NEW TI-994/A game: Biometeor

[Sergioz82]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm happy to present you my second game: Biometeor.

 

This is a brief explanation of the game story and gameplay.

More details are available in the game manual.

 

The Martian colony of Quenisset must repel the invasion of a living meteor.

You're in command of the last howitzer tank of the defence line and you must avoid that the Biometeor tendrils invade the underground shelter of the city.

 

In order to repel the invader's tendrils you must then fill all the empty space in a horizontal line of elements by using projectiles or bombs. Both contains growth factors capable of stimulating the gemmation of new elements. Once you made it the weight of the tendrils will make it collapse on itself, killing it. The tendrils below the destroyed one will pull back. The collapse happens when a tendril counts 14 elements.

 

you can count on the following weapons:

• Growth factor rounds;

• Continuity bombs;

• Ablative laser.

 

But be careful: sometimes the growth stimulants give life to hostile lifeforms called bioids. Avoid or destroy them before they hit your tank! 

 

Scientists also discovered that by using the growth factor projectiles when the Biometeor tendrils die they release crystalline concretions with high energetic potential. The mouth of the cannon therefore has been modified to channel and refine those concretions and power the tank on-board systems

 

According to the substance, and therefore its color, the on-board refiner will create power ups for various systems of the tank:

 

• White: Engine power up. The tank becomes more responsive and moves faster. The engine can endure a maximum of 3 power ups;

• Yellow: material for the continuity bomb. You can carry a maximum of 3;

• Cyan: Energy charge for the ablative laser. The accumulator can keep a charge for a maximum of 3 shots;

• Red: Expansion for the tank magazine. The tank can initially fire 30 rounds. Each crystal increases the capacity of 15 units for a maximum of 75.

 

Attached you'll find the bin files and the game manual. 

 

You can find it also on TI-99 Italian user club page:

 

TI-99IUC

 

In order to play the game on the real TI-99/4A you need 32K RAM expansion and a joystick.

 

I hope you'll enjoy it.

 

 I also thank Atari Age community for support and for the XB256 development platform that simplified me a lot of coding problems I had to face. 

 

 

 

 

BioMeteor8.bin (Multilanguage)-(Manual)-(Bio_Meteor)-(2022)-(by_Sergio_Zanotti)-(from_ti99iuc.it).pdf

Edited February 24, 2022 by Sergioz82

[Sergioz82]

To be fair, the core mechanics is not an idea of mine, let's say I expanded the concept.

 

It all begun with this 5€ lcd game I found in a.. I don't know how to call it.. a "stuff store"?  (Flying Tiger for Italian and I think European users)

 

The game contains about 20 variants of Tetris game, among them the one I used for this game.

 

Here's the picture:

 

[ti99iuc]

Nice Game  
This is my Highscore at the moment.

Not easy to collect 100K points damn ? 

 

 

[Sergioz82]

3 minutes ago, ti99iuc said:

Not easy to collect 100K points damn ? 

That's the point ?

[XLERB]

Wow, impressive!!

[Sergioz82]

8 hours ago, Paul Fitzgerald said:

Wow, impressive!!

Thank you

 

I hope you're enjoying it

[sometimes99er]

Arrow UP+'Q' Key stopped working.

 

[Sergioz82]

44 minutes ago, sometimes99er said:

Arrow UP+'Q' Key stopped working.

 

I'm sorry to read that.

You mean you can't shoot the laser, right?

 

It never occurred to me, do you remember how it happened?

 

 

 

[ti99iuc]

If someone want create a real cart for this game

 

 you can find the labels in the dedicated docs page

 

>>HERE<<

[unhuman]

This is a fun game.  I see there's a powerup for more responsive tank.  It is really uncomfortable until you get those... 

[Sergioz82]

1 hour ago, unhuman said:

This is a fun game.  I see there's a powerup for more responsive tank.  It is really uncomfortable until you get those... 

Thank you. I'm glad you like it 

 

The idea was to make the tank a bit sluggish at the beginning and then make it more responsive with power ups. I thought it could add some challenge (in my gameplay idea, the tendrils speed in level 1 to 3/4 match with with the slow tank speed, meanwhile the player has the opportunity to get the upgrades to face the fastest levels) 

 

On development side I couldn't make it too fast with 3 power ups otherwise it would have been very difficult to position it. On the other hand I couldn't make it too fast at the beginning because otherwise the speed increment wouldn't have been noticeable.

I had to find a compromise.

 

However, also @ti99iuc told me it's not very responsive at beginning.

 

If players find this annoying rather than challenging I can surely see if I can improve the tank speed.

 

 

[+save2600]

Fun game and thank you for this! Love the concept, graphics and animation... especially the two moons above, nice touch! Regarding the gameplay, I found the tank a bit 'sticky'. To the point where at first, I thought something was wrong with my joystick or the TI just being the TI (not always the most responsive) as can be the case in this department. Now that I see it's purposely designed that way to simulate sluggishness out of the gate, will have another go at it and concentrate on securing the speed power-ups.  
 

Oh and concerning the English instructions on @ti99iuc's website... might be an error in translation, but I saw it reads move tank Left to armory, when it should be Right. Just a heads up...

 

 

[+save2600]

Btw: @Sergioz82, you mentioned this was your second game. Biometeor is so nice, curious what your first game was?

 

-edit-

 

Question answered, thanks! Lazy Snake looks to be a credit to the genre.  

[ti99iuc]

1 hour ago, save2600 said:

[...] concerning the English instructions on @ti99iuc's website... [...] Just a heads up...

Oh man, I fixed the typo  thanks for the heads up

 

1 hour ago, save2600 said:

[...] you mentioned this was your second game. Biometeor is so nice, curious what your first game was?

you can find his first game here
 

 

Edited March 1, 2022 by ti99iuc

[sometimes99er]

On 2/27/2022 at 1:53 PM, Sergioz82 said:

I'm sorry to read that.

You mean you can't shoot the laser, right?

 

It never occurred to me, do you remember how it happened?

Couldn't reproduce. Moving left and right is very non-responsive. Only played for 2 minutes. ?

  

6 hours ago, unhuman said:

This is a fun game.  I see there's a powerup for more responsive tank.  It is really uncomfortable until you get those... 

Oh. ☺️

 

Edited March 1, 2022 by sometimes99er

[Sergioz82]

15 hours ago, sometimes99er said:

Couldn't reproduce. Moving left and right is very non-responsive. Only played for 2 minutes. ?

  

Oh. ☺️

 

 

Now that I think of it, it happened to me once but because I had the alpha lock enabled.

Otherwise never happened, surely not that early in the game.

 

If other users had the same problem please report.

 

I designed the tank to be that slow at begininning but maybe it's annoying rather than challenging.

I'm going to see if I can fix it.

 

[sometimes99er]

2 hours ago, Sergioz82 said:

Now that I think of it, it happened to me once but because I had the alpha lock enabled.

Otherwise never happened, surely not that early in the game.

 

If other users had the same problem please report.

 

I designed the tank to be that slow at begininning but maybe it's annoying rather than challenging.

I'm going to see if I can fix it.

Yes, it did happen early in the game.
 
The lack of responsiveness is like playing a bad TI BASIC game.
 
?
 

[senior_falcon]

I don't know anything about your code, so this is just speculation. In my opinion, using CALL LINK("DELAY") in a compiled game to slow it down is not ideal. If you tap a key during a CALL LINK("DELAY") it would be missed. Instead it is better to use a loop to scan the keyboard enough times to give the desired delay. This way a quick tap on a key will be detected.

[Sergioz82]

3 hours ago, senior_falcon said:

I don't know anything about your code, so this is just speculation. In my opinion, using CALL LINK("DELAY") in a compiled game to slow it down is not ideal. If you tap a key during a CALL LINK("DELAY") it would be missed. Instead it is better to use a loop to scan the keyboard enough times to give the desired delay. This way a quick tap on a key will be detected.

I don't use delay.

 

I have a variant in the game loop called SPD. At the beginning of the game it's 10.

Then I use a variant SP that is incremented each loop. Until SP is less than SPD it skips the tank movement part.

Each time the player gets a speed crystal SPD is decremented by 2.

 

Quote

1020 IF SP<SPD THEN GOTO 1160 !skip tank movement 

...

...

1430 IF SP=SPD THEN SP=0 ELSE SP=SP+1
1440 CALL KEY(1,K,S) :: CALL JOYST(1,JX,JY)
1450 GOTO 1020

 

I think I could lower SPD initial value to 8 or 6 (that is, the start speed would be the speed with one or two white crystals), however, on the other hand without a slow down the tank is too fast and it becomes difficult to position it.

 

 

 

Edited March 2, 2022 by Sergioz82

[Sergioz82]

Hi.

 

I have updated the game.

This is the list of changes:

 

• Adjusted the tank speed (now the start speed is slightly faster than the speed with 1 white crystal)
• Added a sound during the "Get Ready" countdown
• The game now begins with 4 tendrils (to reduce dead time waiting for a new row at level 1)
• Collecting a crystal now adds 50 points
• The laser dissipation animation is a bit faster
• Corrected a bug: when a bomb hit a bioid and the game ended with a game over, in the next match the first spawned bioid exploded with bomb sound
• Corrected a bug: in the credit menu if the player went back to main menu the text "press any key to go back" remained on screen

 

Please let me know if this version is more playable, especially for the tank speed part

 

 

 

 

BioMeteor.bin

[sometimes99er]

Absolutely more playable. ?
 

[Sergioz82]

21 minutes ago, sometimes99er said:

Absolutely more playable. ?
 

Good! 

 

[senior_falcon]

In my opinion still not good. I think you need to invert the logic for moving.

What I see happening now is this:

I press left/right and nothing happens until the prescribed amount of time has elapsed, then the tank moves. This repeats as long as the key is held.

What I think should happen is:

I press left/right and the tank immediately moves.  If I continue to hold the key, after the prescribed amount of time has elapsed then the tank moves again. This repeats as long as the key is held.

[Sergioz82]

1 hour ago, senior_falcon said:

In my opinion still not good. I think you need to invert the logic for moving.

What I see happening now is this:

I press left/right and nothing happens until the prescribed amount of time has elapsed, then the tank moves. This repeats as long as the key is held.

What I think should happen is:

I press left/right and the tank immediately moves.  If I continue to hold the key, after the prescribed amount of time has elapsed then the tank moves again. This repeats as long as the key is held.

Oh I see.

I appreciate your suggestion.

I'm going to implement this solution. I hope I can release a new version in the weekend.

 

Thank you very much!

[Sergioz82]

Here's the new version with @senior_falcon control method.

 

Now it's way more responsive 

BioMeteor.bin