"Refhraktor" homebrew WIP

[+Dave C]

Early WIP for a two player pinball-style game inspired by games like Ballistix (Amiga), Shufflepuck Cafe (various platforms).. and a little bit of Laser Blast

Javatari Link: PLAY ON JAVATARI!
Github Site: https://github.com/DChristianson/refhraktor 




The game: 
  - player has a laser they can use to shoot at a reflective ball and try to knock it into the opposing goal

  - the playfield is larger than the screen and scrolls up/down to track the ball movement

  - the lasers are imagined as sitting on a gantry above the playfield so they are always at the top and bottom of the screen
  - laser beams automatically track towards the ball based on relative position

UPDATE 20221232:

  - the game now utilizes a 16kb ROM with 128 bytes ram (f6 + superchip)
  - a lot of experimentation, culminating in a couple of simple changes
    - all players are effectively on autofire now - mashing the button has no benefit
    - each player has a power reserve that replenishes over time  
    - behind the scenes the beams can have different physical and visual effects based on range and equipment type
  - a few different ship types - two kinds of saucers, the maser tank, and the drone (AI)
    - the maser tank projects a short range beam that acts as a shield 

    - all the other ships play the same just with visual differences
  - still no score but there is a timer that ends the game after a set period of time
  - still no sound except for a chime that starts to play when the game clock starts to run out 
  - just a few levels still 

UPDATE 20220722:
  - three "levels" with different obstacles (or no obstacles)
      - selectable only with select switch during gameplay
      - still no menu system - select switch = no couch compatible seal of approval (sad face emoji)
  - scan lines glitch fixes
  - a few new glitches (long story short - a few page boundary timing bugs that I couldn't solve quickly)

 

 

 

refhraktor_NTSC_20221231.bin

refhraktor_PAL60_20221231.bin

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

14 hours ago, Dave C said:

Early WIP for a two player pinball-style game inspired by games like Ballistix (Amiga), Shufflepuck Cafe (various platforms).. and a little bit of Laser Blast

currently there's no score, or sound, or AI, or a menu...or different levels... so, just a POC demonstrating the shooting/collision mechanic, interested in any feedback

LOVE the concept, we'll be checking it out on Friday's ZPH show!

 

- James

[+Dave C]

3 hours ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

LOVE the concept, we'll be checking it out on Friday's ZPH show!

Thanks! I’ll see if I can make a few bug fixes by then.

 

It started out as drawing fishing lines by way of making some sort of fishing game… then went sideways.

[Fort Apocalypse]

This is amazing! The laser effect was cool, and it was a lot of fun to play!

 

These might be known, but found them when testing the first version in Stella 6.7:

• There's a spot about 2/3 to the right of the screen where the laser when pressed a lot sometimes comes from just to the left or farther on the left side rather than the right side.
• Even though the ball usually bounces off of the bottom right and top right area, if I got it going fast enough, it would go off and win, like it went in the goal.

 

Kicking the ball around with the laser was great!

Edited July 20, 2022 by Fort Apocalypse

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

ZeroPage Homebrew is playing Refhraktor on tomorrow's stream LIVE on Twitch, hope you can join us!

 

Fri Jul 22, 2022 @ 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 7PM GMT

WATCH: https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/

 

Games:

• Orbital War (2022 Exclusive World Premiere | 2600) by Leandro Camara @HSW3ET (Programming, Design and Soundtrack) / Heitor Maciel (Programming Consulting) / Viviane Peçaibes (Design and Text Consulting)
• Refhraktor (2022 WIP | 2600) by Dave Christianson @Dave C
• Boom! (2022 WIP Update | 2600) by Chris Walton @cd-w (Programming) / Nathan Strum @Nathan Strum (Graphics)

 

[+Dave C]

On 7/20/2022 at 5:29 AM, Fort Apocalypse said:

This is amazing! The laser effect was cool, and it was a lot of fun to play!

 

These might be known, but found them when testing the first version in Stella 6.7:

• There's a spot about 2/3 to the right of the screen where the laser when pressed a lot sometimes comes from just to the left or farther on the left side rather than the right side.
• Even though the ball usually bounces off of the bottom right and top right area, if I got it going fast enough, it would go off and win, like it went in the goal.

 

Kicking the ball around with the laser was great!

Thanks! I know the math is still off for both lasers and ball movement but I particularly haven't tested high speed, and pressing the laser a lot having an effect on the path is one I haven't seen 

[+Dave C]

UPDATE 20220722 :
  - three "levels" with different obstacles (or no obstacles)
      - selectable only with select switch during gameplay
      - still no menu system - select switch = no couch compatible seal of approval (sad face emoji)
  - scan lines glitch fixes
  - a few new glitches (long story short - a few page boundary timing bugs that I couldn't solve quickly)

[Fort Apocalypse]

I love the new default playfield! It's good practice for one player, since it's difficult to play two players by myself, though I tried. The other two maps are good for two players.

 

A few new things I noticed when playing, and since the release listed a few new glitches, maybe they are known. I could reproduce these, but not easily:

1. When the ball hits the disappearing black bars sticking out from the wall from the lower left, it can go out and win. I had the ball go out to the right of the goal at low speed with the top green laser once also, and no black bars, so that may be a different bug, but it only happened once.
2. When my laser is just right of center at the bottom and I'm shooting the red laser frequently, sometimes the ball and screen go fuzzy.

(Also, the rate doesn't stay on 262 scanlines / 60 Hz for NTSC when the laser is on.)

Edited July 23, 2022 by Fort Apocalypse

[+Dave C]

 

10 hours ago, Fort Apocalypse said:

 

A few new things I noticed when playing, and since the release listed a few new glitches, maybe they are known. I could reproduce these, but not easily:

1. When the ball hits the disappearing black bars sticking out from the wall from the lower left, it can go out and win. I had the ball go out to the right of the goal at low speed with the top green laser once also, and no black bars, so that may be a different bug, but it only happened once.
2. When my laser is just right of center at the bottom and I'm shooting the red laser frequently, sometimes the ball and screen go fuzzy.

These are helpful! Does the fuzziness happen - in emulator or real hardware? That's one I'm not sure I know (or maybe I'm worse at button mashing than I thought)

The sticking and scoring I've seen but thought I had eliminated. The fact that it's happening a lot on on the sides is interesting - it's one place I thought I had collisions working right, since the code works off of knowing for sure when you hit the extreme left/right boundaries there versus doing weird guesswork with the collision registers.

The scanlines and black bars I'm pretty sure I know the problems and can fix the bulk of them in the next pass - long story short there's a lot of kernel code that needs to find clean page boundaries to avoid timing problems - and a little bit I didn't cycle count at all (which I admit is shameful).
 -  I already decided I'm not going to kill myself trying to keep this game <= ??K so I'm planning the next pass to be a refactor to add bank switching (my first foray into >4K outside of bB) and hopefully get those clean page boundaries back (we'll see)..
- Wrt the black bars  I have been thinking of just giving up on them and having a black background all over the screen - the bars were kind of a graphical experiment but I don't feel they add much other than being a cycle counting flex (maybe better to get those cycles back and use them for better things)

 

[Fort Apocalypse]

8 hours ago, Dave C said:

These are helpful! Does the fuzziness happen - in emulator or real hardware?

Emulator (Stella 6.7)

 

8 hours ago, Dave C said:

having a black background all over the screen - the bars were kind of a graphical experiment but I don't feel they add much other than being a cycle counting flex (maybe better to get those cycles back and use them for better things)

Sounds good!

[+Dave C]

Year end progress release for 2022-12-31...  I made some detours ... but after spending the holidays experimenting with gameplay I could really use some feedback...

Updating the top post

 On the face of it not that different: 

  - still no score but there is a timer that ends the game after a set period of time
  - still no sound except for a chime that starts to play when the game clock starts to run out 
  - just a few levels still 

Changes
  - a lot of experimentation, culminating in a couple of simple changes
    - all players are effectively on autofire now - mashing the button has no benefit
    - each player has a power reserve that replenishes over time  
    - behind the scenes the beams can have different physical and visual effects based on range and equipment type
  - a few different ship types - two kinds of saucers, the maser tank, and the drone
     - the two saucers play identically but have different beam patterns (purely visual difference at the moment)
     - the drone (starts as the default for P2) is an AI opponent (same power as a saucer)
     - the maser tank has an extremely short range beam - effectively acts as a shield
  - a menu system lets you select your ship type and the play level
  - general cleanup of as many framerate, beam and ball movement glitches as I could 

Notes   
  - i have spent almost all my time playing versus the drone in the "void" level (no obstacles) as a way to figure out the core shooting mechanics - really really wanting to get better insights from actual play testing
  - there are definitely situations where the ball can get jammed on objects and basically stall play (in "void" the sloped side of the goal is the one place this happens - the result of loopholes in how I handle collisions)
  - there are still obvious visual glitches for the lower beam at extreme angles
      - this is because to draw the lower beam I start at the top - and there are some situations where the desired starting position can't be handled by my kernel
      - I have thoughts around having the beams actually do some reflecting/refracting but... for now I'm just letting them glitch away
  - tank vs tank... the tanks have no secondary weapons ... and the ball won't move on its own...
  - the tank is very OP versus the drone (which I did not expect)
  - drone versus drone battles are a great way to find new glitches...