Game design questions

[rdefabri]

Still gathering info and trying to think through a game I will attempt to program in either Atari BASIC or FastBasic (undecided yet, but leaning towards Atari BASIC since I know it reasonably well).  

 

Part of the game will involve a grid / array of shapes.  These shapes wouldn't be animated, but they may change.  They can change shape - say from square to triangle, or they can change color, from say red to orange.  They don't need to be high resolution and they wouldn't move.

 

I'm thinking these could be redefined characters, and to change their color / shape, simply use a different character to replace the one on screen.  Does that make sense or is there some other way I should render these?

 

There would be some sort of PMG that would be have a priority setting over the shapes, and that would need to move fluidly around the grid of shapes.  This shape would be animated, although it can be a single color.  I'm thinking a single player would be what I'd use here.  However, it doesn't need to be "big", it just needs to move around...so I think I could leverage a missile instead.  Is there any value to using a missile over a player other than saving a player for use somewhere else?

[Rybags]

Shape changing could be done by flipping character sets (expensive as each animation costs 1/2 or 1K for the chset) or just change the data of the characters being animated.  Not practical in Basic but well worth it in assembly when only several characters need to change.

 

You could use the corresponding missile per player to make it 10 pixels wide.  Or other missile/s to overlay and add extra colour.

But in Basic, missile manipulation can be tricky since 4 missiles are packed into each byte.  Assembly subroutine can help there.

 

A good way to manipulate player data in Basic is modifying string pointers which then allows using string operations to quickly move or fill data.

[rdefabri]

Yea I know missile manipulation is a bit of a pain.  After reading your post, I'm rethinking this.  I'd still have the char set grid, and just change the chars to manipulate the grid shapes.  The moving object over the grid shapes could be (say) player 1.  I'd need a centralized player (or combined players), so that would take up player 2 (and maybe 3-4).

 

I do need some sort of item that is "shot" at the shape - these would have to be missiles, but they only need to move in a linear fashion - either horizontally or vertically - not diagonally.

 

Speed will be an issue, so BASIC isn't optimal.  I'll experiment and see if compilation is possible.

[rdefabri]

Ok I realized something I said in my previous post was stupid - the idea of combining 3 players for a centralized icon wouldn't be necessary.  I can use the full height of the screen, and a single player can be "resized" from single to double to quadruple size.

 

I'm not sure that's "big enough" for my idea, and I'm not sure (but I think you can) resize the PMG on the fly, but that would resolve some issues for me.

 

Playing around with @bocianu Sprite Editor has really been helpful.  I suck at designing them, but it's helping me think through potential design issues.

Edited August 17, 2022 by rdefabri