Tober's Nightmare (2600) - The Pumpkin Smashing Game!

[+SpiceWare]

@mickmuze - Video Game Critic has been updating his Halloween Review Special page. I let him know about Tober's

 

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There's a really cool 2600 game in development that you'll want to add once it's finished:

...

 

and his response was:

 

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I can't wait to play this. Looks great. ... Please let me know when these are available!

 

[mickmuze]

Thanks SpiceWare! I appreciate that

[mickmuze]

Something I’ve been thinking about and was hoping to get some opinions.

 

For a game that never ends… Is it fair to continuously increase the speed of the enemies over time to the point where it is basically humanly impossible to go any further. If the game is all about points?

 

Or should there be a limit to the enemy speed so that there is always a possibility of the player outrunning the enemy if they are skilled enough.

 

The latter sounds like the correct answer but then comes the question of where to set the speed limit, and if the player is so skilled to always outrun the enemy, should the game really be set up so that skilled player can play basically forever, racking up points, and then only gets game over from exhaustion?

 

I’m sure this has probably been discussed a ton, I’ve looked before but had a hard time finding any thoughts on the issue.

I’m currently leaning towards having the speed increase with no limits for Tober’s Nightmare for the infinite levels game mode, unless you think this is the wrong way to go and feel it is unfair. Because at some point it will become impossible to outrun the green flame and tracking enemies, though most players will probably not make it far enough to get to the “game is now impossible” point.

[vitoco]

This topic wants its own thread...

 

A game could have an end when the next increase of the difficulty would turn the level unplayable or impossible. But it could happen that you would always get the same max score or that the score could depend on some bonus points collected during the game. If there is an absolute max score, once you reach it, you are done and you might forget the game, but if there are bonus points, you might want to try again and get all that extra points in your score. Of course you could finally get another max score that includes all the available extra points.

 

An aproach for an endless game is to go back to a previous level of difficulty, in order to disturb the player's muscular memory or concentration. In one of my endless games, the game iterates between the three most difficult levels.

 

If the game gives you back some lives or power during a level or after completing it, you can disable that feature when iterating in the most difficult level(s), giving less chances to remain in that/those level(s) to the infinite.

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

2 hours ago, mickmuze said:

For a game that never ends… Is it fair to continuously increase the speed of the enemies over time to the point where it is basically humanly impossible to go any further. If the game is all about points?

 

If a game is all about points (or levels) and there's no end state planned then I don't see an issue with increasing the speed to beyond human abilities. This prevents burn out from marathon, unending sessions and expert players possibly quitting midgame after mastering the hardest level. For the casual player it won't matter much as they'll never reach those high levels where only the few will make it to so that's no problem.

 

For the competitive players, they will try to squeeze out every available point on their way up to the levels of human impossibility and then try to eek out those remaining points near the final difficult stages through luck or sheer skill.

 

Given that, I think the most important things to concentrate on are a difficulty ramp up that's fun for new players but not boring for skilled players while also maintaining a decent length of gameplay before it gets too hard for humans to play.

 

- James

[mickmuze]

I like the ideas about switching between different difficulty. I seen somewhere about game design that through a level you should aim more for a wave than just a straight line of getting more difficult, which definitely makes sense.

On 10/3/2022 at 6:41 PM, vitoco said:

If the game gives you back some lives or power during a level or after completing it, you can disable that feature when iterating in the most difficult level(s), giving less chances to remain in that/those level(s) to the infinite.

I like this thought too and did that in my first game.. I believe after floor 50 it is no longer possible to gain health or free lives, but it definitely a big challenge to get that far. However I also made a limit to the enemies speed as well. Was never sure if that was the right direction.

 

On 10/3/2022 at 10:43 PM, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

 

If a game is all about points (or levels) and there's no end state planned then I don't see an issue with increasing the speed to beyond human abilities. This prevents burn out from marathon, unending sessions and expert players possibly quitting midgame after mastering the hardest level. For the casual player it won't matter much as they'll never reach those high levels where only the few will make it to so that's no problem.

Good points, I think I agree with you here. Would definitely want to avoid marathoning and I like the idea of reaching the human limits but still going back to push further in game to find ways of reaching the highest possible score within those limits. I think I’ll go this route with this game, in that game mode at least.

 

On 10/3/2022 at 10:43 PM, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

Given that, I think the most important things to concentrate on are a difficulty ramp up that's fun for new players but not boring for skilled players while also maintaining a decent length of gameplay before it gets too hard for humans to play.

That’s the trick right there. The hardest part is finding that perfect balance.

 

I find when developing and testing a game, you become very skilled in it yourself, without really noticing. I think that might be why a lot of the early games were so difficult at times. Probably from developers bug testing and playing their game so much that they lose track of what the game is actually like for a new player who doesn’t yet know how to play or what to expect.

[mickmuze]

Is 1Up owned or copyrighted by anyone? (the big N?) I have put this in Tober's Nightmare for an extra life item and got to thinking. Does anyone own 1Up when used in games? I googled it and found that it was a phrase that began in the Pinball era and was used in many games. However I also seen people get take down notices from Nintendo for designing shirts that had no mention of Nintendo but just had 1Up on the shirt.

 

I really like the nostalgia of the term 1Up and would like to put it in my game but I do have a (Not as satisfying) backup if this is something that is frowned upon (which seems ridiculous to me if that is the case)

[roots.genoa]

3 hours ago, mickmuze said:

I also seen people get take down notices from Nintendo for designing shirts that had no mention of Nintendo but just had 1Up on the shirt.

It must have been a graphical asset from a Nintendo game, then. That's usually what they're after.

[CapitanClassic]

I believe the trademark applications are in reference to the new Super Mario World in Universal Studio. 
 

Specifically to sell merchandise (like T-Shirts) like these. Pretty sure their trademark doesn’t extend to video game representations of additional lives earned.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

 👻HAPPY HALLOWEEN! 👻

 

ZeroPage Homebrew is playing the Exclusive Final Version of Tober's Nightmare on tomorrow's ZPH Halloween Homebrew Special stream LIVE on Twitch, hope you can join us!

 

Tue Oct 31, 2023 | LIVE @ 7PM PT | 10PM ET | 2AM GMT+1Day

WATCH LIVE: https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/
WATCH LATER: https://youtube.com/zeropagehomebrew/

 

Games:

• Tober's Nightmare (2023 Exclusive Final Version | 2600) by Mick Crocker @mickmuze
• Geist (2023 Exclusive World Premiere | 2600) by xbataxel @xbataxel
• Hobgoblin (2008 | A8) by Krzysztof Dudek @xxl, Krzysztof Ziembik @Kaz atarionline.pl, Michal Radecki-Mikulicz/Agenda/stRing @michomis
• Fright Zone Bowling (2023 Hack | 2600) by Edward Smith @easmith / Kevin Mosley @KevinMos3

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I just watched the game in the ZPH stream. Gameplay seems to be really great. Nice graphics, great attention to detail and everything seems very polished!

 

Some thoughts:

• some spooky music or tunes would enhance the immersion, IMO 
• have you thought about killing multiple enemies with one pumpkin when they line up?
• and/or vice versa, enemies which need more than one hit?

[mickmuze]

10 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

I just watched the game in the ZPH stream. Gameplay seems to be really great. Nice graphics, great attention to detail and everything seems very polished!

Thanks, I appreciate it 🙂 My head still hurts from the amount of time I have spent on this "side project" lol

 

10 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

• some spooky music or tunes would enhance the immersion, IMO 

 

I agree it would enhance the immersion but there definitely isn't any room for this on the cart. It's a 32kb game and there is currently only 18 bytes free spread out over 7 banks unfortunately. I have spent a lot of time crunching the code down as much as I could.

 

10 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

• have you thought about killing multiple enemies with one pumpkin when they line up?

 

I have thought about that when I first started thinking about power ups. I didn't think I'd have room for power ups at all but people requested an extra pumpkin so I tried really hard to crunch things down and squeeze power ups into it. I thought about having a special pumpkin that allowed to clear multiple enemies but the code to clear the enemies is kind of complicated the way it uses multiple sprites to splat the enemy while leaving the enemy on the screen and then raising the amount of points the player receives up from the enemy when hit. I didn't want the game to have any flicker of sprites at all so I tried to think of an alternative way of wiping out multiple enemies at roughly the same time and came up with the Lantern power up, where Tober grows large and just runs the enemies over. There is no splat animation or points displayed during this power up but I feel like that made more sense (to the player, that they wouldn't even think about it) during that power up then another pumpkin being thrown that didn't have those animations present. Do you know what I mean? I don't know, it's kind of the choice I made I guess when dealing within the limits.

 

10 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

• and/or vice versa, enemies which need more than one hit?

 

I'll just say that, due to the amount of free variables to record hit points, there IS one enemy and only one enemy in the game the requires more than one hit to take out. I had to borrow a single variable that was already in use to make that happen. 😛

 

technically it is possible to have nine enemies on the screen at once, it doesn't happen anymore because I found it unfair to the player but the code does allow for it. For as many enemies on the screen at once as it is, you would need a byte or at least a nybble per enemy to keep track of the hit points, there just isn't any left at this point. Or enough space to deal with storing in the stack.

 

I guess there is constantly a give and take, it is possible to do certain things but you may have to remove something else to make that happen. Constantly need to keep asking which idea is more important to the game.

 

Thanks for your feedback

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

29 minutes ago, mickmuze said:

I agree it would enhance the immersion but there definitely isn't any room for this on the cart. It's a 32kb game and there is currently only 18 bytes free spread out over 7 banks unfortunately. I have spent a lot of time crunching the code down as much as I could.

Yes, that sounds like a lot of code crunching. Which is one of my utterly nerdy pastimes.  (I bet I could find a few more bytes)

29 minutes ago, mickmuze said:

I have thought about that when I first started thinking about power ups. I didn't think I'd have room for power ups at all but people requested an extra pumpkin so I tried really hard to crunch things down and squeeze power ups into it. I thought about having a special pumpkin that allowed to clear multiple enemies but the code to clear the enemies is kind of complicated the way it uses multiple sprites to splat the enemy while leaving the enemy on the screen and then raising the amount of points the player receives up from the enemy when hit. I didn't want the game to have any flicker of sprites at all so I tried to think of an alternative way of wiping out multiple enemies at roughly the same time and came up with the Lantern power up, where Tober grows large and just runs the enemies over. There is no splat animation or points displayed during this power up but I feel like that made more sense (to the player, that they wouldn't even think about it) during that power up then another pumpkin being thrown that didn't have those animations present. Do you know what I mean? I don't know, it's kind of the choice I made I guess when dealing within the limits.

For sure I understand this. Finding the optimal compromises is one of the key requirements when developing top games for the 2600. And it sounds and looks like you took a lot of care here.

29 minutes ago, mickmuze said:

I'll just say that, due to the amount of free variables to record hit points, there IS one enemy and only one enemy in the game the requires more than one hit to take out. I had to borrow a single variable that was already in use to make that happen. 😛

Reusing variables is business as usual, especially when you only have the original 128 bytes. I don't know the limits of DPC+ from my head, but I suppose RAM is scarce there too.

29 minutes ago, mickmuze said:

technically it is possible to have nine enemies on the screen at once, it doesn't happen anymore because I found it unfair to the player but the code does allow for it. For as many enemies on the screen at once as it is, you would need a byte or at least a nybble per enemy to keep track of the hit points, there just isn't any left at this point. Or enough space to deal with storing in the stack.

I don't know how you setup the graphic pointers, but if you should have them constantly, then e.g. the unused top 3 bits bits could be used.

29 minutes ago, mickmuze said:

I guess there is constantly a give and take, it is possible to do certain things but you may have to remove something else to make that happen. Constantly need to keep asking which idea is more important to the game.

Exactly.

29 minutes ago, mickmuze said:

Thanks for your feedback

You are welcome.