My first arcade port and the power of the console

[+bhall408]

6 hours ago, AnalogKid said:

Release candidate 1 is available for download. 

Will the final name be Astromstorm?

 

If so, will you be renaming the file from asteroids.rom to something more in line with that? (Astromstorm.col?)

 

[Swami]

On 11/27/2020 at 1:52 PM, AnalogKid said:

Release candidate 1 is available for download.  I doubled the number of angles for the ship so the ship is more maneuverable, flight is smoother, and it feels closer to the vector version.  I made the UFO smarter with some quasi-trigonometry but had to work in some inaccuracy because it had deadly 100% accurate aim.  I also eliminated the UFO flicker with a smarter sprite prioritizing algorithm.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jwdj8bcltlsr37c/asteroids.rom?dl=1

I forgot this was up here in the programming section, I’ll try to check this out with some different systems and emulators tonight and tomorrow. 

[Swami]

On 11/27/2020 at 1:52 PM, AnalogKid said:

Release candidate 1 is available for download.  I doubled the number of angles for the ship so the ship is more maneuverable, flight is smoother, and it feels closer to the vector version.  I made the UFO smarter with some quasi-trigonometry but had to work in some inaccuracy because it had deadly 100% accurate aim.  I also eliminated the UFO flicker with a smarter sprite prioritizing algorithm.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jwdj8bcltlsr37c/asteroids.rom?dl=1

CoolCV and ColEm work great and it looks great. I'll try the Phoenix and OEM CV later. My comments at this point are: 

1. the small green asteroids appear to cause collisions with the ship with a small, but noticeable, space between them compared to the other asteroids

2. the hits on the asteroids for the original arcade version are more of a thunder boom (about twice as long and lower pitch). 

3. in the original arcade, the small asteroids travel twice as fast

4. I didn't see a small UFO

 

Update: Phoenix works good from SD card and AtariMax cart. I swear I saw a couple instances of 1-frame sprite ghosting (flash of asteroid or something) at the very beginning of play with SD card when I would shoot something, but I'd need someone else to confirm it wasn't a fluke, as I never saw it again after the first ten seconds of play. Could be irreproducible voltage glitch in Phoenix. Only OEM CV left.

[AnalogKid]

9 hours ago, Swami said:

CoolCV and ColEm work great and it looks great. I'll try the Phoenix and OEM CV later. My comments at this point are: 

1. the small green asteroids appear to cause collisions with the ship with a small, but noticeable, space between them compared to the other asteroids

2. the hits on the asteroids for the original arcade version are more of a thunder boom (about twice as long and lower pitch). 

3. in the original arcade, the small asteroids travel twice as fast

4. I didn't see a small UFO

 

Update: Phoenix works good from SD card and AtariMax cart. I swear I saw a couple instances of 1-frame sprite ghosting (flash of asteroid or something) at the very beginning of play with SD card when I would shoot something, but I'd need someone else to confirm it wasn't a fluke, as I never saw it again after the first ten seconds of play. Could be irreproducible voltage glitch in Phoenix. Only OEM CV left.

1.  I'll double-check the collision detection routine, I may not be trimming enough off of the hit-box for the small ones.  I had downsized the sprites by a pixel or two as there wasn't enough difference between the medium and the small.

2.  The arcade audio was fantastic with great bass.  Unfortunately with the Colecovision I have to work with a white-noise generator and it has two frequencies high and low.  I believe the alternative is to link the noise channel to tone channel 3 to get lower sounds but I need all three tones, particularly when the UFO on screen.  Anyway this is why the explosions in most games sound exactly the same.  I will increase the decay time however.
3.  Yeah the arcade version has some randomness to how fast the small ones fly off and often they do shoot off very fast, but I did have to scale down the playfield to account for much lower resolution.  As a result it's pretty cramped so I scaled back the 90-degree splitting and the extreme acceleration to keep the game from being unplayable.  If you think I "nerfed" it too much, I may add back some of the chaos.

4.  The small UFO won't appear until round 3 and then it's a 1 in 4 chance the UFO will be the smaller until after round 4 when it's a 1 in 3 chance.  I really have no idea what the ratio is in the arcade version.  Maybe in later rounds I'll increase it to a 1 in 2.  The easy skill level never has the smaller one.

I too have seen the ghosting you described at least a couple times in ColEm.  I'll double check the sprite attribute update code.

Thanks for all your testing and input. 

[Swami]

7 hours ago, AnalogKid said:

1.  I'll double-check the collision detection routine, I may not be trimming enough off of the hit-box for the small ones.  I had downsized the sprites by a pixel or two as there wasn't enough difference between the medium and the small.

2.  The arcade audio was fantastic with great bass.  Unfortunately with the Colecovision I have to work with a white-noise generator and it has two frequencies high and low.  I believe the alternative is to link the noise channel to tone channel 3 to get lower sounds but I need all three tones, particularly when the UFO on screen.  Anyway this is why the explosions in most games sound exactly the same.  I will increase the decay time however.
3.  Yeah the arcade version has some randomness to how fast the small ones fly off and often they do shoot off very fast, but I did have to scale down the playfield to account for much lower resolution.  As a result it's pretty cramped so I scaled back the 90-degree splitting and the extreme acceleration to keep the game from being unplayable.  If you think I "nerfed" it too much, I may add back some of the chaos.

4.  The small UFO won't appear until round 3 and then it's a 1 in 4 chance the UFO will be the smaller until after round 4 when it's a 1 in 3 chance.  I really have no idea what the ratio is in the arcade version.  Maybe in later rounds I'll increase it to a 1 in 2.  The easy skill level never has the smaller one.

I too have seen the ghosting you described at least a couple times in ColEm.  I'll double check the sprite attribute update code.

Thanks for all your testing and input. 

3. Maybe top the max speed 25% faster, since the relative playfield is smaller (in the arcade mode).

4. Regarding the small UFO, in the arcade version, it starts appearing after 10,000 points, alternating with the large UFO. After 40,000 points, only the small UFO appears. I don't know the exact point values, but I'm guessing from experience that every 10,000 points, the small saucer becomes more frequent: every third saucer after 10,000, every other saucer after 20,000, the last 2 out of three after 30,000 and the only saucer after 40,000. I've also read that after 40,000, the small saucer forces you to move or shoot quickly, because it shoots right at you if you are sitting still.

 

I don't mean to nit-pick, I just wanted to point out some arcade qualities since one of the options is "arcade" version. I encourage creativity and variation in the 8-bit console ports, in general - it keeps the sense of nostalgia better. It's also probably more fun to make it slightly less hard compared to the arcade version, so it's not such a "coin-gobbler".

[Kiwi]

Oh I just remember.  The shots fired from the ship usually disappear after a certain distance.  Also, it wrap around the screen in the atari 2600 version. 

[Swami]

1 hour ago, Kiwi said:

Oh I just remember.  The shots fired from the ship usually disappear after a certain distance.  Also, it wrap around the screen in the atari 2600 version. 

In the arcade version, they travel about 70% of the screen width/height, wrapping around, if necessary. It is your game, though. I should add that the wrap around can add a cheat if not compensated for. A player can get to one or two slow moving Asteroids and hide on the edge of the screen and shoot saucers by wrap around, since the saucers don’t aim by wrap around in the original arcade version. This was patched in a revision so the saucers’ could shoot at the player by wrap-around. Arcade owners were complaining about losing money on the game. 

[AnalogKid]

17 hours ago, Swami said:

3. Maybe top the max speed 25% faster, since the relative playfield is smaller (in the arcade mode).

4. Regarding the small UFO, in the arcade version, it starts appearing after 10,000 points, alternating with the large UFO. After 40,000 points, only the small UFO appears. I don't know the exact point values, but I'm guessing from experience that every 10,000 points, the small saucer becomes more frequent: every third saucer after 10,000, every other saucer after 20,000, the last 2 out of three after 30,000 and the only saucer after 40,000. I've also read that after 40,000, the small saucer forces you to move or shoot quickly, because it shoots right at you if you are sitting still.

 

I don't mean to nit-pick, I just wanted to point out some arcade qualities since one of the options is "arcade" version. I encourage creativity and variation in the 8-bit console ports, in general - it keeps the sense of nostalgia better. It's also probably more fun to make it slightly less hard compared to the arcade version, so it's not such a "coin-gobbler".

I appreciate the input.  I did try to find information about the game-specifics because yeah, I agree, it does matter for the game to feel like a true arcade-port.  I didn't manage to find any specifics, people seemed more interested in pointing out the bugs in the game or describing the UFO hunting scheme to run up the score.

[AnalogKid]

Here's release candidate 2.  I fixed a bunch of bugs and glitching.  I also made the asteroid splitting more like the arcade game, i.e. the smallest ones splinter off more wildly, requiring the player to be smarter and not fill the entire field with chaos.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4bkjpg9zlbvpqy4/astrostorm.rom?dl=1

[zyzzle]

Got a 404 error on your 2nd release canidate rom above. May you kindly re-upload it, please?

[AnalogKid]

Updated link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5ex6grxwmxmfwne/astrostorm.rom?dl=1

[Keatah]

File deleted?

 

[Pixelboy]

The "1" at the end of the link is left out of the address, but it seems to work with "=0".

 

Anyway, I just tried it and it plays pretty well. I like it.   

 

Have you considered doing a CV version of Mine Storm? That's one Asteroids clone I'd like to see, even if it turns out a little different than the Vectrex version.

 

Just a thought. 

 

Edited December 28, 2020 by Pixelboy

[AtariLeaf]

Looks fantastic. I hope to try this on my phoenix this weekend

[AnalogKid]

18 hours ago, Pixelboy said:

The "1" at the end of the link is left out of the address, but it seems to work with "=0".

 

Anyway, I just tried it and it plays pretty well. I like it.   

 

Have you considered doing a CV version of Mine Storm? That's one Asteroids clone I'd like to see, even if it turns out a little different than the Vectrex version.

 

Just a thought. 

 

Yeah there are a lot of things I'd like to do with the game engine but you know how it is, you get burned out with a game for a while and want to put it away and work on something very different for a bit.  I want to make a version of the original Space War with player vs player action and I wanted to add something that brings gravity into the picture, so maybe a black hole in the middle and the occasional asteroid comes in from the side and gets pulled in while the players shoot at each other and leave space-mines for the other player to either shoot or run into.  It would be cool if Asteroids itself had other phases that emphasized flight like one where there was a black hole in the middle and you had to negotiate the asteroids being pulled in and also a phase where you had to dock the ship or land it similar to Lunar Lander, but the purists want the game to match the arcade version as close as you can get it.  So, maybe Astrostorm II, the asteroids strike back.  I was also thinking of using the engine to make Armor Attack but the thought of coming up with all the images for jeeps, tanks, and helicopters in all the phases of rotation put me off of that for a while :c)  Coming up with 32 angles for just the Asteroid's ship was a serious pain and that's just a triangle.

[leolopes79]

On 12/28/2020 at 6:56 PM, AnalogKid said:

Updated link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5ex6grxwmxmfwne/astrostorm.rom?dl=1

File deleted. Please update the link.

[AnalogKid]

On 4/26/2021 at 8:11 AM, leolopes79 said:

File deleted. Please update the link.

updated Astrostorm link