thinking to move diagonal to avoid a step and make things faster... what is the idea that you have so it's understood, something to work from? Edited December 9, 2021 by _The Doctor__ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matosimi Posted December 9, 2021 Author Share Posted December 9, 2021 (edited) 40 minutes ago, ilmenit said: I played the game when was released and couldn't get through the control scheme, if you plan some future update it would be great to have some alternative control provided. You basically loop through all the towers by left-right... and with up-down you just loop between those that are at the very same horizontal position. Maybe it would require some "neighboring matrix" or something like that in order to make it more convenient. still, how would you define which blue path to choose if the cursor is in the middle? level 2 is also tricky... it looks like the neighboring moves could not be two-way because it does not make much of a sense to select only one blue path...and there could be some additional paths as well (down from the middle place)... and again I can see people complaining why it is again so stupid... Edited December 9, 2021 by matosimi typo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 I ad alot of fun playing this when originally released. It was the most played 8bit game for me in a long time. Having said that the only frustration was I could easily die on level 2 the same as level 4, so progression became a bit of a drag. I most likely did alot of "level 1 upgrade path" type deployments - guess that is not the best strategy? If you havent played it, this is an excellent 8bit title. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilmenit Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 3 hours ago, matosimi said: Maybe it would require some "neighboring matrix" or something like that in order to make it more convenient. still, how would you define which blue path to choose if the cursor is in the middle? [...] level 2 is also tricky... it looks like the neighboring moves could not be two-way because it does not make much of a sense to select only one blue path...and there could be some additional paths as well (down from the middle place)... and again I can see people complaining why it is again so stupid... yup, "neighboring matrix" would be my approach, shortly for each tower an array of 4 joy directions to which tower cursor will go. How would I select which path to choose in these cases? I'd implement it by some simple to understand rule, like "when in doubt where to go horizontally, always the top one". Then to go to the lower tower you would need to press joy left and then down - still simple to understand. Similarly for the case of the middle tower on level 2 "when in doubt vertically, always the left one". 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ZeroPage Homebrew Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 6 hours ago, matosimi said: I just saw the recording of the twitch stream... I have few things to mention: Thanks for watching! ? 6 hours ago, matosimi said: 1. the output Atari video is somehow not showing full resolution so it is kind of flickering even it should not... like some vertical lines of the 320x196 resolution are missing Very interesting, I'm using s-video output through a UAV upgraded 800XL upscaled to 1080P through a RetroTINK 5XPro then broadcast 1:1 unresized through OBS. I'm guessing the 1080P upscaling isn't an even integer and I'll see if there's a better scaling method that will eliminate the flickering. Your game will be a good test bench for this, thanks for the observation. 6 hours ago, matosimi said: 2. in order to win 1st level you have to build tower type 2 to destroy shields of enemies that are introduced in phase 4... you both built only towers type 1 and upgraded as much as possible - rookie mistake Definitely a rookie mistake! Thanks for the heads up for next time we play. We were a little rushed for time as our cat went to emergency that day so I wasn't able to prepare as much as I normally would have been able to. ? 6 hours ago, matosimi said: 3. I have used full 64kB, Basic can be turned off programmatically and also OS Rom was turned off as well - pretty standard these days. Oh nice! It's unusual that I've seen people writing that you have to hold down the option key to load some games. ? Probably they don't have that programmed into their games. 6 hours ago, matosimi said: 4. You eventually understood the control scheme, the way how you switch between towers is taken from the original game. It's definitely good to stick to the original control scheme when porting a game as some people would be used to playing the original. Reading post above this makes sense why it would be difficult to make an alternate scheme with the towers not being in a grid. It took a bit to get our heads around it but can understand why they did it that way originally. 6 hours ago, matosimi said: 5. I would watch it live, however it was like 3am or 4am in my central european timezone. No problem, we have viewers from all over the world so no time is perfect for everyone sadly. We do stagger the start time of some of our shows to try to accommodate people, thanks for watching it after the fact! - James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matosimi Posted December 9, 2021 Author Share Posted December 9, 2021 3 hours ago, ilmenit said: yup, "neighboring matrix" would be my approach, shortly for each tower an array of 4 joy directions to which tower cursor will go. How would I select which path to choose in these cases? I'd implement it by some simple to understand rule, like "when in doubt where to go horizontally, always the top one". Then to go to the lower tower you would need to press joy left and then down - still simple to understand. Similarly for the case of the middle tower on level 2 "when in doubt vertically, always the left one". hmm. try this one: CastleDefender12a.xex only 1st level implemented... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ZeroPage Homebrew Posted December 9, 2021 Share Posted December 9, 2021 35 minutes ago, matosimi said: hmm. try this one: CastleDefender12a.xex 48.9 kB · 2 downloads only 1st level implemented... Nice, so much more intuitive! ? - James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilmenit Posted December 10, 2021 Share Posted December 10, 2021 (edited) 6 hours ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said: Nice, so much more intuitive! ? I agree, works really well. Now I see that because of the vertical alignment of the towers, pressing left/right move cursor to other column and up-down selects a tower in the column. Very intuitive. Edited December 10, 2021 by ilmenit Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilmenit Posted December 10, 2021 Share Posted December 10, 2021 (edited) [deleted, double post] Edited December 10, 2021 by ilmenit Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matosimi Posted December 10, 2021 Author Share Posted December 10, 2021 (edited) 2nd is defined like this: it is not that easy to define 3rd level: Blue arrows are single direction ones. Edited December 10, 2021 by matosimi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilmenit Posted December 10, 2021 Share Posted December 10, 2021 2 hours ago, matosimi said: 2nd is defined like this: it is not that easy to define 3rd level: Blue arrows are single direction ones. The second level is organized in columns of towers, so basically any left-right switching between the columns will work. The 3rd one while not clearly set on the columns layout still have column-like placement: 1-4-7, 0-3-6, 2-5-8 so I think this control scheme should work, but definitely would require testing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matosimi Posted December 10, 2021 Author Share Posted December 10, 2021 @ilmenit so I have final ones... I did some testing and these are the best... level1: one thing that i considered for level1 is going from left to right by 3-6-5-7-4, but I did not like it that much. level2: superb, no doubt level3: crazy one, quite different compared to previous post, but better level4: superb I have two more features to implement/rethink before I release new version (1.3). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matosimi Posted December 19, 2021 Author Share Posted December 19, 2021 Final version of Castle Defender v1.3 is out! Main page: http://matosimi.websupport.sk/atari/castle-defender/ v1.3 Info post: http://matosimi.websupport.sk/atari/2021/12/castle-defender-v1-3/ Direct download: http://matosimi.websupport.sk/atari/download/my_games/CastleDefender.xex Changes in v1.3 - 19.12.2021 added tower neighboring matrix based controls (more intuitive switching between towers) added level unlocking (ability to start game from any level up to highest reached) added game speed-up when fire is hold fixed spawn point bug in Level 2 Wave 3 fixed glitches when quitting game right after starting a wave added v1.3 indication 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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