Odyssey 1 Gun Games: adding score, lives and possibly ammunition counters

[Mikebloke]

Hi everyone. You might have seen various topics by me for the odyssey 1. For example the multicard (some still available!) as well as some "demakes" in the form of space war from the fairchild channel f, and a somewhat jokey version of pac man for the anniversary last year. 

 

One of my goals was to make a rpg for the console, ideally played fully single player. I stalled this for a long time due to the fact I couldn't make any odyssey 1 features make the game 'fun' without completely ignoring it. I felt the only sure way to make it interesting would be to include a gun mini game. I didn't have a gun for the odyssey 1 so it went on hiatus. 

 

In the last few days I've managed to grab one internally in the UK fairly cheaply. It didn't come with overlays but I use OBS on my laptop to expand a digital overlay, make it somewhat transparent and then switch the screen to my TV through a regular hdmi cable. For those that don't know, the tricks with crt light guns was an innovation and the original odyssey light gun simply tracks light where ever it is, on the TV, a light bulb or the sun. 

 

This means the odyssey light gun works on modern tvs, laptop screens etc. By creating a game in any other program or language in black and white (or at least, well defined colours that will correctly trigger 'hit' when fired at) you can create something new without the need of other players moving dots on the screen. 

 

For this I use gamecard 9, it's sole purpose is to show when I hit something. Reloading temporarily disappears the square too, which will be an issue I'll explain a little later. 

 

I've already created some basic programs including a shooting gallery program which lights one of 16 targets up randomly or in a set sequence , at chosen speeds and also a "program" version where it speeds up as it progresses towards the end. A second game mimicing clay pigeon shooting I've also started and got working and will include some skeet shooting modes and double trap settings as well. Finally, I plan to do a duck hunt demake too, where dark grass should prevent a successful hit. 

 

Odyssey 1 relies heavily on honesty, these games is great but it's up to you to remember your score - I'm already stepping it up by making games in other systems in the first place to create a moving display - how now to make it interactive? By using a screenshot capture program I can create an image of whether or not my firing is successful or not. If the captured image is white, it means I haven't fired yet/missed. If its black, it means I scored a hit. If you see the photo I took, you can see some of my processes testing this. I have the USB device giving me the image to capture in the corner, I have a window capture program taking a screenshot regularly of the area showing the square from the odyssey. I then have my "game" loading the screenshot image and then detecting if it's white or black. If its black, you get score. 

 

Now there is two issues with this: first, either my odyssey or my USB device needs to warm up. Its always glitchy for the first 30 minutes or so, so the square moves about a bit. Not a problem for normal 2 player gameplay, but my current score keeping registers the jumping as a hit. The second issue is reloading also blanks the square. I believe I can get round this by timing how long the square remains black. A short time will be presumed to be a reload, a long time will be presumed to be a hit. 

 

Because the game is seeing from the screenshot when a hit happens, it means it can remove the target to prevent double scoring and also counting up score for each hit. It won't be able to tell me if I scored in the middle or the edge of a ring, but it does do a hit. This can then be used to make railshooters. Zombies could be coming at you and if you don't hit them, they could take lives. Counting reloads could be used to make ammo counts and reload periods by making enemies darker to not register while you wait for a cartridge reload time in game. Having scenes with innocents as well means you could create "bad" hits reducing lives or score further. Essentially I'm proposing a house of the dead / virtua cop situation with the odyssey 1 system! 

 

I need to link my previous shooting range and clay pigeon scenes to the hit detection and count timings before I can get score, life and ammo counts sorted, and ideally I would simply code this in a program that has built in pixel colour detection as standard rather than using a 3rd program to screen capture. But the concepts is there. 

 

If people are interested once I've tided up what I got I'm happy to upload my shooting scenes which would work on the "honesty" system and explain how one might actually use it. I've enjoyed testing the shooting range one and adding different modes.